Debating Security in Turkey : Challenges and Changes in the Twenty-First Century 9780739148730, 9780739148716

Citation preview

Debating Security in Turkey

Debating Security in Turkey Challenges and Changes in the Twenty-First Century Edited by Ebru Canan-Sokullu

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

Published by Lexington Books A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom Copyright © 2013 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Debating Security in Turkey : Challenges and Changes in the Twenty-First Century / Edited by Ebru Canan-Sokullu. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7391-4871-6 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-7391-4873-0 (ebook) (print) 1. Turkey—Foreign relations—21st century. 2. National security—Turkey. 3. Security, International—Middle East. 4. Turkey—Politics and government—21st century. I. Canan-Sokullu, Ebru, 1977–, editor of compilation. JZ1649.D43 2012 355'.0330561—dc23 2012026834 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

For Mum, Dad, and Oğuz

Figures 16.1

EU Neighborhood Policy and Turkey (%)

279

16.2

Turkey’s Preferred Involvement in Different Regions (%)

280

16.3

Preferred Authority for European Security (%)

281

16.4

European Army vs. National Army (%)

282

16.5

Transfer of Authority in Security Policy (%)

283

ix

Tables 13.1

The Western Balkan Countries’ Candidacy Status at the EU and NATO

220

13.2

Comparative National Income and Official Unemployment Statistics in 2011

222

13.3

Level of Corruption in the Western Balkans (2011)

224

xi

Acknowledgments As with all projects, there are many people to thank, without whose support this book could not have been completed. During the preparation of this book I have received valuable suggestions and great support from many people, all of whom unfortunately cannot be mentioned here. First and foremost, I am greatly indebted to the contributors for both agreeing to write their chapters, and for diligently submitting them on schedule. Thanks must also be given to Lenore Lautigar, the Associate Editor at Lexington Books, who has been very patient and helpful during the preparation of the book. Special thanks also go to Jerry Spring, who has meticulously helped me in the proofreading of the book. I would like to mention the International Security Conference I co-organized by the same title as this book in October 22–23, 2010 in Istanbul. Concentrating on the crucial theme and the problematic task of locating Turkey in the new security equations, this conference generated critical thinking about the new state of Turkish foreign and security policy, and contributed immensely to the preparation of this book. I gratefully acknowledge that the financial support that enabled me to organize the conference was received partly from NATO, Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, Swedish Consulate in Istanbul, and Bahçeşehir University. The conference paved the way for a restructuring and reformulation of the content of the book. Finally, I want to thank my family, particularly my dear husband, Oğuz, and my mum and dad for their never-ending understanding, tolerance, love, care, and tremendous support. Without their endless support and belief, this book would not have been what it is now.

Ebru Canan-Sokullu İstanbul, 2012

xiii

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgments

ix xi xiii

Introduction: Debating Security: Changes and Challenges for Turkey in the Twenty-first Century Ebru Canan-Sokullu PART I

1

APPROACHES TO “SECURITY” AND “CHALLENGES” IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

1

Security and Challenges in the Twenty-first Century: A Theoretical Outlook Craig A. Snyder

31

2

Insulator, Bridge, Regional Center? Turkey and Regional Security Complexes Thomas Diez

45

3

Continuities and Changes in Turkish Foreign and Security Policy in the Twenty-first Century and the EU Selcen Öner

59

PART II

TURKEY AND INTERNAL SECURITY CHALLENGES IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

4

Beyond Military Tutelage? Turkish Military Politics and the AKP Government İsmet Akça and Evren Balta-Paker

77

5

Islamization: A Challenge to Turkey’s Secular Democracy? Selin Özoğuz-Bolgi

93

PART III 6

TURKEY AND EXTERNAL SECURITY CHALLENGES IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Turkey’s New Cyprus Policy: Transforming a Military Base into a Basin of Cooperation Ahmet Sözen

109

7

Turkey’s Changing Relations with the Middle East: New Challenges and Opportunities in the 2000s Özlem Tür

123

8

Switching Sides or Novel Force? Turkey’s Relations with Israel and the Palestinians Nathalie Tocci

141

9

The Iraqi Conundrum: A Source of Insecurity for Turkey? Armağan Gözkaman

157

10 Turkish-Russian Rapprochement and the Security Dialogue in the Black Sea-South Caucasus Region Burcu Gültekin-Punsmann

173

11 Energy Security and Turkey in Europe’s Neighborhood Özgür Ünal Eriş

187

PART IV

THE EURO-ATLANTIC PARTNERSHIP IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

12 Security Challenges of Turkish-American Relations in the Post-Bush Era Emre İşeri

205

13 Turkey as a Stakeholder and Contributor to Regional Security in 219 the Western Balkans Adam Balcer 14 Turkey and Greece: What Future for Rapprochement? James Ker-Lindsay

237

15 Turkey’s Approach to Environmental Security: A Case for Soft Security Rana İzci

249

16 Turkish Political Elite Perceptions on Security Çiğdem Üstün and Özgehan Şenyuva

271

Conclusion: What Future for Security? Ebru Canan-Sokullu

289

Bibliography Index About the Contributors

305 333 343

Introduction: Debating Security: Changes and Challenges for Turkey in the Twenty-first Century Ebru Canan-Sokullu Turkey holds a unique position as regards its geopolitical location, strategic extension and socio-cultural dynamics in international and regional politics. At the start of the twenty-first century, Turkey’s significance in security politics bears multidimensional, multiregional and multisectoral attributes. The thawing of the Cold War was a source of various challenges as well as opportunities for Turkey in the new foreign and security context. Regarding the challenges and opportunities that Turkey has faced since the end of the Cold War, Turkey’s perceptions of its foreign and security policy have been particularly influenced by the European integration process, the impacts of the democratic transformation of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the rapprochement between Turkey’s Euro-Atlantic partners and the Russian Federation, as well as the foreign policy agenda of neighboring countries. The newly emerging Turkic world in the Caucasus, the global refocusing on Turkey’s Middle Eastern neighbors after the Gulf War, and the recent restructuring of the Balkans have all introduced various new challenges and opportunities for Turkey’s internal and external security prospects. In Turkey, security was historically defined by traditional hard security issues rather than by soft security considerations. Traditionally, Turkish security was concentrated on military power and territorial defense against potential aggressors, with national security policies concentrating on finding a way to survive the “security dilemma.” However, with the end of the Cold War and the breakdown of bipolarity, a broader security agenda emerged. This agenda was characterized by an increased recognition of the reduced value and importance of military power. The end of the Cold War resulted in a transformation of traditional hard security concerns and norms, exclusively defined and guided by pure 1

2

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

military considerations, to a soft security agenda, which concentrated on issues such as economic and social conditions, environmental damage, ethnic and religious civil conflict, terrorism, and organized crime. This paved the way for a restructuring and reformulation of Turkey’s security agenda at national, regional and sub-systemic levels. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, “hard security”—defined purely according to a realist “national interest” framework—became subject to critical scrutiny, particularly during the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP) period. That is, a limited understanding of interestbased ‘national security’ was replaced by a new spectrum of “soft security” issues, ranging from societal security (i.e., cultural, ethnic and religious identity, recognition of “differences,” diversity and plurality, individual and group interests) in the multiethnic, multireligious and multicultural country, to economic security challenges (e.g., energy diplomacy, water politics).1 Reconciliation of these issues with the overarching concept of a Kemalist view of the state’s “national interest” has become a pressing issue. In particular, since the war in Yugoslavia, Turkey’s appeal as a “soft power” in the Middle East, the Balkans and Central Asia has greatly increased. Besides its participation in traditional hard security-oriented foreign policy initiatives, Turkey has increased its strategic value through diplomatic initiatives in the new global security environment, such as providing an energy corridor between the European Union (EU), Trans-Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East. Turkey has also aspired to become a promoter of stability to meet the security needs of the Euro-Atlantic security community, to bridge the Euro-Atlantic sphere to the Eurasian geopolitical system at economic, cultural, political and strategic levels. Turkey has also acted as a key security partner in international conflict resolution and peacekeeping operations. Mediating in and contributing to solving chronic problems through intensive diplomatic initiatives with its eastern neighbors has added to the role and importance of Turkey’s soft power within its new multidimensional foreign policy framework. This potential and recognition of Turkey’s soft power is deemed as a very important step forward for Turkey’s changing foreign and security policy.

Theoretical Synopsis of “Security” and “Challenges” in the Twenty-first Century The challenges and threats posed to the contemporary state system can no longer be reduced to a state-centric security calculus, where the state is both subject and object of the analysis. While Turkish foreign and security policy in the twentyfirst century, in tandem with its regional and transatlantic connection, has made strides in terms of the AKP government’s attitude and policy position concerning the emergence of new security challenges and prospects, academic research has scarcely concentrated on the analysis of the perceptual changes of “security

Introduction: Debating Security

3

challenges and prospects” at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This book attempts to meet this need in the literature. Turkey’s security agenda in the twenty-first century is examined in this book, in part 1, with specific reference to the concept of “challenge.” The Oxford Dictionary defines “challenge” as “difficulty of a new task and a competition that tests somebody’s ability and skill.”2 Terminologically, it is the product of some combination of capabilities to do harm and malign intent. “Security challenge,” in a more specific sense, is “a product of potential to cause harm and either intent or deterministic natural processes,” as defined by Caldwell and Williams.3 As the twenty-first century has continued to witness an expansion of the scope and gravity of foreign and security policy “challenges,” “threats” and “risks” in the new security agenda, which has transcended socio-economic, demographic and geographic boundaries, the widening and deepening of aspects of the concept of challenge require special attention.4 For the purpose of analyzing Turkish security challenges, a region-specific level of analysis is a central point of the discussion throughout the book. In the transformed post-Cold War era, the state is no longer the only agent or target of security challenges. Rather, the international system faces a complex security environment, which poses serious challenges and carries unprecedented risks for both state and non-state actors. As once argued by Herz, the contemporary global order has transformed the “hard shell” of the state.5 In this new global security environment, not only has territoriality been challenged, but also the domestic dynamics internal to each state have entered a transition stage due to ethnic strife, environmental degradation, criminalization of national economies, or weak state structures. Today, as challenges cannot be disaggregated into the capabilities and intentions of states, primacy can no longer be attributed only to the state as either agent or object.6 There is also no single satisfactory typology of “security challenges” or a conceptual consensus on what constitutes a security challenge (“content”), the way in which challenges are manifested (“form”), or the source of challenge (“agency”). The way that realists long considered the state as an unequivocal and unchallenged actor, despite its security challenges, has become an outdated approach to security.7 Critical security scholars have concentrated on the “agent-structure problem of challenges” to explore today’s multifaceted nature of security and challenges, particularly the differentiation between societal, state, and systemic security.8 In an effort to provide an over-arching typology of security challenges, Kirchner and Sperling distinguish between the “target”— either state or society—of the threat, and the “agent” of the threat—whether state or non-state agent. This typology is helpful to our understanding of global security and challenges as it combines both traditional and novel dimensions of security threats to better understand the Turkish case. 9 Such an effort to offer a typology of challenges relates to two dimensions, namely “deepening” and “widening,” that security studies can be characterized across. The “deepening” of security studies questions whether entities other than the “state” should be able to claim security challenges. Traditional security studies that focus on military-based and state-centric approaches claim that “military

4

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

might and interest” are the keys to security, and the “state” is the core actor. However, the deepening of security studies challenges this notion that the security of the state is only threatened by the military power of other states and defended by the military power of the state itself. 10 As the post-Cold War situation unraveled, this approach has changed. Therefore, the post-Cold War era has also been marked by a “widening” that relates to the sectoral extension of security. 11 A wider approach to security, primarily advocated by constructivists, argues that state-agents are capable of changing their security environments from a highly competitive to a highly cooperative level by moving into security cooperation. Following the constructivist paradigm of security, postmodernists, particularly the Copenhagen School, argue that security should be reconsidered within multisectoral lines, with reference to military, as well as political, societal, economic and environmental sectors. Post-Cold War era debates on security have also expanded the “level of analysis” of security and challenges to it. During the Cold War era, the central unit of analysis was the “nation-state”; hence a “national” level was adapted by most realists. In contrast, the liberal school, rejecting the blind focus on “national security,” developed its arguments on a more international level, with specific references to global society, global security, and international security cooperation. However, this twofold typology has been abandoned in the post-Cold War era, with critical security studies increasing the range of levels of analysis for security studies by incorporating new levels, such as “individual” and “society.” Given that a multisectoral and multidimensional security agenda has come to the fore, as challenges transcend national borders, a multilevel analysis of security has also become essential, including a “regional” reference, with more focus on security interdependence, collective security, and regional security complexes to face challenges. During the Cold War era, the literature on security in international relations was predominantly shaped with reference to the nationstate and the national interest. Interdependence was recognized as the most prevailing issue only with reference to military security. The concept of “collective security” urged for greater military security interdependence among states. However, the September 11 attacks underscored the vulnerability of modern industrial states to unconventional threats, which now constitute the new security agenda. The September 11 attacks, if accepted as the beginning of the twentyfirst century, marked a new world order, where challenges to security have no longer visible fronts, armies or countries with well-defined borders. In response, there has been an expansion in the agenda, actors and methods of security interdependence. Thus, the new global security agenda raises an important question of “how” states should meet the new challenges and threats. If “interdependence” is simply described as the interrelatedness and connectedness of actors, and implies the sensitivity and vulnerability of the dependent, as once defined by Keohane and Nye, then security interdependence is essential to meet borderless challenges through closer foreign policy partnership, with a revised understanding of effective leadership and with a willingness to accept deeper cooperation.12 For neorealists, however, increased interdependence leads to conflict and instability, since states are self-interest seeking units.

Introduction: Debating Security

5

As also argued by dependency theorists, greater interdependence leads to a structural imperialism between the dependent and the dominant actors of the international system. In contrast, for neoliberals, the level of interdependence determines the degree of interstate cooperation and stability in the international system. The neoliberal institutionalists, going even further, argue that cooperation is enhanced at both regional and global levels through increased interdependence. This leads to policy coordination and the progressive handling of problems in a cooperative spirit. Buzan proposes that the “regional level” is the most appropriate level of analysis to understand security. He argues that, because of the relational nature of security, it is possible to understand the national security patterns of states only with reference to the patterns of regional security interdependence.13 More specifically—and more applicably to Turkey’s twenty-first century security understanding—Buzan’s “regional security complex” theory examines security relations and problems on the regional level. His definitions of “region,” “regional security” and “security complex” are essential both in a conceptual and methodological sense. Buzan defines “region” as a distinct system of states closely united by geographical vicinity, and whose security relations are so significant as to establish the location of boundaries with other regional formations. In other words, a “region” should not be thought of as an arbitrarily defined set of countries.14 With a more constructivist emphasis, Katzenstein defines a “region” as a social and cognitive construct that is rooted in political practices.15 On the other hand, Hettne and Soderbaum’s definition of “region” not only refers to geographical proximity but also to a common set of cultural values, social bonds and historical legacy.16 Besides all these conceptions of region, Bisley’s inclusive definition is also particularly applicable, with specific emphasis on the region(s) where Turkey is located.17 That is, a “region” is a group of states that share similar communal identities.18 “Regional security complex theory” lays the foundations for investigating the security region within which Turkey is located. Buzan et al. define “regional security” as the sum of the national securities, or a particular set of constellations of security interdependence, among a group of states.19 The analytical device for identifying and delineating regional formations is the “security complex,” defined as “a group of states whose primary security concerns link together sufficiently closely that their national securities cannot realistically be considered apart from one another.”20 Empirically, “regional security complexes” are regions of various kinds with different functioning security commitments, such as NATO or the Western European Union (WEU). These are amalgamations of regionally based clusters of international subsystems, such as the EU, and nation-states, such as Turkey. Within their various security complexes, states share certain security dynamics that are constellations and interactions of security challenges in their specified regions, like Turkey’s sharing of security interests with the EU in the West, and with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in the East.21 This brief overview enables us to understand that Turkey’s security position is profoundly embedded in an institutional security setting,

6

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

specifically in Europe, with the EU, WEU and NATO, or in the Middle East and Arab world, with the OIC. Based on this synopsis of the theoretical overview and on the fact that novel characteristics have been ascribed to the twenty-first century security agenda, this book contributes to the literature on security studies by delving into various ontological themes. Craig A. Snyder, in chapter 1, introduces the reader to the broader theoretical perspectives covered in the book. In an attempt to provide an overview of “change” in the security agenda, he surveys the major themes and evolution of strategic/security studies over the past sixty years. He further develops the continuities and differences between three broad periods in this evolution, namely the classical thought, modern strategic theory (from the inter-war period through to the Cold War), and contemporary theoretical assumptions. He then examines how concepts such as security and challenge have widened and deepened, both as a result of geo-political changes in the post-Cold War era but also through academic debates concerning the study of security. For states such as Turkey, these changes are immense, as the nature and direction of threats have shifted radically during the last decade of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, and include internal political and social threats as much as external military threats. Traditionally, “Regional Security Complex Theory,” developed by Buzan and revised by Buzan and Wæver, sees Turkey as an ‘insulator’ state between the European, the Middle Eastern and the Central Asian security complexes. While Buzan and Wæver note that Turkey’s active foreign policy runs against the behavior expected from an insulator, they nonetheless maintain that this does not challenge Turkey’s status as such, since Turkey is unable to draw the security complexes together into a coherent whole.22 Thomas Diez, in chapter 2, explores the rather underdeveloped concept of “insulator” in the theory, and challenges the very idea of “insulating.” While it is true that the security dynamics within the three complexes surrounding Turkey are more intense than between them, two questions are explored more thoroughly. First, what are the internal dynamics within Turkey? Diez suggests that rather than being an insulator, Turkey can be seen as a meeting ground of security dynamics that result in domestic political struggles about the legitimate order. Second, what is the function of Turkey from a systemic perspective? Rather than simply being an insulator that “absorbs” security dynamics, he suggests that states caught between security dynamics always have an option to act passively, as Buzan and Wæver predict, or pursue an active policy of “barrier” or “bridge.” This book not only aims to report empirical observations, it also aims at contributing to the literature on how the new geo-strategic map of the post-Cold War era has affected the relationship between the nature of “security” and “challenge” in the Turkish context, and its implications for the security identity of the nation-states in the wider regions. While securing its national interests, Turkey has also started incorporating new security issues and principles into its own security agenda. As no single theoretical approach is sufficient to understand the twenty-first century security politics of Turkey, it is not in the interest of this book to adopt a single theoretical view. In other words, this book, by synthesiz-

Introduction: Debating Security

7

ing the “widening” and “deepening” strands of security theories, offers a multitheoretical examination. For a full comprehension of Turkey’s twenty-first century security paradigm, the safest contemporary approach would be a multilevel and multisectoral approach. Today, Turkey’s security politics include multiple levels with global, regional, national and the individual as units of analysis; and multiple sectors (political, military, societal and energy). However, such a compound security framework requires more attention on the “region” where Turkey is located because of “interests,” as discussed previously. There are different theoretical approaches to Turkey’s security “identity” and “interests.” Some of them focus on the prioritization of issues, others on actors and interests. This book, without restricting itself to any specific approach, explores the most effective framework depending on the issue at stake. In correlation with this, Selcen Öner, in chapter 3, puts Turkey’s traditionally Hobbesian foreign and security policy under critical investigation to introduce us to the multifaceted and multi-interest new foreign policy adopted by the AKP government since 2002. It was previously thought that Turkey needed to be strong in military terms, and a “win-lose approach” remained dominant. In the post-Cold War, however, as new opportunities emerged, together with new security challenges, Turkey has increasingly been considered also as a soft power. A transformation has been in progress from focusing on military security and the balance of power to an increasing emphasis on civilian instruments, such as law and diplomacy. Especially with the coming to power of the AKP government, Turkey’s foreign and security policy has moved towards a Kantian approach, with more emphasis on being active, cooperative, and constructive. Foreign policy during the AKP government has become consistent with the “Strategic Depth” vision of the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ahmet Davutoğlu. Along similar lines, Öner argues that Turkey’s security policy has been reconstructed as a policy of “zero problems” with neighbors.

Contextual Analysis of Turkey and Security Challenges in the Twenty-first Century The external and internal security domains are two inseparable and essential pillars of politics for the survival of the state in the twenty-first century. In the context of Turkey’s traditional security priorities, external security has always been given special attention due to its geo-strategic location at the edge of Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Yet, internal security has also required equally constant attention, as the country has been frequently tense and rarely tranquil. The claim that external actors have exploited domestic cleavages within Turkey to weaken and undermine the Turkish state’s principal tenets has carried particular historical resonance within Turkey. The perception of domestic threats as extensions of external ones started in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire and continued during the Republican era. In the twenty-first century

8

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

security context, challenges to security in both senses carry equal weight in empirical practice. Following this argument, this book elaborates on both internal and external security and challenges that Turkey has faced under a succession of AKP governments.

Turkey and Internal Security Challenges in the Twenty-first Century Domestic political circumstances and dynamics have meant that the primary security challenges occupying the country’s political agenda in the last decade have one aspect in common: “democracy.” This book, in part 2, covers two specific multisectoral (regime sector and societal sector) challenges to internal security as regards Turkish democracy: the long-lasting intrusive role of the military in domestic politics when faced with ethno-religious tension, the Islamic challenge to democracy and laïcité caused by the rise of political Islam, and the ripple effect of expressions of ethnic Kurdish nationalism, which is examined more thoroughly in the External Security section. While the predominance of the military and the fear of religious domination of politics more directly challenge regime security in Turkey, the Kurdish issue relates more to the security of societal identity, as well as to the external security of the country. Military–Civilian Divide: A Challenge to Regime Security? Turkey is a country in which the armed forces have always been held in the highest regard. The Kemalist ideology affected almost all aspects of Turkish security policies.23 The principles stated in Article 2 of the 1937 Constitution laid the foundations of the Republican understanding of Turkish national security: “The Turkish state is republican, nationalist, populist, statist, secularist, and revolutionary-reformist.” This outlines the state ideology of Kemalism and the Kemalist essentials of “state security”: “the indivisibility of the nation and its territory, and the secularism of the republic.”24 The corollary of this was that the Kemalist Turkish state established strict controls in the name of secularism over religion, religious institutions, and radical activism; and over all different ethnic and cultural identities and groups, and separatist movements in the name of protecting national identity. The most visible result of the formation of this secular and homogenous state has been the militarization of domestic politics. Any articulation of different ethno-religious identities and socio-cultural differences—most prominently the Kurdish culture and the expanding role of Islam in society and politics—have been treated as sources of insecurity and challenges to national unity.25 Thus, the military establishment became one of the core components of politics, and the central apparatus of Turkish security. The Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) has exerted a significant impact on defining security challenges (internal and external), formulating national security policies and undertaking operations against all manifestations of these threats. This has resulted in a quite different form of civil–military relations than that experienced in western liberal democracies, where military subordination to the

Introduction: Debating Security

9

civilians is an essential principle.26 This peculiarity of civil–military relations in Turkey can best be understood with regard to Turkey’s socio-cultural characteristics and geographical location. Socio-cultural factors also help explain the popular acceptance of TAF’s influence over politics. TAF, for many Turks, has provided insurance for political stability. It has long been the most trusted institution, with very strong popular support.27 At the same time, because of geographical constraints Turkey has been exposed to challenges and threats that most western European countries have not faced. The geography within which Turkey is located has not only increased Turkey’s global commercial and economic importance, but it has also been conducive to justifying why Turkey needs to maintain its external and internal security with a strong army more than its western neighbors. However, by the beginning of the twenty-first century, the highly trusted TAF had itself become transformed into a military challenge to democracy in Turkey with reference to two dynamics: the AKP effect and the EU acquis. Since its first electoral victory, in 2002, the AKP government has prioritized preventing the military’s political meddling in order to develop a functioning consolidated democracy in the country. Accordingly, AKP governments have insisted on more accountability and transparency on the part of the armed forces to increase democratic civilian control over the military. This has been partly achieved through reforms limiting the political role of the military, as has been repeatedly requested as part of the EU acquis, even though “civilianization” of Turkish security decision-making still lags behind the standards of the acquis.28 As Greenwood argues, the European norm is that the “armed forces are unambiguously subordinate to the lawfully-elected government-in-office and the armed forces’ leadership has no public voice in public affairs beyond its professional domain.”29 In chapter 4, İsmet Akça and Evren Balta-Paker argue that civil–military relations in Turkey in the twenty-first century have to be comprehended as a relational process. On the one hand, the AKP government’s legal and institutional reforms to reduce the role of the military in the political sphere have been necessary, both for the EU accession process, and also for the consolidation of the AKP’s political power. On the other hand, hardliners within the military, who perceive the AKP government as the latest representative of the political Islamist movement, and thus a significant threat to the secular foundations of the Turkish Republic, have made several attempts to significantly weaken the incumbent government, such as organizing several failed coup attempts, promoting public anti-government campaigns, and fostering anti-AKP social mobilization. Akça and Balta-Paker argue that the various continuities and ruptures that they identify in the role of the military in Turkish political life are by-products of internal socio-political power configurations, rather than merely external pressures. Islamization of Political and Public Domains: A Challenge to Secularity? The 2007 parliamentary and presidential elections raised concerns about the placement of AKP sympathizers in the Turkish state bureaucracy. The following local elections, in 2009, raised concerns over whether Turkish politics would

10

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

continue to be merely “conservative Muslim democracy” in the long run, or whether the possible end goal of the AKP government was/is to ingrain political Islam in Turkish politics in order to eventually introduce a well-known Russian style of politics—albeit not in matters of religion—of top-down control over society. The Republic of Turkey was founded on an ethnic, linguistic and national identity that excluded any reference to “Islamic identity.” In effect, Islamic identity was considered to be a source of backwardness and a security threat. The secular, progressive, liberal and democratic identification of the republic was presented as opposing Islamic forces and processes. As Adıvar argues, “[the] Kemalist conception of secularism, similar to logical positivism in Western thought, became the ‘official dogma of irreligion.’”30 Kubicek further argues that westernization and Europeanization was a “cultural project,” introduced to deIslamize Turkish society.31 The contested nature of Islam and democracy in Turkey among public and political circles relates inextricably to Turkey’s EU membership bid, as a country that is predominantly Muslim but a secular state founded on democratic values and principles. Turkey’s identification with Europe was promoted during the Cold War. Its strong aspiration to join the EU, as an extension of the European roots of Ottoman/Islamic, European and Turkic heritage, dominated Turkey’s foreign and domestic political structure. 32 Turkey adopted western initiatives in foreign politics and involved itself in western organizations to obtain recognition as part of the European Community. While the modernization of the Ottoman Empire had not aimed at the Europeanization of its value system, the Kemalist revolution was nourished by this aim.33 At the societal level, the implication of this transformation was that the majority of Turks considered themselves both western and Muslim.34 In the 1980s, a pro-European Islam was formulated during the liberalization period in Turkey with the formation of a new economic class. New Islamist intellectuals and a pro-Islamic Anatolian bourgeoisie played a very important role in promoting the view that “EU membership would be the best way to overcome the ideological faultlines in Turkey between democracy and authoritarianism, civilian and military, and secularism and Islam.” 35 According to Tibi, this was a reflection of Prime Minister Erdoğan’s ‘instrumental Europeanism.’36 The AKP pursued pro-European policies by locating itself in the center-right of the political spectrum. The government has developed its position by stressing human rights, social justice and a secular political system in close connection with EU policies. It has thus developed a conservative democratic outlook that can be seen as the Islamist equivalent of the Christian democratic parties of Europe. Debates have continued as to whether, rather than being an Islamist party, the AKP is a “Muslim democrat,”37 or a “pseudo-democrat” party,38 concealing their religious goals under the cover of democracy and liberalism. According to the party itself, the consolidation of democracy, a determination to introduce democratic and legislative reforms, and the aspiration to reduce the power of the military within the political system help pave the way towards EU membership, and, in turn, the EU project helps Turkey achieve democratic targets. As the EU does

Introduction: Debating Security

11

not tolerate religious suppression and the implementation of religious law in its political system, its universal political liberalism has obliged the AKP government to present its political platform in secular terms.39 Focusing on political Islam, Selin Özoğuz-Bolgi, in chapter 5, examines whether it truly represents a challenge to Turkey’s secular democracy, with specific focus on the AKP era. She investigates the extent to which the projection of an Islamist political discourse poses a threat to the secular nature of the state and represents a cultural and political challenge to the democratic tenets of the Republic in the twenty-first century. She also investigates whether this discourse is a deceptive and prejudiced, or an objective estimation of the challenge posed by the rise of political Islam in Turkey, or whether it merely serves the political ends of the laïcité. She then explores the current and prospective effects of this particular dichotomy in Turkey in terms of its internal security politics. In the political history of Turkey, there have been political parties which gave way to a religious revivalism that was perceived as a threat to the state’s secular understanding. Furthermore, most of these parties took a clear stand against the EU and NATO. Such discourse and policies estranged the secular political elite, the military and parts of the public from the political Islamist parties. She argues that this tension has led to an ongoing polarization of Turkish society.

Turkey and External Security Challenges in the Twenty-first Century: The Near Abroad Turkey’s foreign and security politics have historically been defined according to strategic “national interests” and the exercise of or deterrence with military power, alongside transatlantic partners. Variations have occurred in the approaches and prioritization of issues in the post-Cold War period. Especially since the beginning of the twenty-first century, neighboring areas other than the transatlantic hemisphere have gained immense importance. Today, Turkey’s external security design cannot be considered without including the Mediterranean, Middle East, Caucasus, and Caspian regions. In this context, the part 3 focuses on the external security challenges to Turkey. The Cyprus Impasse and the Mediterranean A cornerstone of Turkish foreign and security policy in the Mediterranean is the “Cyprus issue,” which has been defined as an impasse reflecting one of the most uneasy and long-lasting security concerns of Turkey. It is comprised of several aspects. Firstly, it has been one of the region’s most intense and protracted conflicts, constructed by the different discourses of the actors involved in the dispute, namely Turkey, Greece, the UK, the two Cypriot communities (Turks and Greeks), as well as the United Nations (UN) and the EU. Greece has historically claimed that Turkey should withdraw its soldiers stationed in the Turkish north (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus–TRNC) since 1974. Secondly, since 2004, the Cyprus issue has gained a European dimension following the Greek Cypriot membership of the EU, especially with regard to the European

12

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) and the initiative to establish a European Army, and for Turkey’s role in this new construction.40 The EU has started pressuring Turkey to recognize the Greek Cypriot south and to open Turkish ports to Greek Cypriot ships if it wishes to start EU negotiations. While not complying with these demands, both TAF and the AKP government have gradually softened their positions on Cyprus in the last decade, albeit with reservations: so long as there is no resolution to the issue, the Greek Cypriot administration cannot be recognized as an independent state, and this can by no means be made a precondition for Turkey’s eventual EU membership. Thirdly, Matlary notes that NATO is also invisibly involved in the issue. 41 She argues that “diplomatic problems related to the Cyprus issue severely hinder cooperation between NATO and the EU.”42 The lack of Turkish diplomatic recognition of Cyprus and the lack of EU recognition of the TRNC have resulted in a series of diplomacy impasses. That is, a Turkish veto of Greek Cyprus’s NATO membership would be followed by a Greek Cypriot veto of Turkey’s EU accession. This would seriously damage any diplomatic success. From a more strategic perspective, Turkey’s participation in the institutional design of European security has meant Turkey may redefine Cyprus’s EU membership as an existential threat or “challenge” to its own national security. However, to do so would lead to a deterioration of relations, the exclusion of Turkey from the European security complex, and a loss of influence in regional security and stability. The Cyprus problem thus has the potential to provide Turkey with leverage in its relations with the EU and the evolving European security architecture, although this depends on whether Turkey construes Cypriot EU membership as a threat or a non-threat to Turkish security. Ahmet Sözen in chapter 6 explores the changing contours of Turkey’s security concerns and subsequent security policies with regard to their relationship with the Cyprus conflict and the peace process. Sözen argues that the 1999 EU Helsinki Summit, which accepted Turkey as a candidate country for full EU membership, can be seen as the turning point, in that it made sense for Turkey to abandon its Cold War security perceptions and adopt a new paradigm which would be more regional and global in scope. Later, the coming to power of the AKP governments with a clear foreign policy agenda—known as “strategic depth”—and the AKP’s political will to implement it, made it possible for Turkey to adopt a softer security discourse and a new security policy based also on soft power, which now complements Turkey’s strong hard power. Similar to the paradigm shift in overall Turkish foreign policy during the AKP government, Sözen argues that Turkey’s security considerations vis-à-vis Cyprus have also changed. The shift was from a military and strategic perspective to one based on soft power, and regional cooperation and integration that include at least Turkey and Greece on the one hand and the Greek and Turkish Cypriots on the other. According to Davutoğlu, Turkey has two objectives in Cyprus: (i) to design a new order where the Turkish Cypriots’ existence and security are guaranteed; and (ii) to protect and maintain the balance (of power) in the Mediterranean and to transform this region into a basin of stability. Sözen’s analysis concludes that

Introduction: Debating Security

13

these objectives, without a doubt, have been reflected in Turkey’s recent policy vis-à-vis the Cyprus conflict and the peace negotiations. The Middle East, Israel and Iraq: Replete with Multiple Challenges Turkey is located at a historical, religious and cultural conjuncture in the Middle East. Unlike many Middle Eastern neighbors, Turkey has internalized— despite shortcomings—secularization, Westernization and democratization for almost a century. Turkey’s security challenges, prospects and role in the Middle East should be examined thoroughly with reference to the interests of regional actors (e.g., Israel and Iraq), transatlantic actors (e.g., the United States and the EU), as well as Turkey’s strategic national self-interest. Firstly, Turkey’s EU membership would have a direct impact on the EU’s capacity and capability to overcome or exacerbate the most debated civilizational divide between the East and the West. Considering the multiple security challenges of the Middle East that the EU would face, Turkey’s role as a security provider and mediator would be undeniable in regional conflicts. Secondly, from a military security aspect, the ambivalent position of Turkey as a NATO member complicates the role of NATO in the region. Many Middle Eastern Arab countries criticize Turkey for its NATO membership. This is considered as a threat that increases Arab distrust of the NATO alliance and sours the already strained relationship between Turkey and the Arab countries of the region.43 Thus, skepticism towards American interests, intertwined with those of Israel in the region, boosts anti-Americanism among the Arabs. All these dynamics inevitably challenge Turkey’s ability to be a security actor in the region. In chapter 7, Özlem Tür analyzes Turkey’s relations with its neighbors in the Middle East since the 1990s—years associated with tension and conflict. Turkey and Syria were at the brink of war in 1998, the no-flight zone in northern Iraq was seen as providing shelter for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and Iran was perceived as a threat to the secular nature of the regime in Turkey. However, under İsmail Cem, Turkish foreign policy changed into an active and multiregional policy, relations with the Middle Eastern countries were desecuritized, and cooperation began. This was followed by the AKP’s “zeroproblem policy” in the Middle East, especially after the appointment of Davutoğlu as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Within this context, the chapter analyzes the shift in Turkish foreign policy towards the Middle East from conflict to close cooperation/partnership. Tür provides a multilevel examination of Turkey’s Middle East policy by looking at the domestic, regional and international levels. She argues that the depth and extent of the change in relations cannot merely be explained by changes in the balance of power in the region; ideational factors also matter. On the domestic level, she analyses the mental map of the AKP’s foreign policy makers. On the regional level, she focuses on the Iraq War (2003) and its consequences. Lastly, at the international level, she examines American and Turkish foreign policy concerning the region. After the detailed introduction of the region provided by chapter 7, Nathalie Tocci, in chapter 8, focuses on Turkish security concerns related to Israel. Turkey has historically enjoyed close relations with Israel, being the first predomi-

14

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

nantly Muslim state to recognize it, and thus providing Israel with a key diplomatic, social and economic outlet in Middle East. At the same time, however, Turkey, and in particular the Turkish public, has been sensitive to the plight of the Palestinians, with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) opening an office in Ankara in 1979, before the European Community, let alone the United States, were ready to recognize the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Yet, Turkey’s policies towards Israel, the Palestinians and the broader Arab–Israeli conflict varied erratically over the years. In the 1990s, Turkey’s approach became centered around two pillars: a strategic military relationship with Israel, and support for the Oslo process and its logic. In the twentyfirst century, however, Turkey’s relations with Israel and the Palestinians have changed dramatically. Although Turkish–Israeli cooperation has continued, with the outbreak of the second intifada and the aggravation of the Arab–Israeli conflict, Turkish–Israeli political relations have visibly deteriorated. Meanwhile, Turkish–Palestinian relations have deepened and, unlike the United States and the EU, Turkey has kept open political channels with Hamas. In light of these dynamics in Turkey’s relations with Israel and the Palestinians, Tocci explores the international, regional and domestic factors that have brought about these changes, while assessing the implications they might have for Turkey’s security role in the Middle East, and Turkey’s relations with the United States and the EU, more broadly. The Middle East provides challenges not only due to the complexity of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, but also due to the power struggles external as well as internal to Turkey in the aftermath of the Iraqi war. Iraq presents multiple challenges to Turkish security. Turkey faces stirrings in its southeastern border related to Northern Iraq, the Kurdistan People’s Party (PKK) terror, and the “Kurdish issue.” These issues pose separate yet strongly interrelated security challenges to Turkey, not only in terms of the protection of borders but also for maintenance of territorial integrity and democratic identity rights. Any turbulence in Northern Iraq is an immediate concern for Turkey for two main reasons, namely Kerkuk and its oil reserves, and the PKK militants hiding in the region. Because Kerkuk reflects the nationalist ambitions of the Kurds, Kerkuk’s transformation into the capital of an independent state of Kurdistan could have a dramatic impact on separatist Kurds living in Turkey. On the other hand, the oilrich city of Kerkuk is important for the Iraqi Turkmen population because any demographic change in the region is likely to turn into an ethnic civil war. Thus, the recent developments in Iraq related to Kurdish nationalism and questions over the status of Iraqi Turkmen risk dragging Turkey into an “Eastern crisis.” The preservation of Turkey’s southeastern border became the ultimate security aim throughout the 1980s and 1990s because of unabated PKK terror. Consequently, in the mid-1990s, Turkey found itself in an armed and bloody struggle with the separatist PKK. As Drorian argues, “during much of the 1990s, Turkey confronted an armed conflict in its Kurdish dominated southeast region.”44 By launching this terror campaign, the PKK challenged the unitary state. Although in the beginning, this was more of an external security issue, in the course of time, the discrepancy between external and internal security became

Introduction: Debating Security

15

blurred so far as the massive threat posed by the PKK was concerned. Kurdish nationalism has become one of the greatest challenges and threats to Turkey’s national unity and integrity. The “Kurdish issue” and the PKK are often seen as identical by the TAF, and defined as a “terror problem.” The AKP government, however, emphasizes a distinction between the two, with the former being considered a problem of “democracy” and “citizenship,” while the latter constitutes a threat to the nationalism and territorial integrity of Turkey. This debate has brought about a new discourse on the so-called Democratic Overture as advocated by Prime Minister Erdoğan, whether seen as a “southeastern,” “eastern” or “Kurdish” overture (or maybe more correctly an “opening”). That said, resurgence in PKK terror not only creates Turkish–Iraqi problems but also urges Turkey to implement military and political maneuvers to deal with this complex question in its southeast. Turkey’s security agenda concerning Iraq and the related Kurdish question is critically examined by Armağan Gözkaman, in chapter 9, where he evaluates the “Iraqi conundrum” as a source of multiple insecurities for Turkey, especially in the aftermath of the Iraqi war. Turkey attaches the utmost importance to the unity of Iraq due to concerns about the rise of Kurdish nationalism at home. The emergence of an independent Kurdish state could act as a source of inspiration for Kurds living in Turkey’s southeast region. In addition, Gözkaman points to the security problem caused by the refuges and support provided to the PKK in the region. The PKK is using Iraq’s northern region as a staging ground to plan and launch attacks against Turkish targets. Turkey’s fight against the terrorist organization is all the more problematic, for it has a deep impact on her relations with other foreign actors. Gözkaman also addresses the Turkmen question. Since the early stages of the Iraqi crisis, the situation of the Turkmens has constituted a red line for Turkish foreign policy. A kinship-based approach is one of the factors that have made this a foreign policy issue for Ankara. Moreover, their presence in Northern Iraq is perceived as a means to dilute the case for the territorial integrity of, and Kurdish control over, northern Iraq. The oil fields of Kerkuk add another dimension to the debate. In light of these circumstances, the final status of the city is a serious preoccupation for Turkey. It has openly declared, on several occasions, its discomfort at demographic changes that jeopardize the multiethnic structure of the province and called on all relevant parties to endeavor to reach a sustainable solution. This chapter explores the multiple security concerns posed by Turkey’s eastern neighbor in the past decade in relation to these issues. Caucasus and the Caspian As regards Turkey’s security concerns for its northeastern borders, the southern Caucasus and the Caspian region are important for both regional and sectoral reasons. Firstly, the region is home to the largest reserves of oil and natural gas after the Persian Gulf reserves. This increases the importance of the region in terms of energy interdependence. Secondly, lying at the heart of west Asia, the region’s strategic proximity to the Turkic world is critical, even without its oil and gas resources. Diplomatic dialogue with the Muslim and Turkic community in the region has become even more vital during the AKP era. Cen-

16

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

tral Asia is surrounded by five present/future nuclear states, namely Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and Iran. This nuclear capacity represents an external threat because the region is a hub of instability, with severe existing as well as numerous potential ethnic and sectarian conflicts. What happens in the south Caucasus, the Caspian region and generally in the Central Asian Turkic countries affects significantly the Eurasian politics of Turkey, and thereby also the Americans, Europeans and Russians. Turkey’s security concerns in the Caucasus and Caspian area are twofold. Firstly, Turkey acts as a military security actor that is actively participating in the United States-led NATO Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, and acts diplomatically to resolve cross-border tensions in the region. Turkey’s military presence in the region, along with western allies, has given it a chance to improve and intensify relations with other Central Asian countries, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. Turkey has exerted strong efforts to support and enhance political stability in the region. Secondly, besides this hard security role, as a soft-power actor, Turkey has established military contacts with, and provided assistance to, most of the countries of the region, in particular with Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, inhabited by people of Turkic origin. As the Caucasus plays the role of a bridge for relations between Turkey and Central Asia, Turkey’s potential to grow as a regional power is increased. For example, in the Caucasus, during the Russia–Georgia conflict in 2008, Turkey made swift moves to reach out to both parties in an attempt at conflict management. Turkey’s security concerns in the South Caucasus rely on dialogue specifically with two countries: Azerbaijan and Armenia. Azerbaijan has always been Turkey’s natural ally with cultural, historical and strategic importance. Turkey’s soft- and hard-power potentials have contributed to the deepening of ties with Azeris on various occasions, such as dealing with the Nagorno-Karabakh issue between Armenia and Azerbaijan, providing technical and cultural assistance and counterbalancing Russia’s influence. Even the Flag Crisis in October 2009 showed that Azerbaijan and Turkey had no alternative to a policy based on mutual cultural, economic, historical and political interests, as both countries confirmed that they consider each other as strategic partners. In contrast with the Azerbaijani case, Turkish–Armenian relations have historically been stagnant. Though Turkey was one of the first countries that recognized an independent Armenia in 1991, bilateral relations lacked a formal dialogue, especially after the official closing of the Turkish–Armenian border in 1993. Since then, bilateral relations have traditionally been characterized by conflicting official positions regarding the history of Turks and Armenians. By 2002, bilateral official relations had restarted, with Prime Minister Erdoğan actively supporting dialogue with Armenia to repair bilateral relations. In particular, a new official dialogue, implemented by Foreign Minister Davutoğlu’s office for reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia, has encouraged a rapprochement. Concentrating on these aspects of the Caucasus region, in chapter 10, Burcu Gültekin-Punsmann focuses on analyzing the new patterns of Turkish–Russian

Introduction: Debating Security

17

relations that reveal the positive impacts on bilateral political relations of adopting a pragmatic approach based on business initiatives. As the Black SeaCaucasus region has historically suffered from being a grey area of confrontation in the managed rivalry between Turkey and Russia, Gültekin-Punsmann’s analysis is based on the assumption that the twenty-first century Turkish–Russian rapprochement may positively affect the region. It also examines the possibilities to transfer this model of economic bilateral cooperation between Russia and Turkey, which verges on interdependence, to the shared neighborhood, namely the Black Sea-Caucasus. In this context, Turkey can, through normalization of its relations with Armenia, contribute to the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, help to open up and reintegrate Abkhazia into the region and overcome tensions in the Crimea. Thus, the chapter also elaborates on the possibility that Turkish–Russian rapprochement, by contributing to peace-building efforts in the Black Sea-Caucasus, prevents the collapse of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, and thus strengthens the European security architecture. Besides its political and economic importance, as briefly mentioned above, energy supply per se has become a significant security issue that reinforces Turkey’s position in the Caucasian regional economic security puzzle. Owing to the vast oil and gas reserves in the Caspian basin, Turkey’s interest in these energy sources introduces another aspect of Turkey’s security interest related to the energy sector in the region. While pursuing its own interests in seeking energy sources and energy security, Turkey has tried to avoid any form of conflict or antagonism with regional energy giants, such as Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran. Regarding energy security, it is in Turkey’s interest not to alienate these countries. Moreover, especially in recent years, the issue of securing supplies through diversification of oil and gas fields has come to dominate the transatlantic agenda. In this respect, the EU’s neighborhood, the Caspian area and the Middle East are likely to become major energy sources, in which Turkey’s position as an energy corridor will become prominent. As a result, it is imperative to analyze the relevance of Turkey’s security concerns regarding its energy needs and policies. These issues around energy are dealt with in chapter 11, by Özgür Ünal Eriş. Energy supply is one of the most significant security issues of the globalizing world. In recent years it has dominated the agendas of Eurasian actors and interest holders in terms of securing supplies through the diversification of oil and gas sources. The energy crises between Ukraine and Russia in the winters of 2006 and 2009 made energy-dependent countries, for example within the EU, suddenly aware of the potential problems of overdependence on Russia as an energy supplier. As this issue is discussed regularly within the framework of the EU Neighborhood Policy, this chapter offers a multidimensional look at the issue of energy security in terms of tapping into the oil and gas fields of the Caspian region, and analyzes Turkey’s impact in the energy sector.

18

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

The Euro-Atlantic Partnership in the Twenty-first Century: Clashes and Convergence of Security and Challenges The part 4 of this book examines Turkey’s relations with the Euro-Atlantic partners concentrating on clashes and convergences of both hard and soft security issues. Stable and persistent relations with the United States have always been a central dimension of Turkey’s foreign and security politics. Both countries’ security priorities have long been strongly interdependent, with Turkey acting as a “strategic partner” to the United States since the end of World War II. In the strategic environment of the Cold War years, this relationship proved a reliable and enduring one, despite occasional periods of stagnation. The first Gulf War, in 1991, opened a new phase in relations, where Turkey indirectly yet actively participated in the United States-led war against Iraq. Turkey offered the United States a settled partnership and arbitration in a region of turmoil surrounding Turkey, which met the primary interest of the American security calculus. Regions like the Balkans, the Caspian basin, the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean have been at the nexus of American and Turkish regional security strategies. During the post-Cold War era, Turkey and the United States co-operated over a number of security issues therein. As President Clinton officially declared, and as shared by the Obama presidency, Turkey was a “strategic partner” of the United States in the twenty-first century. The post-Cold War period witnessed enormous transformations in the scope of security priorities, prospects and challenges for the two countries. Both have suffered significantly from terrorism and cooperated in counter-terrorism. During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Turkish support became crucial for the U.S. policy of containing the Taliban and Saddam regimes, respectively. Unsurprisingly, this relationship was not a problem-free one. Rejection by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi—TBMM) of the proposal to allow 62,000 American troops to move through Turkey to open a northern front in Iraq caused a temporary breakdown in Turkish–American security relations. The weight of the transatlantic pillar for Turkey’s security interdependence is thus undeniable. Though the Iraqi War harmed the relationship between the United States and Turkey, the success of a secular and democratic Turkey retains a special importance for American foreign policy. As President Obama stressed, the new U.S. foreign policy is to enlist and empower dialogue with Turkey. However, while it was explicitly pronounced that Turkey’s leadership role in the region is undeniable and Turkey’s proactive policies in the region is applauded, the U.S. administration recognizes the importance of burden-sharing and cooperation in a range of security issues, such as Turkey’s conduct of peace talks between Syria and Israel, Turkey’s intermediary role between the United States and Iran, or allowing the U.S. troops to transit Turkish territory and to pass through Turkey on their way out of Iraq, in line with the United States’ military withdrawal plans.

Introduction: Debating Security

19

Turkish-American Relations in the Post-Bush Era Emre İşeri, in chapter 12, surveys Turkish–American relations in the postBush era and analyzes the dynamics behind the transformation from strategic to model partnership, as coined by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, respectively. He argues that, in many ways, the Obama administration inherited a foreign policy wreck from the aggressive unilateralist policies of the Bush era. Obama not only had to deal with the “war on terror” and on-going global financial crisis, but also, more importantly, adjust American foreign policy according to the realities of global power shifts. In this context, the United States does not have much option except to transform its “extra-regional hegemony” grandstrategy of the 1940s to one of “off-shore balancer” or “global broker” by launching a new dialogue with the other major global centers in the new era. Given that the capabilities of the United States have been declining as a multipolar order emerges, the best the Obama administration can do is to ask for the help of its former friends and allies, İşeri argues. At this point, few states will be as critical as Muslim-populated secular Turkey, which is a temporary member of the UN Security Council and a NATO ally, for implementing American global strategic interests in the Greater Middle East, particularly at a time when American troop withdrawal from Iraq has begun. From a security perspective, Turkey acts as a “stable” country, with close ties to both the West and the East, thus able to play a positive role in promoting stability and enhance the West’s influence in the East.45 On the western front, Turkey’s security politics have long been a part of transatlantic security. Turkey has always been a “pivotal country” 46 and a faithful transatlantic ally. Not only has it been a traditionally pro-American country, it has also embraced its potential EU membership with a series of reforms that have fundamentally changed the political and economic nature and face of Turkey.47 In terms of the security equilibrium, the EU is perceived by some circles in Turkey as a force to balance an overpowering American hegemony, and conversely the U.S. partnership has been considered as support vis-à-vis ambivalent Turkey–EU relations. Regional Security in the Western Balkans Turkey’s security concerns and challenges have historically been critical and immediate for the Euro-Atlantic partners. As far as military security is concerned, the European security architecture should be examined with reference to Europe’s internal defense institutionalization as well as the NATO command. One of the long-lasting projects of the EU has been the construction of a foreign and security policy, ever since integration deepened. The end of the 1990s introduced concretely this new dimension into the European security context, through the ESDP. The roots of the ESDP lie within NATO’s concept of a European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI) as well as in the Common Foreign and Security Policy’s (CFSP) long-term goal of a European security and defense policy, which might lead to common defense. The second pillar—the CFSP—of the Maastricht Treaty established the ESDP with the purpose of promoting integration in the security and defense fields. That is, the development of the ESDP was a result of the objective of strengthening the EU’s capacity for action in the

20

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

fields of conflict prevention, crisis management and humanitarian tasks. By definition, where NATO as a whole is not engaged, the EU is determined to launch and conduct EU-led military operations in response to international crises. However, in bearing shared security needs in a foreign policy environment replete with controversies and challenges, the CFSP and the ESDP fall short of responding single-handedly to challenges, and cannot respond adequately to multifocused global and regional challenges. Given this situation, Turkey has offered itself as a security corridor to contribute to facing these challenges, using both its military and soft-power potentials. Some critics argue that Turkey has played its trump card “to try to exert leverage on the EU, both in terms of its own application to the EU and for greater representation with ESDP.”48 If Turkey were to contribute militarily to a military operation it ought to have the same rights as other contributors. In exchange for not being given the same rights and obligations as the EU member states, and being squeezed out of policymaking and decision-making forums, Turkey threatened to veto the unrestricted EU use of NATO planning capabilities. Turkey’s main security concerns related to the implementation of the European Rapid Reaction Force in Turkey’s immediate area of interest—Cyprus and the Aegean Sea. When projected at the NATO level, this would have implications for NATO capabilities in the form of divisions and fragmentation in NATO decision-making and policy implementation. This is because one of the big issues of EU–NATO relations has been Turkey’s demand for representation during all ESDP discussions on security matters. Turkey’s concerns were resolved after extensive political pressure by various EU members and the United States at the Copenhagen European Council through the Berlin Plus arrangements. The fact that Turkey lifted its veto over the use of NATO assets and capabilities proved Turkey’s final support for the development of the ESDP that supplemented and strengthened the transatlantic partnership. In response, the ESDP would not affect Turkey’s security interests in the region. Given this multifaceted and complex security environment within which Turkey operates directly or indirectly, this book concentrates on Turkey’s role as a security provider, particularly in the Western Balkans, and on the impact of an eventual increase of Turkish engagement in the coming years on the stabilization of the region. Adam Balcer, in chapter 13, argues that, despite a radical improvement in security conditions since the 1990s, the Western Balkans—an island in the EU “sea”—due to its relatively high level of instability is still a troublesome region for European security. Over the coming decade, stabilization of this region will provide a serious test of the EU’s ambitions to become a global player. Ankara has proven since the end of Cold War, by its substantial engagement in NATO, EU and UN missions and by its training and equipping of regional military and police forces, that it possesses the capacity to make an important contribution to the stabilization of the Western Balkans as well. Turkey’s capacity derives from its role as an important stakeholder in the economic, social and political life of the Western Balkans. Turkey’s activity in the region has been on the rise in recent years and it will most probably increase substan-

Introduction: Debating Security

21

tially in the next decade. Turkey’s role as a stability factor in the Western Balkans is examined by evaluating Turkey’s general leverage within the region and Turkish activity in the security sector. To this end, Balcer analyzes certain statistical data on military cooperation between Turkey and the Western Balkan states, as well as of the documentation of various peace missions. Finally, he evaluates Turkey’s importance for European security, and in this way contributes to the discussion over the costs and benefits of Turkey’s accession to the EU. Greece: Future for Rapprochement? Today, with the emergence of new security challenges, Turkey serves as a regional contributor to the security that the EU and the United States wish to provide. As the Turkey–United States security partnership in the region is discussed in other chapters, the next chapter focuses on the non-military security dynamics which affect Turkey–EU security relations—a highly complex relationship replete with political, social, economic and security challenges. There are several debates in the non-military security agenda that reflect controversial challenges, such as energy-related issues, environmental debates, EU enlargement, religious fundamentalism, which is often associated with Islamic fundamentalism, and unavoidable immigration from the Third World to the West. The European security complex is composed of nation-states (e.g., Turkey, Germany and Greece) as well as regional actors (e.g., the EU). It reflects the security interests of each entity and it is assumed that their security interests are nested with each other. For instance, on the national level, Turkish membership of the EU is entrenched in the Member State positions, inter alia. In particular, the CFSP and ESDP are policy areas where Member States’ national interests play a central role. Individual positions regarding the question of Turkey’s EU integration bid also show variations. While Turco-enthusiasts like the United Kingdom and Italy take the lead to support integration in political, economic, and foreign and security policies, concerns and objections to Turkish membership drift from Turco-apathetic towards Turco-skeptic camps. There has been a growing sense of Turco-skepticism since the last two enlargements in 2004 and 2007, in relation to the sense that the EU has reached its geographical and cultural limits.49 That is, Turkey should be excluded from this entity, defined by Judeo-Christian roots rather than by the secular universalist values of the Enlightenment. Concerning Turkey’s long-standing disputes with Greece, such a skeptical approach has historically marked trilateral Turkey-EU-Greece relations. However, as James Ker-Lindsay argues in chapter 14, since 1999, Greece and Turkey have engaged in a process of rapprochement that culminated in Turkey’s nomination as a candidate for EU membership. At the time, this was hailed as a major breakthrough, and was greeted with hopes that relations across the Aegean would radically change for the better. Ten years later, however, this process has not delivered the results many observers had expected, and major issues between the two countries remain unresolved. Nevertheless, political engagement has produced a range of other significant results. Tensions between the two countries

22

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

are now at a much lower level than in previous decades. There is also a much greater degree of co-operation between Athens and Ankara on a wide range of issues, such as the environment, transport, tourism, trade and the combating of organized crime. To this extent, while the process of rapprochement was initially driven by Turkey’s pursuit of EU membership, there are good reasons to argue that the development of cordial relations is extremely beneficial and should be continued regardless of the direction Turkey takes with regard to its European aspirations. To this end, Ker-Lindsay investigates the dynamics underlying the unresolved issues, as well as the state of cooperation and rapprochement developed between the Aegean neighbors in the twenty-first century, and the further implications for the EU. Environmental Security: A Case for Soft Security Considering that Turkey–EU relations are marked by Turkey’s aspiration to share the EU’s soft-security concerns, in chapter 15, Rana İzci focuses on the non-military security issue of environmental security and Turkey’s commitment and capacity to comply with global and regional efforts to provide security in terms of protection of the environment. In January 2010, the opening of the environmental chapter of Turkey’s EU accession negotiations took place. With regard to Turkey’s approximation to EU environmental legislation, similar criticisms, considerations and objections have been going on longer than the discussions over signing of the Kyoto Protocol, starting even before the accession negotiations opened. Turkey finally became a party to the Kyoto protocol on August 26, 2009, and is now working on the development of a National Climate Change Action Plan. Many reservations and criticisms have been raised so far on the grounds of Turkey’s special circumstances and the possibility of future commitments for Turkey, and their repercussions within the global climate change regime. Environmentalists have supported the developments, but also stated that these developments are delayed or even too late, and that Turkey should do more. Nonetheless, these developments have clearly underlined the urgent need for costly investments in all economic sectors and changes in consumption and production patterns, as well as changes in policy-making considerations in Turkey. However, none of them has adequately touched upon Turkey’s environmental security understanding. While heated debates about these developments center high politics, serious environmental degradation requires a shift in the prevailing discourse of environmental security in Turkey. In line with this argument, İzci first explores the premises of environmental security and then examines the challenges to soft security approaches in Turkey, with special emphasis on the environment. Elite Perceptions of Security and Challenge The security-democracy nexus is a necessary component of a constructive and peace-oriented foreign policy. Besides hard-power security concerns, foreign policy makers are now paying more attention to Turkey’s soft-power potential, too. The perception of “challenge” can be examined within a three-layer framework. Conceptually, when “challenge” encompasses an individual’s per-

Introduction: Debating Security

23

ception of challenges to his or her personal well-being (economic, social, physical, etc.), the subject of the threat is the individual him- or herself. That is, decision-makers need to satisfy each individual’s personal security needs. Secondly, when the subject of challenge is the “nation,” individuals perceive that the country within which they live and are sheltered, carry out economic activity and maintain a social environment faces perils. Lastly, at the other extreme are threats to international security. Challenges of this type are directed at the state of order in the international system that may indirectly or directly—albeit not immediately—affect each individual’s life. Foreign policy elites—be it the elected governments or the militarybureaucratic elite—play an important role in decision-making and creating popular support for an active role in world politics. 50 They are highly interconnected groups of individuals that are recruited through highly selective processes, and have large amounts of strategic resources as a result of specialized careers. Equipped with political power, technical expertise and economic, social or cultural capital, they play very significant political, economic, social and cultural roles. Political elites have a crucial role in the process of “imagining” new communities and polities within which they operate. Other elites (e.g., militaryindustrial, corporate, economic, governmental, bureaucratic, social, cultural) also play an important role in alliance with political elites to help develop and sustain such new visions. Rosenau labels the political elites responsible for the formation of a country’s foreign policy as “foreign policy elites” and “opinion makers.”51 According to Hveem, these policies are then operationalized through parliamentarians, the administration (e.g., Foreign Service, Trade Ministry and Ministry of Defense), the mass media and main interest organizations (e.g., the Red Cross, peace and defense groups).52 The “informal” elite group includes leading members of business, public interest groups, news media and universities, while political parties and labor unions, and members of the bureaucracy and the parliament are included in the “formal elite” group. In chapter 16, Çiğdem Üstün and Özgehan Şenyuva study the Turkish political elites’ perceptions of security. They argue that Turkey’s security understanding, cultivated through an elite-driven process, has been dominated by the perceived threats emanating from both the country’s geopolitical situation and historical memory. Turkey has long been seen as a country investing in hard security matters, and so it has been important for Turkey that the state maintains an independent military production capability and capacity, since its borders with neighboring countries have been perceived as potential sources of insecurity. However, in the last decade it appears that the security understanding of the elites in Turkey has shifted from a hard to a rather soft understanding. In this chapter, Üstün and Şenyuva discuss whether there has really been a substantial change in the security perceptions of the political elite, and if so, what are the main characteristics and determinants of this change. They also ask what the new threat perceptions of Turkey’s political elites are, and how they foresee the future of security policy making in terms of Turkey–EU relations, the European Army and the future of NATO.

24

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

Concluding Aims and Objectives of the Book As can be seen from the conceptual and contextual outline presented in this introduction, this book aims to give a detailed account of the strategic and security agenda facing Turkey in an era of uncertainty and swift transformation in global politics and local dynamics in the twenty-first century. It seeks to describe the challenges and opportunities that Turkey is encountering in the international, regional and national environment at a time of extraordinary flux. The aim of this book is thus twofold. First, it provides a basic framework for Turkish foreign and security policies and priorities. Second, it locates these within current theoretical discussions. To this end, it develops a conceptual framework of security challenges to Turkey and the broader region within which the country and its interests are located. It thereby contributes to the positioning of Turkey in the new global security order within the multidimensional framework in order to address the aforementioned—by no means exhaustive—political agenda. It points to the need to further elaborate an overall evaluation of Turkey’s political affairs, both domestic and foreign, and to trace a critical conjuncture of its transatlantic relations, its recent role in the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia and its bid for full membership in the EU within the security context. The book reflects on where Turkey’s security challenges and prospects stand from both internal and external perspectives through an interactive foreign policy assessment. Finally, this book aims to offer conclusions and suggestions for the country’s future security strategies and politics. In this regard, it is also designed to offer significant policy choices for decision-makers at national, regional and transatlantic levels concerning Turkey, and it maps out a future research agenda on Turkish foreign and security policy that integrates hard-power and soft-power dynamics.

Notes 1. According to Martin, “national security” is “a state’s ability to defend itself from enemies who, by external attack and/or internal subversion, would threaten the integrity of its borders or its very existence.” Lenore Martin, “Turkey’s National Security in the Middle East,” Turkish Studies 1, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 83. 2. Concise Oxford Dictionary, Tenth Edition for 2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 204. 3. Dan Caldwell and Robert E. Williams, Seeking Security in an Insecure World (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 11. 4. The concepts of challenge, threat and risk have slight differences in their meanings. ‘Risk’ (Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1151) is defined as “the possibility of something bad happening at some time in the future; a situation that could be dangerous or have a bad result.” Here, either a negative future projection or possibility of a bad outcome is emphasized. “Threat,” on the other hand, is “a statement in which you tell somebody that you’ll punish or harm them, especially if they do not do what you want; the possibility of

Introduction: Debating Security

25

trouble, danger or disaster” (Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1408). These three terms will be used interchangeably here. 5. John H. Herz, “The Rise and Demise of the Territorial State,” World Politics 9 (1957): 473–93. 6. Craig A. Snyder, “Emerging Regional Security Cooperation in Europe and the Asia Pacific,” The Pacific Review 9 (1996): 553–76. 7. Michael Mastanduno, “Economics and Security in Scholarship and Statecraft,” International Organisation 52, no. 4 (1998): 825–54. 8. Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991); Jaap H. de Wilde “Environmental Security Deconstructed,” in Globalisation and Environmental Challenges, Vol. 1, ed. Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Mosbach: AFES-Press, 2008), 595–602; Adrian Hyde-Price, “Alternative Security Systems for Europe,” in European Security: Towards 2000, ed. Michael C. Pugh (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 124–40; Peter J. Katzenstein The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Ole Wæver, “Securitisation and Desecuritisation,” in On Security, ed. Ronnie D. Lipschutz (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 46–87; Ole Wæver, “The EU as a Security Actor: Reflections from a Pessimistic Constructivist on Post-Sovereign Security Orders,” in International Relations and the Politics of European Integration, ed. Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams (New York: Routledge, 2000), 250–95. 9. Emil J. Kirchner and James Sperling, “The New Security Threats in Europe: Theory and Evidence,” European Foreign Affairs Review 7, no. 4 (2002): 423–52. 10. David Mutimer, “Beyond Strategy: Critical Thinking and the New Security Studies,” in Contemporary Security and Strategy, ed. Craig A. Snyder (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), 77–101. 11. Buzan, People, States and Fear; Barry Buzan et al, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998); Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams, “Broadening the Agenda of Security Studies? Politics and Methods,” Mershon International Studies Review 40, no. 2 (1996): 229–54; Harald Muller, “Security Cooperation,” in Handbook of International Relations, ed. Walter Carlsnaes et al. (London: Sage Publications, 2002), 369–92. 12. Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977). 13. Buzan, People, States and Fear, 187. 14. Ibid., 186–219. 15. Katzenstein, The Culture of National, 354. 16. Bjorn Hettne and Fredrik Soderbaum, “Theorising the Rise of Regionness,” in New Regionalisms in the Global Political Economy, ed. Shaun Breslin et al. (New York: Routledge, 2002), 33–48. 17. Nicholas Bisley, “Regional Security and Regional Conflict,” in Contemporary Security and Strategy, ed. Craig A. Snyder (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 210–29. 18. Ibid., 228. 19. Buzan et al., Security: A New Framework, 45. 20. Buzan, People, States and Fear, 190; Buzan et al., Security: A New Framework, 12. 21. Ole Wæver et al., Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe (London: Pinter, 1993).

26

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

22. Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 394–95. 23. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s imprint is seen in every aspect of Turkish society and politics, and although he did not codify his ideas into an all-embracing ideology, the basic principles by which the reforms were realized have formed the Kemalist ideology. 24. Eric Rouleau, “Turkey’s Dream of Democracy,” Foreign Affairs 79, no. 6 (November/December 2000): 102. 25. Hakan Yavuz, “Cleansing Islam from the Public Sphere,” Journal of International Affairs 54, no. 1 (Fall 2000): 27. 26. In modern democracies, the term “civil–military relations” extends to embrace the relationship between the military and the society at large. 27. Baastian Konijnenbelt, “The Role of the Military in Turkish Politics: An Analysis of Public Statements Made by the Turkish General Staff,” in Governance and the Military: Perspectives for Change in Turkey, ed. Sami Faltas and Sander Jansen (Groningen: Center of European Security Studies, 2006), 161. 28. Sevgi Drorian, “Turkey: Security, State and Society in Troubled Times,” European Security 14, no. 2 (June 2005): 255–75; Nilüfer Narlı, “Transparency Building in the Defence Sector and the EU Reforms in Turkey,” in Governance and the Military: Perspectives for Change in Turkey, ed. Sami Faltas and Sander Jansen (Groningen: Center of European Security Studies, 2006), 129–55. 29. David Greenwood, “Turkish Civil-Military Relations and the EU: Preparation for Continuing Convergence. Final Expert Report of an International Task Force,” in Governance and the Military, ed. Faltas and Jansen, 29–30. 30. Abdulhak Adnan Adıvar, “The Interaction of Islamic and Western Thought in Turkey, in Near Eastern Culture and Society, ed. Cuyler Young (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1951), 128 quoted in Hakan Yavuz, “Islam and Europeanisation in Turkish–Muslim Socio-political Movements,” in Religion in an Expanding Europe, ed. Timothy A. Brynes and Peter J. Katzenstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 230. 31. Paul Kubicek, “Turkish–European Relations: At a New Crossroads?” Middle East Policy Journal 4 (1999): 157–73. 32. Yavuz, “Islam and Europeanisation.” 33. Bassam Tibi, “Europeanizing Islam or the Islamization of Europe: Political Democracy vs. Cultural Difference,” in Religion in an Expanding Europe, ed. Brynes and Katzenstein, 220–21. 34. Ali Çarkoğlu, “Societal Perceptions of Turkey’s EU Membership,” in Turkey and European Integration, ed. Mehmet Uğur and Nergis Canefe (London: Routledge, 2004), 19–45. 35. Yavuz, “Islam and Europeanisation,” 235. 36. Tibi, “Europeanizing Islam,” 218. 37. José Casanova, “Religion, European Secular Identities and European Integration,” in Religion in an Expanding Europe, ed. Brynes and Katzenstein, 73. 38. Murat Çakır, Die Pseudodemokraten. Türkische Lobbyisten und Islamisten (Düsseldorf: GDF Publikation, 2000), 101–76. 39. Tibi contradicts this with the argument that AKP is a reformist party that tries to introduce secular-democratic policies. He claims that “AKP is using the power of government to push Islamist legislation” at home, and making demands of other governments, such as asking Germany to remove the National Outlook Movement (Milli Görüş) from the list of extreme radical groups in Germany. Tibi, “Europeanizing Islam,” 219.

Introduction: Debating Security

27

40. Özlem Terzi, “New Capabilities, Old Relationships: Emergent ESDP and EUTurkish Relations,” Southeastern European Politics 3, no. 1 (June 2002): 43–61. 41. Janne H. Matlary, European Union Security Dynamics: In the New National Interest (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 42. Ibid., 61. 43. Ronald Dannreuther, “Europe and the Middle East: Attempting to Bridge the Divide,” in European Security in a Global Context, ed. Thierry Tardy (London: Routledge, 2009), 148–49. 44. Drorian, “Turkey: Security, State,” 256. 45. Meliha B. Altunışık and Özlem Tür, Turkey: Challenges of Continuity and Change (London: Routledge, 2005), 113. 46. Robert S. Chase et al., “Pivotal States and US Strategy,” Foreign Affairs 75 (1995): 35–51. 47. Dannreuther, “Europe and the Middle East,” 140. 48. Trevor C. Salmon and Alistair J. K. Shepherd, Toward a European Army: A Military Power in the Making? (London: Lynne Rienner, 2003), 176. 49. Ebru Canan-Sokullu, “Turco-scepticism and Threat Perception: European Public and Elite Opinion on Turkey’s Protracted Membership,” South European Society and Politics 16, no. 3 (September 2011): 483–97; Ebru Canan-Sokullu and Çigdem Kentmen, “Public Opinion Dimension: Turkey in the EU?: An Empirical Analysis of European Public Opinion on Turkey’s Protracted Candidacy,” in A Sisyphean Story: Fifty Years of EU-Turkey Relations (1959-2009), ed. Armağan Emre Çakır (London: Routledge, 2011), 105–31. 50. As Almond argues, the opinions and policy preferences of American elites play a unique role in the foreign policy-public opinion nexus. Gabriel A. Almond, The American People and Foreign Policy (New York: Praeger, 1950). There are studies on the motivations guiding national elites in the decision-making processes and their preferences. See Kenneth Dyson and Kevin Featherstone, “Italy and EMU as a ‘Vincolo Esterno’: Empowering the Technocrats, Transforming the State,” South European Society and Politics 1, no. 2 (1996): 272–99; Kenneth Dyson and Kevin Featherstone, The Road to Maastricht: Negotiating Economic and Monetary Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Andrew Moravscik, The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998); Andrew Moravscik, “Is there a ‘Democratic Deficit’ in World Politics? A Framework for Analysis,” Government and Opposition 39 (2004): 2; Andrew Moravscik, “The Myth of Europe’s ‘Democratic Deficit,’” Intereconomics: Journal of European Economic Policy (November–December 2008): 331–40. Many scholars pointed out the role of elites in forming policy and invoking public opinion. See Fay Lomax Cook, Jason Barabas, and Benjamin I. Page “Invoking Public Opinion: Policy Elites and Social Security,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 66, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 235–64. A considerable body of theory suggests that the elected public officials in democratic systems pay attention to public opinion. See Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957); Ole R. Holsti and James N. Rosenau, American Leadership in World Affairs: Vietnam and the Breakdown of Consensus (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1984); William O. Chittick and Keith R. Billingsley, “The Structure of Elite Foreign Policy Beliefs,” The Western Political Quarterly 42, no. 2 (1989): 201–24. 51. James N. Rosenau, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy (New York: Random House, 1961). 52. Helge Hveem, “Foreign Policy Thinking in the Elite and the General Population: A Norwegian Case Study,” Journal of Peace Research 5, no. 2 (1968): 146–70.

PART I APPROACHES TO “SECURITY” AND “CHALLENGES” IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Chapter One

Security and Challenges in the Twentyfirst Century: A Theoretical Outlook Craig A. Snyder The questions (i) what is security and (ii) what are the challenges to security were once quite simple. Security was the protection of the state against external military threats. However, in the contemporary international security environment, the state is no longer the only agent or target of security threats. In addition, state authorities face a more complex array of security challenges that pose new challenges and carry unprecedented risks. Challenges to security no longer come simply from the capabilities and intentions of states, nor can states be considered as the primary actors or objects of security.1 Therefore, in order to answer better the first two questions we need to ask more fundamental questions such as (iii) whose security, (iv) what threatens that security and (v) how is that security ensured. Most writing in the area of strategic or security studies focuses on either traditional approaches to traditional issues, or takes new approaches to new issues such as feminist analysis of the socio-economic impact of armed forces. A third approach is to look at new issues using traditional approaches. These works seek to broaden the traditional conception of security to include non-military threats to security such as the environment, human rights and the movement of people across international borders. Yet another approach is to recast the debate on traditional issues such as deterrence, proliferation and the causes and transformation of war, using new approaches. The focus of this chapter is to move beyond the traditional analysis that has come to dominate the field of security studies and address the underlying continuities of these new approaches. It also explores a deepening of the agenda of security studies by examining different levels of security, either down to the societal or individual level or up to the regional or global level. A common belief of this type of writing is that the traditional focus on military threats to the state emanating from outside of its borders

31

32

Craig A. Snyder

is no longer sufficient as a means of determining what or who is being secured, what these threats look like and from where they originate. 2 Smith argues that the debate over the broadening and deepening of the concept of security has been supported by the events of and in response to September 11, 2001.3 While they did bring military force back to the forefront of security discourse and the United States-led war on terror has primarily been a stateon-state conflict—with little or no role for international institutions—the attacks cannot be explained using traditional understandings of international security or the traditional approaches to the study of security. The attacks were by a nonstate actor who used non-traditional means and was motivated not by traditional political ideology but by a combination of antipathy towards western forms of modernity and liberalism and also of U.S. policies in the Middle East. For states such as Turkey, the nature and direction of the threats have shifted radically and include internal political and social threats as much as external military threats and challenges. Turkey faces new challenges as it begins to shift away from its post-1945 focus on engagement with Western Europe towards a more balanced security and foreign policy outlook with all of its neighbors. Turkey’s internal security challenges in regards to the Kurdish minority also take a greater international role due to increased autonomy of Iraqi Kurds. This chapter introduces the reader to the broad theoretical perspectives for the study of contemporary security policies and issues. It surveys the major themes and evolution of strategic/security studies over the past sixty years. It also develops the continuities and differences between three broad periods in this evolution, namely classical thought, modern strategic theory (from the interwar period through to the Cold War) and contemporary theoretical assumptions. It then examines how concepts of security and challenge have widened and deepened both because of geo-political changes in the post-Cold War era and through the academic debate on the study of security.

Conceptual Development of Strategic and Security Studies The term strategic studies has been closely associated with an American approach to the study of the military aspects of the Cold War. This has also been described as national security studies because it was generally Americans studying American security.4 One of the distinctive elements of strategic studies has been its focus on military strategy and challenges defined in solely military terms. As an academic discipline the early focus was on how wars start, how they can be avoided, or if not avoidable, then fought in the most efficient manner possible.5 To this end, the focus of traditional strategic studies has been the military means that actors in the international system employ to gain their political objectives or ends. While states are the principal actors in the international system, due primarily to their command over the overwhelming bulk of military power, non-state actors, such as terrorists, separatists or national liberation

Security and Challenges: A Theoretical Outlook

33

movements are also included. However, that these non-state actors are usually involved in an attempt either to gain control of an existing state, or to create a new state, underscores the pre-eminence of states.6 However, just what is strategy? Strategy involves the use or the threat of the use of force in international relations. Strategy is for Liddell Hart, “the art of distributing and applying military means to fulfill ends of policy,” for Bull, “exploiting military force so as to attain given objects of policy,” and for Gray, “the relationship between military power and political purpose.”7 Freedman defines strategy as closely related to power, understood “as the ability to produce intended effects . . . it takes strategy to unleash the power inherent in this capacity and to direct it towards specific purposes.”8 As a sub-discipline of international relations, strategic studies has been closely linked to the theoretical approach of realism. 9 Indeed, they are often treated as synonymous. Both feature a distinctive worldview based on assumptions about the nature of the political environment, the significant actors in the political environment, and the characteristic manner in which political actors interact with each other.10 For realists, states hold sovereignty over a particular territory and the people within that territory, and maintain a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Externally, states exist in the self-help international environment of anarchy where states can rely on no one else for their security. As a result, states are in a constant struggle for power or security. Alongside of the American-dominated strategic studies a ‘British’ or ‘English’ school evolved which looked at a wider range of issues under the name of security studies. Security studies came to the fore in the 1980s and early 1990s as a response to the militaristic focus of strategic studies. Security studies and strategic studies differ not in their basic assumptions about how the world works but in what are considered security threats and challenges. This contrasts to the realist interpretation of international relations that argues that due to the anarchic nature of the international system, states should be skeptical of possibilities of permanent peace, ideas of world government, disarmament and concepts such as collective or cooperative security.11 As a result, strategic studies focuses much more on military threats to states while security studies broadens the definition to include non-military threats and challenges to states but also non-state actors and sub-state groups. This understanding of security studies is associated with the liberal or pluralist approach to the study of international relations. For this group, cooperation is possible among states, and international institutions can help to shape the behavior of states. For liberals, states will cooperate so long as they can achieve absolute gains. This differs from the realists who see states as focused on only relative gains, that is, they will cooperate only if they will gain more than that of a rival. It is through international cooperation, liberals argue, that states can achieve security through common acceptance of rules and norms for state behavior beyond simply individual state interests. Security studies also incorporates further variants, that of constructivism and critical security. Constructivist approaches seek to broaden the notions of security and to examine how academics, policy-makers and individuals alike have conceptualized security. Constructivists examine the cultural, ideational

34

Craig A. Snyder

and normative motivations for security policy.12 Both approaches take a critical theory approach and raise questions about the nature of the international system itself and the power relationships that form the system. They question the key realist assumption that the international system is a predetermined entity, or given, that cannot be changed. Critical theorists argue that the international “system” is socially constructed, that it exists because we have agreed that it should exist. This does not mean any conscious decisions were made but that human interaction has created the structures of the international system and they are neither “natural” nor “absolute” in their nature. That is, unlike the realists who see the international system as anarchic, the critical theorists see that anarchy as a socially constructed system. For critical security, therefore the focus is on changing the way we think about security and the role, and indeed the very makeup, of the actors, in the system. 13 While security studies adopts a broad definition of security and as a result is much closer to international relations than strategic studies, it does have one important difference. It deals with not only the causes and consequences of war, which is the primary area of interest for many international relations scholars, but also the conduct of war. The conduct of war is an important area of scholarship, as the decision to go to war and the result of the war tends to rest on the military dimension rather than the political. Betts makes this point when he argues that the different patterns of World War I (WWI) and II (WWII)—that is, Germany’s ability to control Western Europe in the early 1940s, as opposed to its inability to do so between 1914 and 1918—cannot be explained only by reference to indices of power—that is, the size of the population, armed forces and the economy; amount of natural resources available; and so on. Rather the success of the German military to develop the Blitzkrieg strategy incorporating new military technology and the doctrine of armored warfare provided the key ingredient to initial German success in WWII. Likewise, the ultimate defeat of Germany in this war was a result of a combination of the development of attrition warfare and the strategic and political miscalculations of the German leadership.14

Development of the Study of Security Before we can fully understand the contemporary study of security it is important to understand how the field developed before and during the Cold War. The first book to examine the broader questions of security and war prevention was Wright’s Study of War, published in 1942.15 It deviated from the work of the classical strategists who considered war a tool of statecraft. Rather than looking at problems of national security or alternatives for national strategy, Wright looked to diplomacy, international understanding, arbitration, national selfdetermination, disarmament and collective security as guarantors of international peace and stability.16 In the immediate aftermath of WWII the study of war continued along this line.

Security and Challenges: A Theoretical Outlook

35

In the aftermath of the defeat of Nazi Germany, the anti-fascist allies (the United States, Britain, France, the Soviet Union and China) sought to create a new world order that would ensure global peace and stability. International institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund emerged at this time to assist in decolonization; economic, social and political development; and the management of international crises. In the heady days of the early post-war period, security analysts built on the work of Wright and examined four key themes, first, that security was not the primary concern of all states at all times but merely one concern that varied in importance from one historical context to the next. Theorists in this area looked at calculations as to the trade-off between military security and other values such as economic welfare and individual freedom. Second, both military and non-military tools of statecraft would be important to national security. Third, the recognition of the security dilemma (that is, the actions that one state takes to increase its security in turn decrease the security felt by others) led to cautious use of military power. Fourth, linkages between national security and domestic affairs, such as the economy, civil liberties and democratic processes, were made.17 However, this period of optimism faded, due to the growing tension and mistrust between the two leading post-war powers. The United States and the Soviet Union, divided over their political and economic ideologies of democracy and capitalism versus communism, clashed over the nature of the post-war system that was emerging. The United States sought to establish an international political economic structure that favored capitalism—specifically American capitalist interests—while the Soviets sought to export the worker’s revolution and overthrow capitalism at a global level—and, at a more practical level, exercising its control over Central and Eastern Europe: an area of strategic importance to the security of the Soviet Union. Because of this growing mistrust, tensions between the two increased to the point where the notion of a “Cold War” developed between the U.S.-led “West” and the Soviet-led “East.”18 Strategic analysts, at this time, focused on the possibility of a major conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. Added to the mix of conventional strategic analysis was the issue of nuclear weapons. While the United States maintained a monopoly on nuclear weapons, these were seen as just another weapon in the U.S. arsenal, albeit a strategic rather than a tactical one. That is, nuclear weapons were considered as war-ending or war-prevention weapons. However, the implications of a global nuclear war emerged in 1949, following the first Soviet nuclear test. This was followed in 1957 with the introduction of intercontinental ballistic missiles with the Soviet launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite onboard the “R-7” ballistic missile. This removed the U.S. monopoly on both nuclear weapons but also the ability to use them as a strategic weapon vis-à-vis its Cold War rival. “It would be no exaggeration to say that strategic studies really took off . . . with the onset of the nuclear age: the prospect of nuclear annihilation concentrated the minds of academics and ordinary folk on the causes and impact of [nuclear] war.”19 While the type of security study that Wright had advocated continued throughout the Cold War, it was marginalized due to the narrowing of the focus

36

Craig A. Snyder

of strategic studies onto nuclear weapons and the increased chance of global nuclear war. Strategic studies flourished in this period because nuclear deterrence was, by its very nature, theoretical rather than practical and hence the domain of the academic theorists and politicians rather than the generals. The major questions raised at this time were concerned with arms control and limited war. As a result, the Cold War security agenda was conceptualized through the concept of deterrence. The complexity of the rivalry between the two ideologically based blocs was simplified to questions of alliance management and nuclear stability. It was commonly assumed that state behavior was based on a policy of power or security maximization with the strategy of influencing rivals to act in certain ways through threat manipulation and force projection. 20 This was a major shift in thinking. While the previous scholars focused on defining security and how important it was as compared to other goals and how this should be attained, the new focus was on how weapons of mass destruction could be used as a policy instrument without risking a nuclear exchange. This type of thought, however, placed too much attention on military tools that led to an overemphasis on the military aspects of national security over other elements such as historical, cultural or political contexts. 21 Because of this focus on the abstract theories of nuclear deterrence and limited nuclear war, many in strategic studies in the late 1960s through to the early 1980s found themselves unable to respond to contemporary strategic issues such as the Vietnam War and other post-colonial wars of national liberation. The academic strategic analysts were too specialized in global strategic issues such as the Soviet–U.S. rivalry that they were unable to offer insights into these regional conflicts. Indeed, they tended to explain them in terms of the Cold War divide and deemed them ‘proxy wars.’22 Moreover, those strategists that did look to Third World conflicts tended to be practitioners rather than academic theorists. They focused on examining case studies of counterinsurgency operations, concluding that the American experience in Vietnam demonstrated that theories failed when applied to the real world.23 Other scholars did look to non-nuclear military issues, but continued to focus upon the Cold War divide.24 These scholars questioned the assumptions of the effectiveness of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) conventional forces to fight a war in Europe. The questions asked by this group focused on the political, economic, social, technological, organizational and doctrinal aspect of the NATO forces. However, strategic studies also found itself, due to its limited focus on these types of military issues, challenged by other fields such as peace studies and international political economy, which could better explain issues such as détente, economic interdependence, Third World poverty and environmentalism. Most significantly, the 1973 Oil Embargo brought home the idea that threats to the Western living standards came from non-military sources as well as military ones.25 With the renewal of the Cold War in the 1980s, strategic studies also underwent a revival. The focus of strategic studies from this point until the end of the Cold War remained on the study of the threat, use and control of military force—in other words, the use of military means to meet military challenges.26

Security and Challenges: A Theoretical Outlook

37

In summary, the Cold War affected the focus of the research conducted in strategic studies. It focused attention away from the broader questions of how security policy fits into the larger foreign policy goals and toward technical and theoretical aspects of nuclear weapons and strategies, East–West relations, and the security problems of the United States and Western Europe. Nuclear weapons added a particular twist to the focus of strategic studies: that is, strategic analysts were studying how to use the threat of the use of force while they also worked to prevent such usage.

The End of the Cold War and the Changing Conceptualization of Security The end of the Cold War had a transformative effect on the study of security. While there is a great deal of debate over the study of security, there was common agreement among security analysts as to the implications of the end of the Cold War on the field of security studies. First, the role of military power was scrutinized. While the old school of strategic studies accepted that questions of force had to be seen in the wider context of the political and economic aspects of the international system, the revival of liberal notions of multilateral cooperation that accompanied the end of the Cold War delegitimized force as a tool of statecraft. For some this meant that military threats declined in relevance, while for others, military tools were less useful. Second, there was a need to re-examine the way we thought about security. For some this was a result of fundamental changes to the post-Cold War environment, and for others the failure of strategic studies to predict the end of the Cold War. Third, there was a need to expand what we meant by security. Again, for some this meant expanding the definition to include the effect of domestic issues on the national security agenda of states, and for others it meant treating non-military threats to the national well-being as security threats. While military threats from states were by no means eliminated, new asymmetrical threats and challenges came to the fore, such as nuclear proliferation, terrorism, security effects of climate change and human security. 27 In order for security studies to remain relevant in the contemporary era, it needed to shift its thinking about security—in particular, the notion that security is the primary goal of states. While strategic analysts during the Cold War insisted on the primacy of security, is it still plausible to insist on this today? Security is important, but how much security is needed and are there other national interests that are of at least equal importance at a very basic level? How good is security if there is no food, arable land or drinkable water in a country? How effective have our security policies been if they have resulted in ‘blowback’ through the rise of other challenges, such as environmental issues or new rivals such as global terrorists? While military security may indeed be important to states that confront hostile neighbors, for others military security is not of primary concern at all times. Many in the West, in particular, question the marginal costs of security. Most

38

Craig A. Snyder

accept that western states have an overabundance of security, and therefore the return on a dollar spent on security will be smaller than the return that dollar would provide if spent on other goals not in abundance. In other words, for states with an abundance of security it would be cost-effective to reduce the military budget and spend that money on other projects, such as cleaning up the environment or feeding the people.28 Even in the post-September 11 environment, questions arise about how much the West’s Middle East policies have not so much caused but, perhaps, facilitated the rise of militant Islamic extremism. In addition, questions as to the extent and nature of the West’s response to the threat need to be addressed. These examine not only the cost of the military actions conducted in the name of the so-called “War on Terror” but also the extent that civil liberties have been sacrificed in the name of “national security.” The second aspect in redefining security was to widen the referent object of security away from the state to include non-state actors and objects, such as individuals, groups, societies, economic structures and the environment. While the state was the referent object for realism and strategic studies, constructivist and critical security theorists began to examine different objects of security. In this, states were seen to be just one of many objects of security, one that had been privileged through the realist and liberal approaches to international relations. In this, states maintained a monopoly as securitizing actors, that is, those who determine what are and are not security threats. While states maintain dominance in regards to political and military power, there is recognition that the instruments of state security can be sources of insecurity for the citizens of that state. To reflect this development Wæver coined the term “securitization”: “In naming a certain development a security problem, the “state” can claim a special right, one that will, in the first instance, always be defined by the state and its elites . . . by definition, something is a security problem when the elites declare it to be so.”29 As such, an issue is “securitized” simply through the act of a state calling it a security problem. Mutimer identifies an important implication of Wæver’s notion of securitization.30 That is, in naming a certain development a security problem, the state claims special rights in regards to it. As a result, the state can adopt any measures that it perceives as necessary to secure itself against the threat. In the name of national security a state may undertake actions that would be unacceptable in the absence of the threat identified. For example, most states are able to act secretly and withhold information from their citizens in the name of “national security.” The most pervasive of the special rights claimed by a state in this regard is the claim on social and economic resources in the name of national security. As in the earlier example of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, its spending on military development to protect it from an attack by the United States and its allies placed an overwhelming burden on the Soviet economy and social structure. While not to the same extent, western democratic states make similar claims to resources for “defense forces” that could otherwise improve the quality of life for their populations. 31 Finally, in redefining security, security studies began to look at not only the goals of security, but also the means to security. Traditional approaches to security tended to examine the use of military force without devoting equal attention

Security and Challenges: A Theoretical Outlook

39

to the purposes for which it was used. Baldwin calls this very unClausewitzian.32 During the Cold War, most strategic analysts saw military threats as the primary source of threats to states; therefore, it was understandable that they also considered the use of force as the primary response. However, in the contemporary era, with the recognition that threats to security can come from other issues, such as environmental degradation, resource depletion, disease, forced migration, and organized transnational crime, among others, security can only come from a balance of all instruments of foreign policy. Likewise, the response to the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001 have tended to focus on the military dimension rather than exploring the political, social or economic dimensions of the antipathy that groups like Al Qaeda have towards the West.

Conclusion The evolution of the theoretical debate over the meaning of security and the means of achieving this security is important not only at the academic level but also at a practical level for states. As demonstrated above, the nature of the study of security has had direct influence on the nature of security policy adopted by not only the superpowers but also for the smaller states. This is especially true for Turkey. By overemphasizing the threat posed by the Cold War bipolarity, Turkish (as well as many other states’) security and foreign policy overlooked a plethora of security threats and challenges that may have been resolved before they manifested themselves into violent episodes. NATO, the primary mechanism for regional security, proved to be unable to deal with the range of security challenges that emerged in the post-Cold War era. NATO proved unable to respond effectively to challenges such as new nationalist movements in the former Soviet-dominated Central and Eastern Europe, as well as militant Islamic extremism and security challenges arising from other transnational threats such as unauthorized people movements. Echoing the global trends, Turkey has undergone a transformation in its foreign and security policy outlook. During the Cold War, Turkey was firmly entrenched in the West European confrontation with the Soviet Union. Indeed as a front-line state, Turkish foreign and security policy was especially focused on the East–West confrontation. Internally, Turkey also faced several security challenges, from separatist Kurdish forces to demands for Turkey to exercise greater influence in its immediate neighborhood, especially in support of the Turkish population in Cyprus. With the end of the Cold War, Turkey continues to find itself on the front line, but this time between the West and radical Islamic forces. A new set of security challenges have also risen to the fore that transcend national borders. As a result, a need for a broader understanding of security is necessary. Therefore, a “regional” reference to face challenges becomes timely. During the Cold War era, literature on security in international relations was predominantly shaped with reference to the nation-state and national interest.

40

Craig A. Snyder

Interdependence was recognized as the most prevailing issue area only with reference to military security. The concept of “collective security” sought greater interdependence among states. The September 11 attacks underscored the vulnerability of modern industrial states to the unconventional threats, which would now constitute the new security agenda. The new global security agenda raises an important question about how states should meet the new challenges and threats. Contemporary challenges to security no longer have visible fronts, armies or countries with well-defined borders, thus security interdependence expanded its agenda, actors and methods. Throughout the history of the twentieth century, states looked to their immediate and near neighbors as well as key external or regional powers as potential sources of threat or of protection. By focusing on these neighbors, states sought to devise rules and norms for how states in a particular region should act. Rather than at the global or local level, the region was where most post-1945 success in achieving security arrangements has been experienced. Kriesberg argues that “all international conflicts have a regional base, but also have some links to countries or other large-scale actors from outside of the region.”33 More specifically (and more applicable to Turkey’s twenty-first century security understanding) Buzan’s “regional security complex” theory examines security relations and problems on the regional level. Buzan’s definitions of “region,” “regional security” and “security complex” are particularly instrumental here. Buzan defines a “region” as a distinct system of states closely united by geographical vicinity, and whose security relations are so significant as to establish the location of boundaries with other regional formations. 34 With a more constructivist approach, Katzenstein rejects the geographical determinant of a region, arguing that regions are “social and cognitive constructs that are rooted in political practice.”35 Katzenstein’s definition of “region” as a group of states that share a similar communal identity is in some ways applicable to definitions of Turkey as a regional actor. That is, Muslim Turkey’s membership (like that of Mediterranean Italy) in the preeminent regional security organization, the NATO, is not a result of geography but of political decision-making among the NATO leaders early in the Cold War.36 For states such as Turkey, these challenges are more than mere academic issues, and as a front-line state that also has visions of regional leadership in Southeast Europe, Southwest Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean region, they take on practical importance. Theoretical understandings of security that take identity as a core element of threat articulation will provide Turkish policymakers with a clearer framework from which to develop Turkey’s regional engagement policy.

Notes 1. Craig A. Snyder, “Emerging Regional Security Cooperation in Europe and the Asia Pacific,” The Pacific Review 9, no. 4 (1996): 553–76.

Security and Challenges: A Theoretical Outlook

41

2. Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams, “Broadening the Agenda of Security Studies: Politics and Methods,” Mershon International Studies Review 40, no. 2 (October 1996): 230. 3. Steve Smith, “The Contested Concept of Security,” in Critical Security Studies and World Politics, ed. Ken Booth (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2005), 57. 4. John Garnett, “Strategic Studies and its Assumptions,” in Contemporary Strategy: Vol. 1 Theories and Concepts, ed. John Baylis, Ken Booth, John Garnett and Phil Williams (London: Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1987), 7. 5. Theo Farrell, “General Introduction,” in Security Studies: Critical Concepts in International Relations, ed. Theo Farrell (London: Routledge, 2010), 1. 6. Barry Buzan, An Introduction to Strategic Studies: Military Technology and International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1987), 3. 7. Basil H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2nd ed. (New York: Praeger, 1967), 335; Hedley Bull, “Strategic Studies and its Critics,” World Politics 20, no. 4 (July 1968): 593; Colin S. Gray, Strategic Studies and Public Policy: The American Experience, (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1982), 1. All quoted in Buzan, An Introduction to Strategic Studies, 3–4. 8. Lawrence Freedman, The Transformation of Strategic Affairs, Adelphi Paper 379, (London: Routledge for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2006) 8–9; and, Buzan, An Introduction to Strategic Studies, 3–4. 9. It needs to be noted that realism is not a single theoretical approach but rather a collection of approaches that share a set of assumptions about the nature of the international system and the role of states within that system. Sean Lynn-Jones, “Realism and Security Studies,” Contemporary Security and Strategy, 3rd ed., ed. Craig A. Snyder (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012). 10. J. D. Kenneth Boutin and Craig A. Snyder, “New Approaches to Security: From Strategic Studies to Security Studies,” in Global Risks and Crises, ed. Sally Totman and Scott Burchill (London: Oxford University Press, 2008), 71. 11. John Garnett, “Strategic Studies,” 9–10. 12. Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Alexander Wendt, “The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations,” International Organization 41, no. 3 (Summer 1987): 335–70; Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization 46, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 391–425; Alexander Wendt, “Constructing International Politics,” International Security 20, no. 1 (Summer 1995): 71–81. 13. Boutin and Snyder, “New Approaches to Security,” 78. 14. Richard K. Betts, “Should Strategic Studies Survive?” World Politics 50, no. 1 (October 1997): 9. 15. Quincy Wright, A Study of War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942). 16. David A. Baldwin, “Security Studies and the End of the Cold War,” World Politics 48, no. 1 (October 1995): 119–20. 17. Ibid., 122. 18. The most physical representation of this East–West divide was the division of Europe between the Soviet-controlled eastern half of the continent and the U.S.-led western half. 19. Farrell, “General Introduction,” 2.

42

Craig A. Snyder

20. Edward A. Kolodziej, “Whither Security Studies After the Cold War?” in South Asia after the Cold War: International Perspectives, ed. Kanti P. Bajpai and Stephen P. Cohen (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993), 16. 21. Baldwin, “Security Studies,” 123; Betts, “Should Strategic Studies Survive?” 12–13. 22. Baldwin, “Security Studies,” 124. 23. These strategists include Douglas Pike, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1966); Jeffrey Race, War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict in a Vietnamese Province (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972); Douglas S. Blaufarb, The Counterinsurgency Era: U.S. Doctrine and Performance—1950 to the Present (New York: Free Press, 1977); Larry E. Cable, Conflict of Myths: The Development of American Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the Vietnam War (New York: New York University Press, 1986); D. Michael Shafer, Deadly Paradigms: The Failure of US Counterinsurgency Policy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988); Timothy J. Lomperis, From People’s War to People’s Rule: Insurgency, Intervention, and the Lessons of Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). See Baldwin, “Security Studies,” 123. 24. See Richard K. Betts, Surprise Attack: Lessons for Defense Planning (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 1982); Joseph F. Bouchard, Command in Crisis: Four Case Studies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); Elliot A. Cohen, Citizens and Soldiers: The Dilemmas of Military Service (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985); John Keegan, The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme (New York: The Viking Press, 1976); Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1987); John J. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983); Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984); Stephen P. Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991); Martin van Crevald, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Martin van Crevald, Command in War (Cambridge, N.Y.: Harvard University Press, 1985). 25. Baldwin, “Security Studies,” 124; and, Betts, “Should Strategic Studies Survive?” 20. 26. Baldwin, “Security Studies,” 124–25. 27. Baldwin, “Security Studies,” 118; Lawrence Freedman, “International Security: Changing Targets,” Foreign Policy 110 (Spring 1998): 52–53; Steve Smith, “The Contested Concept of Security,” in Critical Security Studies and World Politics, ed. Ken Booth (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2005); Bryan Mabee, The Globalization of Security: State Power, Security Provision and Legitimacy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 3. 28. Baldwin, “Security Studies,” 126–28. 29. Ole Wæver, “Securitization and Desecurization,” in On Security, ed. Ronnie D. Lipschutz (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 54. 30. David Mutimer, “Beyond Strategy: Critical Thinking on the New Security Studies,” in Contemporary Security and Strategy, 3rd ed., ed. Craig A. Snyder (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 45–71. 31. Ibid., 49–50. 32. Baldwin, “Security Studies,” 128–30.

Security and Challenges: A Theoretical Outlook

43

33. Louis Kriesberg, “Regional Conflicts in the Post-Cold War Era: Causes, Dynamics, and Modes of Resolution,” in World Security: Challenges for a New Century, ed. Michael T. Klare and Daniel C. Thomas (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 155. 34. Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1991), 186–219. 35. Peter J. Katzenstein, “Regionalism in Asia,” New Political Economy 5, no. 3 (2000): 354. 36. Craig A Snyder, “Regional Security and Regional Conflict,” in Contemporary Security and Strategy, ed. Snyder, 314.

Chapter Two

Insulator, Bridge, Regional Center? Turkey and Regional Security Complexes Thomas Diez How can one define Turkey’s place in the global security architecture of today? This seemingly simple question defies any easy answer. Indeed, the question is at the center of both heated political debates and academic disputes. Politically, Turkey’s international role has undergone profound transformations since the end of the Cold War. While for a large junk of the twentieth century, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member Turkey served as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, its role in the international society after 1990 was initially much less clear. Was it to become a minor power at the sidelines of world events, or was it to become a new regional center marked by the pursuit of a “new geopolitics?”1 The terrorist attacks of September 11 and after marked the resurgence of Turkey as an important factor in global geostrategic calculations, now of course no longer as a bulwark against communism but against Islamism. Throughout all these years, Turkey has aimed at closer relations with what is now the European Union (EU). Yet while the association agreement signed in Ankara in 1963 did not consider these relations in a security light (after all, NATO covered this area), Turkey’s membership application in 1987 gained a security dimension exactly in light of the uncertainties of the post-Cold War world and the slow development of a foreign policy and security pillar of the EU, but also within the context of the ambition of securing long-term energy supplies and the opening of new gas and oil pipelines in 2003 (Blue Stream) and 2006 (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan).2 The terrorist attacks of and following September 11, 2001, undoubtedly reinforced this dimension. Yet the debate about Turkey’s EU membership, too, demonstrated the high degree of contestation about Turkey’s role in the world. While on the one hand, supporters of EU membership refer to Turkey’s geopolitical location as a bridge to the Middle East and as a reinforcement of European values in an Islamic neighborhood marked by insta45

46

Thomas Diez

bility and authoritarianism, opponents fear that Turkey as an EU member may drag the other member states into security disputes that they otherwise have no interest in. The question of Turkey’s place in the global security architecture is therefore of utmost importance to a range of political decisions, from EU membership to showing support for, and therefore a degree of trust in, Turkey’s engagement with its eastern neighbors, including Iraq, with its Kurdish population, and Iran. Yet the question is also of relevance to the academic debate in security studies, and here above all to the so-called Copenhagen School led by Buzan and Wæver. The Copenhagen School is marked by two major theoretical developments. The first one, which is often used as a synonym for the School, is securitization theory. Securitization is the construction of something as an existential threat to a referent object, which legitimizes the pursuit of extraordinary means to counter this threat.3 In other words, securitization allows for policies that would otherwise not be seen as legitimate—war is a prime example. The details of this specific argument need not interest us at this point. Suffice it to say that within the debate about the widening and deepening of the concept of security away from its traditional military content towards a broader range of security issues, including environmental or human security, the Copenhagen School provides a formaldiscursive rather than a substantive definition of security: 4 we cannot say which policy-field is most relevant to security, but we can say when a topic is represented in such a way that it becomes a security issue. For the debate about the role of Turkey in international security, this is relevant insofar as it broadens our focus from classic geostrategic considerations to questions of, for instance, energy security but also of whether migration from (and through) Turkey can be constructed as a security threat. It is, however, the second theoretical contribution of the Copenhagen School that is the primary focus of this chapter. This second pillar of the School is Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT).5 Whether the label “theory” is adequate in this context is disputable, but the argument put forward is of central importance to the question of Turkey’s role in the global security architecture. At its core, RSCT argues that security dynamics first and foremost take place at the regional and not at the global level. In this respect, Buzan and Wæver do not see a single international system, but a set of regional international systems that are characterized by a high density of security interactions within, but relatively weak links among themselves. These security interactions in turn take the form of securitizing moves,6 i.e., articulations of existential threats that may or may not be successful in the sense of being widely accepted, which is a requirement for the legitimization of extraordinary means. Global security interactions such as the Cold War, in this view, historically are the exceptions rather than the norm, and they usually do not remove regional security dynamics but rather function as an “overlay” through which regional interactions become sidelined or integrated into a larger security system for a limited time period. 7 Turkey, in this conceptualization of regional security, is an “insulator” state between three security complexes: the European, the Middle Eastern and the

Insulator, Bridge, Regional Center?

47

Central Asian one. An insulator state as defined by Buzan and Wæver finds itself in a location “where larger regional security dynamics stand back to back.”8 In this situation, the insulator state “faces both ways, bearing the burden of this difficult position but [it is] not strong enough to unify its two worlds into one.”9 While Buzan and Wæver note that Turkey’s active foreign policy runs against the behavior expected from an insulator, which they anticipate to be marked by a passive foreign policy as a consequence of being caught between two security dynamics, they nonetheless maintain that this does not challenge Turkey’s status as such, since Turkey is unable to draw the security complexes together into a coherent whole.10 In what follows, I explore the rather underdeveloped concept of insulator in the theory and challenge the very idea of “insulating.” While it is true that the security dynamics within the three complexes surrounding Turkey are more intense than between them, there are two questions that need to be explored more thoroughly: First, what are the internal dynamics within Turkey? Here, I suggest that rather than being an insulator, Turkey can be seen as a meeting ground of security dynamics that result in domestic political struggles about legitimate order. Second, what is the function of Turkey from a systemic perspective? Rather than simply being an insulator that “absorbs” security dynamics, I suggest that states caught between security dynamics always have an option to act passively, as Buzan and Wæver predict, or pursue an active policy of barrier or bridge. In the next section, I will first discuss the problems that any attempt to map the world (and I see Buzan and Wæver’s work as such an attempt) brings with it. This includes both theoretical and political problems, as can be seen in the consequences that RSCT has for an assessment of Turkey’s EU membership perspective. In the subsequent two sections, I will first address the systemic context of Turkey’s position in international politics, and then how this location figures in domestic struggles. In pursuing these two sections, I argue that one of the downsides of RSCT is that it does not take the concept of securitization seriously enough.

The Pitfalls of Mapping the World Regional Security Complex Theory is part of a broader array of attempts to reestablish the regional level as the appropriate level of analysis for security studies, and indeed for international relations more generally. The significance of this debate can only be understood against the backdrop of the dominance of neorealism and neoliberalism during the Cold War. Both of these theories, although neorealism in particular, were essentially systemic theories that operated on a global level and left little room for regional differentiations other than power asymmetries. On the other side of the spectrum, analysts focused mostly on national debates, interests and decision-making procedures in explaining security policies. In contrast, it has become a commonplace today to argue that there

48

Thomas Diez

are significant differences between security interactions in, say, North America, Europe and East Asia, not least in the emphasis put on different policy fields, or what Buzan and Wæver call “security sectors.”11 It is not too far a step from attempting to establish the region as the appropriate level of analysis to mapping such regions. Buzan and Wæver do indeed produce such a map, in which Turkey functions as an insulator between the European, the post-Soviet Central Asian and the Middle Eastern Regional Security Complex (RSC).12 The immediately intriguing characteristic feature of this map is the clear delineation of security complexes. The authors in fact explicitly reject the argument that RSCs can overlap: “We take as a starting point of the analysis that the whole world has to be divided up on a map producing mutually exclusive RSCs, insulator states, and global actors. . . . If this set-up produces complications, anomalies, and difficulties, these are exactly what should be explained and what the theory has then served to alert us to.”13 Yet the case of Turkey indicates that this is an odd move: first the authors superimpose a particular geopolitical map onto the political complexities of security interaction, only then to treat cases that do not easily fit into such a framework as aberrations.14 Thus, Turkey cannot be seen anymore as a bridge between security regions and cultures; it has to be counted into one side or the other, or be left as an insulator. Buzan and Wæver go for the latter option, but then find that Turkey’s foreign policy is far more active than they would expect —and this they wrote before many of the foreign policy initiatives of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP) government.15 Their way out reads more like an excuse than a well-founded argument: “Still,” they write, “Turkey is not able to bring different RSCs together, to make them form one coherent strategic arena, of which it is part.”16 Yet exactly that there is no single coherent strategic arena seems to suggest that there are several RSCs at play at the same time—in other words, there is an overlap of security interactions, rather than security interactions that are simply fewer in number and lesser in intensity, as the theory would have it. Buzan and Wæver seem to fall foul here of a modern cartographic anxiety, of a desire for clear lines and borders—in fact, they themselves acknowledge that their approach “may seem excessively territorial.”17 In that sense, their work stands in a broader tradition of geopolitics in which the organization of the world into distinct territorial spaces has taken center stage.18 As Shapiro has noted, such an ontology, especially if it is presented as a theory and pursued within a methodological framework that uses a whole set of terms and concepts specific to the theory, “appears uncontentious and nonnormative,” yet “it constitutes . . . a moral geography, a set of silent ethical assertions that pre-organize explicit ethicopolitical discourses.”19 In the case of Turkey, this “moral geography” can be seen in particular in relation to RSCT’s positioning of Turkey outside the European RSC. In an article I wrote with Buzan in 1999, we thus argued that “Turkey plays the role of an insulator [between security complexes], a peripheral actor in all of the security regions surrounding it . . . its main function, in practice, is to separate other regional security dynamics from each other.”20 From a normative perspective

Insulator, Bridge, Regional Center?

49

within RSCT, the role of the insulator is to provide stability by preventing the security interactions from one region from spilling over into another one, as discussed above. However, in the case of Turkey, EU membership would bring Turkey more fully into the European complex, with the consequence of the European, Middle Eastern and post-Soviet Central Asian (or the Commonwealth of Independent States—CIS) region directly bordering each other. This could possibly lead to a direct entanglement of the EU in the security dynamics of the Middle East and the CIS. In addition, it would also be in the interest of both Turkey and the EU “to prevent the growth of any linkages between the security dynamics of the Middle East and those of the Balkans.”21 In the light of the changes that have taken place in Turkey since the mid-1990s, I reconsidered this argument in an article written a few years later and found that it raised “fundamental questions about the analytical utility [of RSCT] and [the] normative direction of the argument regarding the Turkish case.”22 Analytically, despite the fact that “Europe” has lost its importance as a central reference point in Turkish domestic debates since the beginning of the century,23 its EU membership negotiations, its military presence in Cyprus and its interactions with Greece seem to strongly place it within the European RSC rather than outside. Indeed, it is difficult to see how Turkey’s security interactions, at least with the southeastern part of the European RSC, are in any way less frequent and intense than even the security interactions between Germany and France at the heart of the EU. Furthermore, there is continued interaction on the societal security24 level between Turkey and even the “core” member states of the EU through the Turkish migrant population, which (whether rightly or wrongly) is often represented as a security threat to presumed national identities,25 with knock-on effects on Turkey’s EU membership prospects, and at times spilling over onto the “high politics” level. 26 This is not to say that Turkey is not engaged in other RSCs, as well— witness the crisis over the Gaza Aid Flotilla crisis in May 2010, or the attempts to come to a lasting agreement with Armenia.27 Yet, this clearly speaks in favor of an overlap of regional security interactions rather than a clear-cut border between complexes. Such an overlap does not only apply to Turkey, but also makes better sense of interactions, for instance, between the European and the Middle Eastern RSC. With the Republic of Cyprus being an EU member, the EU borders the Middle Eastern complex directly.28 In addition, the EU has become more active in the Middle East peace process, not least through its assistance to the Palestinian Authority29 and its crucial role in developing the Road Map towards a peaceful resolution of this conflict.30 The stability-through-keepingapart argument therefore does not make much sense, at least not any longer. Even more important than these questions of overlap are the normative implications of the RSCT argument regarding the stability that Turkey as an insulator was more likely to bring than Turkey as a member of the European Security Complex. Firstly, this did not sufficiently take into account that the security interactions within Europe are largely based on desecuritization, i.e., on scaling down the security relevance of an issue, driven by the logic of integration within the EU. Wæver, for instance, sees the EU as a security community in which

50

Thomas Diez

conflicts are dealt with within the defined rules of EU politics, rather than with a resort to security.31 Higashino argues that the logic of “securitizing to desecuritize” that is endemic to the integration process, legitimized as necessary to maintain peace and stability in Europe, was also prevalent in the justification of the EU’s eastern enlargement in May 2004.32 In this logic, political stability in Europe is achieved not by keeping others out, but by incorporating new members, and desecuritizing their security interactions both with other EU members and on the EU’s outer borders. If this argument is applied to the Turkish case, Turkey as a member of the EU would be a much better guarantor for stability than Turkey as an insulator—especially if this is coupled with an effective “European Neighborhood” policy. A second normative implication concerns the prospect of a permanent and peaceful solution to the Cyprus conflict, which is not based on a partition of the island, and has in the meantime become a strong security argument in its own right in favor of pursuing Turkish membership. The support that the Turkish government has given to the Annan Plan (2004), and the fact that it was rejected by a large majority of Greek Cypriots, but approved in the referendum on the Turkish-Cypriot side, means that Turkey can no longer easily be blamed for the island’s continued division. That a positive engagement towards the unification of Cyprus is a precondition for EU membership, as Turkey would otherwise be seen as occupying a significant part of an EU member state, was probably not the only reason for the Turkish government’s decision to back the Annan Plan— there have, for instance, also been quarrels about the financial cost of supporting the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus—but it was an important one. Without a membership perspective, it is likely that the strategic arguments for maintaining a strong military presence in, and therefore a separation of, Cyprus would prevail. Eventual Turkish membership would change the status of the de facto border in Cyprus, even if there were no solution—for instance, if the Greek Cypriots continued to block a settlement that is not following fully their own views, although given that Cyprus is now an EU member state, this is also likely to lead to blocking Turkish EU membership. If this scenario of Turkish membership without a solution on Cyprus were however to materialize, many Turkish Cypriots could nonetheless travel freely in the EU, either because they have Republic of Cyprus citizenship, or through Turkey with Turkish passports. The partition of the island would seem increasingly outdated within a multilevel, multiple identity Europe. The question of Turkish (and, for that matter, Greek) settlers in Cyprus would also become less problematic, since the freedom of movement would cover them, too, although the issue of the return of properties occupied since the Turkish intervention of 1974 would persist. All in all, from a perspective focused on Cyprus, the security arguments in terms of a permanent and peaceful settlement on the island all speak in favor of Turkish membership. And all of this has not even yet addressed a third set of normative implications of analyzing Turkey out of the European RSC, and thus out of the desecuritization logic of the European integration process, for domestic change in Turkey, which I shall return to in the section on “Security dynam-

Insulator, Bridge, Regional Center?

51

ics and political struggles.” Trying to insert clear-cut borders into a global map as demanded by RSCT therefore seems to bring about numerous problematic consequences for political change. In fact, even though Buzan and Wæver emphasize their constructivist credentials,33 the theory all in all seems to rather fit into the category of “realist” rather than “transformative” approaches, as developed by Buzan and Hansen in their history of international security studies.34

Active and Passive Policies in-between RSCs As I noted above, Buzan and Wæver admit that Turkey is an unusual insulator in that its security policy is in general much more active than one would expect from a state in such a position. 35 Four developments from 2010 serve as indications that, if anything, Turkish foreign policy has become more active.36 First, Turkey has become more active in its foreign policy towards Africa. In 2008, Ankara hosted the Africa-Turkey Cooperation summit, and in March 2010, President Abdullah Gül paid a high-profile visit to Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo.37 While some of the excitement about these developments can easily be considered to be hype, they nonetheless demonstrate a perspective for Turkish foreign policy that is broader than it used to be. Second, in May 2010, Turkey, together with Brazil, tried to broker a deal with Iran to avoid further sanctions for Iran. Under the proposed scheme, Iran would have shipped more than one ton of low-enriched uranium into Turkey for storage in return for higher-enriched uranium for research purposes. Although the initiative ultimately failed due to resistance from the United States and other UN Security Council members, the fact that Turkey was able to negotiate the plan in the first instance is remarkable enough. Third, also in May 2010, Turkey signed a deal with Russia to help Turkey develop and build a nuclear power plant. In return, Turkey agreed to lift visa restrictions for Russian tourists and to allow for the increased transportation of oil through its pipelines.38 This cooperation is particularly significant as it brings together two regional powers that have a number of conflicts or potential conflicts between them, including in the area of energy security and in relation to the Armenian–Azerbaijani conflict.39 Last but not least, Turkey’s reaction to the Israeli raid on a Gaza aid flotilla at the end of May 2010, in which nine Turkish activists were killed, showed a growing self-confidence of Turkey in its relations with its near abroad. And this is only a selection of foreign policy initiatives, to which one can easily add more. Not all of Turkish foreign policy is successful, of course. The Iran deal failed, and Prime Minister Erdoğan’s unfortunate leaving of the Davos World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in 2009, protesting against what he saw as unfair treatment in the allocation of speaking time, can hardly be seen as a highlight of Turkish diplomacy. Yet overall, Turkish foreign policy has not only become more active but has also established Turkey as a serious player, at least in its region. The policy clearly bears the stamp of foreign minister Ahmet

52

Thomas Diez

Davutoğlu, who had set out his vision of a more active Turkish foreign policy while at the same time resolving conflicts in Turkey’s neighborhood, in the socalled Strategic Depth doctrine.40 What is the relevance of all of this for RSCT? First of all, Turkey does not behave as the theory predicts. In fact, Davutoğlu’s vision of Turkey’s place in the world is exactly juxtaposed to that of Buzan and Wæver. From a “frontier country” during the Cold War, he writes, Turkey has come to be a “central country” whose “diverse regional composition lends it the capability of maneuvering in several regions simultaneously; in this sense, it controls an area of influence in its immediate environs.”41 This points to a central problem of RSCT: Theoretically, its core operating logic by focusing on securitizing moves is centered on interactions between security actors. Yet in practice, by focusing on a mapping of the world into distinct Regional Security Complexes, it discounts the relevance of agency, and therefore the political choices to be made about the course of foreign policy, and, not unlike structural realism, prioritizes the structural features of the international system. To put it differently, the drive to distill structural patterns on a global level from the maze of security interactions makes RSCT blind to the capacity of actors to change security interaction. This however runs against the spirit of securitization as a speech act as it was initially devised, i.e., the idea of security coming into being through its invocation by specific actors. Even if one concedes that the speech-act metaphor was misguided and treats securitization as a discourse and therefore as a social formation, such a discourse would still have to be continuously reconstructed through the articulation of security. Davutoğlu’s vision and political practice is such an articulation. It gives new meaning and a new drive to Turkish foreign policy. This is not simply an aberration from the predictions of RSCT; it rather hits at the heart of the theory and the way that it uses the concept of securitization.

Security Dynamics and Political Struggles The final problem of the “moral geography” of RSCT is that it ignores the linkages between domestic politics and foreign and security policy. RSCT’s focus on the systemic level makes it overlook the contestation over security within domestic arenas. This is not a problem for a system-level analysis; it is however a problem if one takes the securitization research program seriously. Securitization is not merely a methodology to map the structure of the international security system; it is a moral concept that draws attention to the struggles over hegemony in a Laclau-Mouffian sense in that securitizing moves compete over the fixation of meaning not only regarding issues beyond state borders, but also within.42 If successful, this fixation of meaning inscribes the sense of urgency and legitimizes extraordinary measures, which makes securitization so problematic for democratic processes. 43 Yet, it is not very likely that securitizing moves are successful without a larger, often heated, debate. This is an aspect of the

Insulator, Bridge, Regional Center?

53

Copenhagen School that has remained rather underdeveloped, and it is part of the concern that the School has neglected the role of the audience of securitizing moves in making them successful.44 At the same time, the process of European integration has been prescribed as an instrument for stabilization and domestic reform. 45 The desecuritizing logic of integration can have an impact not only on peaceful transformation, as argued above, but at the same time on domestic political regimes. Within this impact, we can distinguish between the EU’s “compulsory,” “enabling,” “connective” and “constructive” power.46 In the Turkish case, this power, for instance, compelled the Turkish government to constitutional reforms once there was a concrete membership prospect; it enabled the AKP in particular to legitimize those reforms when they would otherwise not have been seen as legitimate; it provided a platform for the AKP to connect with other domestic and European actors; and it has contributed to the construction of a more pluralistic identity of Turkey both within Turkey and from abroad.47 Yet none of these effects is in any way automatic; instead, one of the core conditions for change is that local actors take on board and pursue them. 48 This will result in political struggles, which in Turkey are clearly visible. The picture that emerges from such a refocusing of the concept of securitization is that of security as a core rallying cry in domestic debates. As Rumelili notes, the EU context has thus not only brought about the “positive” transformative effects already noted; it has rather “authorised and validated two conflicting identity discourses on Self and Other in Turkey and Greece.”49 This has culminated in Turkey in the mass demonstrations against the AKP government in spring and summer 2007. “Europe” has served in these debates as a reference point for both camps—it served one side as the remedy to security concerns, while the others securitized “Europe” as an existential threat to the unity of the Republic of Turkey, thereby reinforcing domestic political positions.50

Conclusion These considerations make it obvious that what RSCT sees as insulators with low levels of security interaction can rather be zones of overlapping RSCs in which the level of securitization is not particularly low, but particularly high. In this chapter, I have shown that this is the case in Turkey both for its foreign policy, in which Turkey is surprisingly active for a RSCT perspective, and for its domestic political debate, which RSCT largely ignores. I have argued that both RSCT’s geopolitical bent and its problematic use of the concept of securitization are at the heart of the problems that the theory faces. Where does this leave us? As far as the theory is concerned, I should emphasize that the regional focus of RSCT is welcome in that it allows us to think about Turkey’s role in the global security architecture more productively. Yet the Turkish case suggests firstly, that the strive for clear-cut borders for security complexes is problematic, and that it would be better to conceptualize RSCs as overlapping, even if this makes

54

Thomas Diez

life for the analyst more complicated. Secondly, the focus on “macrosecuritization” gives away the opportunity to analyze more closely the role that securitizing moves play in domestic political debates.51 Such a reconceptualization would allow us to deal better analytically with the Turkish case. At the same time, it would focus more on Turkish political actors and their way to engage in the broader security context. This is not only of analytical, but also of normative concern: On the one hand, it allows for a greater degree of agency to shape security interactions; on the other hand, it alerts us to the problematic use of security arguments in order to impose or reinforce domestic political hegemonies. All in all, the treatment of Turkey as an insulator does not only bring with it problematic political consequences, as I have argued in this contribution; it also reinforces the illusion of orderly borders between security regions. This, I hope to have shown, is an inaccurate picture. The idea of overlapping RSCs seems more promising—whether this casts Turkey as a “bridge” or a “center,” at least on a regional level, is yet another debate to be had.

Notes 1. Graham E. Fuller and Ian O. Lesser, Turkey’s New Geopolitics: From the Balkans to Western China (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993). 2. Katynka Barisch, Turkey’s Role in European Energy Security (London: Centre for European Reform, 2007), http://www.cer.org.uk/pdf/essay_turkey_energy_12dec07.pdf (accessed August 9, 2010). 3. Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1998), 21–24. 4. Barry Buzan and Lene Hansen, The Evolution of International Security Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 33–34. 5. See especially Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 6. Ibid., 72–74. 7. Ibid., 61–62. 8. Ibid., 41. 9. Ibid., 41. 10. Ibid., 394–95. 11. Ibid., 75. 12. Ibid., xxvi. 13. Ibid., 48–49. 14. Buzan and Wæver do not write of “aberrations” themselves, but they admit that Turkey’s foreign policy does not meet their predictions (Regions and Powers, 395) and is therefore a challenge (ibid., 485). 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 80.

Insulator, Bridge, Regional Center?

55

18. See the discussion in John Agnew and Stuart Corbridge, Mastering Space: Hegemony, Territory and International Political Economy (London: Routledge, 1995), 52– 54. 19. Michael J. Shapiro, Violent Cartographies: Mapping Cultures of War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 16. 20. Barry Buzan and Thomas Diez, “Turkey and the European Union: Where to from Here?” Survival 41, no 1 (1999): 47. 21. Ibid. 22. Thomas Diez, “Turkey, the European Union and Security Complexes Revisited,” Mediterranean Politics 10, no. 2 (2005): 167–80, at 173. I have used sections of this article as building blocks of the following argument. 23. This is evident in a more skeptical, but also more agnostic view of the EU, see “Turkey and the West—Drifting Away,” in Transatlantic Trends 2010 Key Findings Report, 23–26, http://www.gmfus.org/trends/doc/2010_English_Key.pdf. 24. Societal security refers to security interaction with the nation and other societal groups as their reference object; see Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde, Security, 119. 25. Lauren M. McLaren, “Explaining Opposition to Turkish Membership of the EU,” European Union Politics 8, no. 2 (2007): 251–78. 26. See, for instance, the row over Turkish language schools in Germany in spring 2010, e.g., “Erdoğan, Merkel on Collision Course ahead of Visit,” Today’s Zaman, March 26, 2010, http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link= 205451. 27. I should stress that such engagement can be both conflict-enhancing or deescalating, or in Copenhagen School parlance, “securitizing” or “desecuritizing.” On Armenia, see Nona Mikhelidze, “The Turkish-Armenian Rapprochement at the Deadlock,” Document IAI 1005 (Rome: Istituto Affari Internazionali, 2010), http://www.iai. it/pdf/DocIAI/iai1005.pdf (accessed August 11, 2010). 28. It is true that Cyprus has no land border with Middle Eastern countries, but there is dense societal and economic interchange. Arguably, the difference between land and sea borders has also diminished with the advance of transport and weapon technology. 29. Stephan Stetter, “Democracy without Democratisation? The Assistance of the European Union for Democratisation Processes in Palestine,” Mediterranean Politics 8, nos. 2–3 (2003): 153–73. 30. Nathalie Tocci, “Conflict Resolution in the Neighbourhood: Comparing EU Involvement in Turkey’s Kurdish Question and in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict,” Mediterranean Politics 10 (2005): 125–46. 31. Ole Wæver, “Insecurity, Security, and Asecurity in the West European Non-War Community,” in Security Communities, ed. Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 69–118. 32. Atsuko Higashino, “For the Sake of ‘Peace and Security’? The Role of Security in the EU Enlargement Eastwards,” Cooperation and Conflict 39, no. 4 (2004): 347–68. 33. Buzan and Wæver, Regions and Power, 70–75. 34. Buzan and Hansen, The Evolution of International Security, 30–32. 35. Buzan and Wæver, Regions and Powers, 394–95; see also the discussion in Işıl Kazan, “Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean, Seen from Turkey,” in The European Union and the Cyprus Conflict: Modern Conflict, Postmodern Union, ed. Thomas Diez (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 54–69.

56

Thomas Diez

36. See also Stephen F. Larrabee, “Turkey’s New Geopolitics,” Survival 52, no. 2 (2010): 157–80; Kemal Kirişci, “Turkish Foreign Policy in Turbulent Times,” Chaillot Paper 92 (September 2006): 49–52. 37. “Turkey’s Foreign Policy Not Exclusively Focused on Europe Anymore,” Deutsche Welle, April 26, 2010, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,5499758,00.html. 38. “Russia and Turkey Sign Nuclear Deal,” Al-Jazeera, May 12, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/05/2010512162730899387. 39. “Turkey and Russia on the Rise,” Stratfor Global Intelligence, March 17, 2009, http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090317_turkey_and_russia_rise. 40. Bülent Aras, “Davutoğlu Era in Turkish Foreign Policy,” SETA Policy Brief 32 (May 2009), https://www.ciaonet.org/pbei/seta/0016473/f_0016473_14243.pdf; Yasin Aktay, “Politics at Home, Politics in the World: The Return of the Political in Turkish Foreign Policy,” Mediterranean Quarterly 21, no. 1 (2010): 61–75. 41. Ahmet Davutoğlu, “Turkey’s Foreign Policy Vision: An Assessment of 2007,” Insight Turkey 10, no. 1 (2008): 77–96. 42. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1985). See also David R. Howarth, Aletta J. Norval and Yannis Stavrakakis, eds., Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies, and Social Change (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000). 43. Ole Wæver, “Securitization and Desecuritization,” in On Security, ed. Ronnie D. Lipschutz (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 46–86; Claudia Aradau, “Security and the Democratic Scene: Desecuritization and Emancipation,” Journal of International Relations and Development 7, no. 4 (2004): 388–413. 44. Thierry Balzacq, “The Three Faces of Securitization: Political Agency, Audience and Context,” European Journal of International Relations 11, no. 2 (2005): 171–201; Paul Roe, “Actor, Audience(s) and Emergency Measures: Securitization and the UK’s Decision to Invade Iraq,” Security Dialogue 39, no. 6 (2008): 615–35; Holger Stritzel, “Towards a Theory of Securitization: Copenhagen and Beyond,” European Journal of International Relations 13, no. 3 (2007): 357–83. 45. Heather Grabbe, The EU‘s Transformative Power: Europeanization through Conditionality in Central and Eastern Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006). 46. Thomas Diez, Stephan Stetter, and Mathias Albert, “The European Union and Border Conflicts: The Transformative Power of Integration,” International Organization 60, no. 3 (2006): 563–93; Thomas Diez, Mathias Albert, and Stephan Stetter, eds., The European Union and Border Conflicts: The Power of Integration and Association (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 47. Bahar Rumelili, “Transforming the Greek-Turkish Conflicts: The EU Is What We ‘Make of It!’” in European Union and Border Conflicts, ed. Thomas Diez, Mathias Albert, and Stephan Stetter, The Power of Integration and Association (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 94–128. 48. Stephan Stetter, Mathias Albert and Thomas Diez, “Conclusion,” in European Union and Border Conflicts, ed. Thomas Diez, Mathias Albert, and Stephan Stetter, The Power of Integration and Association (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 234. 49. Rumelili, “Transforming the Greek-Turkish Conflicts,” 123. 50. Başak Alpan, Demarcating Political Frontiers in Turkey: Discourses and ‘Europe-as-Hegemony’ after 1999 (unpubl. PhD Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2010).

Insulator, Bridge, Regional Center?

57

51. But see the defense of macrosecuritization in Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, “Macrosecuritisation and Security Constellations: Reconsidering Scale in Securitisation Theory,” Review of International Studies 35, no. 2 (2009): 253–76.

Chapter Three

Continuity and Changes in Turkish Foreign and Security Policy in the Twenty-first Century and the EU Selcen Öner Security concerns have dominated how Turkey views its place in the world and have influenced Turkish foreign policy since the foundation of the Republic. Turkey’s historical experiences, including the late Ottoman period and foundation process of the Republic of Turkey, explain the psychology of insecurity in Turkey. While the Turkish military has long claimed to be the guardian of this strategic vision of Turkish foreign and security policy, the Turkish Foreign Ministry has had a crucial role in providing continuity and consistency in its implementation.1 As Bilgin argues, the civilian-military bureaucratic elite has provided the traditional discourse on security in Turkey that has three main components: fear of abandonment, fear of loss of territory and geographical determinism.2 In the Cold War era, Turkey did not have its own security identity. Rather, it was perceived of as a natural extension of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Furthermore, because of the geostrategic location of Turkey, its problematic neighborhood, and the military’s traditionally strong influence on domestic politics, Turkey prioritized “hard power” and a “securitised Turkish foreign policy” during this time.3 The end of the Cold War affected Turkish foreign and security policy understandings, regarding both domestic and regional threats and opportunities, although foreign policy in the 1990s was still security-centered and confrontational. The National Security Policy Document that indicates perceived threats to national security, as well as priorities and policy guidelines, was modified twice to broaden Turkey’s security agenda in the 1990s.4 Firstly, in 1992, internal threats (particularly separatism and terrorism) were prioritized. Then, in

59

60

Selcen Öner

1997, the rise, specifically of radical Islam and Kurdish separatism, was mentioned as a major threat to the country’s security.5 As far as the external security environment was concerned, the post-Cold War era created various new opportunities as well as challenges for Turkey. On the one hand, the main goal of Turkish foreign policy was defined as adjusting to the new international foreign and security circumstances of the post-Cold War era. For instance, Greece and Syria were identified as the main external threats to Turkey’s security. On the other hand, Turkish foreign policy also became influenced by the process of “Europeanisation,”6 especially after 1999, when Turkey was given official candidate status by the European Union (EU) at the Helsinki Summit. At the same time, new “soft security” issues such as “economic and social security” have gradually entered the agenda of Turkish security conceptualization.7 Since the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi— AKP) came to power in 2002, a multidimensional approach to foreign and security policy has been prioritized. Briefly, the multidimensional aspect of the foreign policy has focused primarily on neighboring countries and regions, while also including various regions of the world that were not dealt with before, such as Africa and Latin America. Because one dimension of this new foreign policy approach concerned relations with the East, particularly the Middle East, concerns were raised about a so-called “axis shift” in Turkish foreign policy. This led to a debate as to whether Turkey is shifting its axis by turning away from the West and gradually turning towards the Middle East. This chapter reviews Turkey’s foreign policy and security concerns in the first decade of the twenty-first century, particularly during the period of AKP government, with a focus on the concept of security from a constructivist approach. The constructivist approach to security has considered security differently than the mainstream international relations theories by offering a middle ground between rationalism and reflectivism in security studies. 8 The Copenhagen School has developed the constructivist understanding of security, which argued that the individual and the society should be considered as “referent objects” of security.9 The social constructivist method of conceptualizing security known as “securitization” argues that state elites have a privileged position in defining security threats.10 As Wæver puts “something is a security problem when the elites declare it so.”11 In other words, issues become securitized when leaders begin to talk about them as “threats” against the referent object, meaning that such threats require emergency action and extraordinary measures. Securitization thus raises an issue above normal politics and into the realm of “panic politics” where additional executive powers are justified and the use of force is legitimate.12 Issues become securitized through “speech-acts” that construct an issue as a security problem or not. Wæver and Buzan define securitization as a successful “speech-act,” “through which an intersubjective understanding is constructed within a political community to treat something as an existential threat to a valued referent object and to enable a call for urgent and exceptional measures to deal with the threat.”13 The labeling of any issue as a security issue has to be

Continuity and Change

61

accepted by a significant audience.14 Therefore, power holders try to use the instrument of securitizing an issue to gain control over it.15 On the contrary, desecuritization may happen when a threat perception disappears or when the securitizing “speech-act” is no longer used or is limited. 16 Following the constructivist approach to security, this chapter first provides a historical examination of the adaptation process of Turkish foreign and security policies from the Cold War to the post-Cold War circumstances of the 1990s. The second part discusses developments in Turkish foreign policy during the AKP government. The last part analyzes the role of the EU in the changes in security discourses and Turkish foreign policy. Thus, this chapter examines the continuities as well as the changes in security discourses that are laying the ground for Turkey’s multidimensional foreign policy for the twenty-first century.

Turkish Foreign and Security Policy in the 1990s: Adapting to New Opportunities and Challenges This section examines Turkey’s foreign and security policy visions with reference to two different approaches, namely “Hobbesian assertivism” with a focus on “hard power” versus “Kantian optimism” with its focus on “soft power.” Traditionally, Turkey’s foreign and security policy was designed from a Hobbesian perspective, in which the military had a crucial role in defining security challenges and priorities, and national interests were defined according to strategic security needs of Turkey and its Cold War allies. A “win-lose approach” formed the core of foreign relations thinking,17 and Turkey had to follow a unidimensional foreign policy because of the primacy of security concerns. However, with the end of the Cold War, and with the increasing multiplicity of issues and actors in international relations, a paradigm shift occurred at a systemic level. This shift provided Turkey with new foreign policy opportunities, while also bringing new security challenges.18 This new security environment favored a Kantian approach to redefining security issues to replace the Hobbesian challenges and priorities that had previously been defined in military terms. During the Cold War the main concern of the state was the preservation of its territorial integrity. The resulting focus on a “hard power” centered security approach reinforced the power of the armed forces in Turkish politics and increased its role in framing security discourses and policies.19 Even in the late 1990s Turkey’s view of security was still determined by traditional, hard security issues including, Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)20 terrorism and external military threats.21 However, while the Kurdish issue was treated only as a security issue in the 1990s, by the late 1990s the seriousness of the problem, both within Turkey and at an international level, pushed the issue into the civilian sector as well.22 At the same time, Turkey’s security approach has had to be reconstructed because the country is aspiring to join the EU. The EU has subse-

62

Selcen Öner

quently become the main anchor, particularly since Helsinki through the Copenhagen political criteria. Turkey’s foreign policy has been transformed from a reactive foreign policy during the Cold War to a more proactive policy in the post-Cold War era.23 With the end of the Cold War, Turkey’s geostrategic importance has increased because of the growing need for stability in the neighboring regions where a power vacuum emerged with the end of the Cold War. 24 In the early 1990s, though “cautious and moderate,”25 Turkish foreign policy took a newly proactive stance in the neighbouring regions such as the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus. Besides providing assistance for political stability, Turkey prioritized establishing closer economic and cultural relations with the newly independent states in these regions.26 Conflicts in the neighborhood also contributed to Turkey’s increasing geostrategic importance in the post-Cold war era. In the Gulf War (1991), Turkey aspired to take on a security provider role.27 This opened a new period of activism and involvement in Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East as Turkey abandoned its long-standing non-interventionist policy in the region. In the meantime, Turkey’s close relations with Israel as a part of the “Turkey-US-Israel triangle”28 strengthened Turkey’s diplomatic leverage in the region.29 In doing so, Turkey tried to keep a balance between its traditional policy of noninterference and preference for status quo and adapting itself to the changes in the “new world order.”30 The emergence of the Turkic republics after the collapse of the Soviet Union provided a new area of influence for Turkey in the Caucasus and Central Asia. That Turkish policy-makers attributed the new course of relations to close cultural ties with these countries paved the way for a new “soft power” dominated foreign policy orientation.31 Thus, from a Kantian perspective, Turkey’s “soft power” in the region would not only provide access to Caspian energy, which Turkey needs for its own consumption, but would also strengthen Turkey’s strategic importance as a key link along the East–West energy corridor for the export of Caspian gas and oil to Western markets.32

Turkish Foreign and Security Policy during the AKP Era Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, in particular during AKP government (2002–2010), Turkey’s foreign and security policy has transformed itself from focusing on military security through relying on a balance of powerdriven “hard power” approach, to an increasingly “soft power” emphasis on civilian instruments, such as international law and diplomacy. Especially since 1999, as a consequence of the Europeanisation process, Turkey has adopted a more Kantian approach to reorienting its foreign and security policy with more concentration on “soft power.”33

Continuity and Change

63

As already mentioned, Europeanisation is one of the driving forces having a clear effect on transforming Turkish foreign and security policies from the dominance of “hard power” to soft one. During the AKP government, Turkey has replaced its “security-centered” foreign policy with the goal of “zero-problem policy” with its neighbors. Rather than a confrontational approach with military driven security policies, a “win-win discourse” has been adopted, particularly during the first period of AKP government (2002–2007). For instance, the AKP government has tried to change Turkey’s position regarding the long- standing Cyprus conflict, which had been long securitized vis-à-vis the perceived existential threat of Greek Cypriot dominance of the island.34 An important driving force behind this change was Turkey’s EU membership bid. During the first period of AKP government there was a stronger commitment to the EU process, while mediation and facilitation efforts in the Middle East were emphasized. During the second period of AKP government (2007– 2011), especially after the Davos affair in 2009, with the changes in international circumstances, increase in self-confidence of Turkey in political and economic terms and with the stalling of negotiations with the EU because of the Cyprus issue and blocking of the opening of several chapters by France, Turkish foreign policy has become more assertive and proactive, especially in the Middle East. Transformation of Turkish foreign and security policies, especially during the two-term AKP government, has been consistent with the “Strategic Depth” vision of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. Davutoğlu suggests that it is both a necessity and a responsibility in the current era for Turkey to pursue a proactive diplomacy to strengthen national security in the neighboring regions, including the Balkans, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Caspian basin, and the Middle East.35 The “Strategic Depth” doctrine is based on “geographical depth” and “historical depth.” According to Davutoğlu, one has to take “historical depth” into account in order to have a long-lasting strategic perspective because it provides links between the past, present, and future. One needs to consider “geographical depth” based on the dynamics of the relations between domestic, regional and global factors.36 Davutoğlu argues that “the unique combination of our history and geography brings with it a sense of responsibility. To contribute actively towards conflict resolution and international peace and security . . . is a call of duty arising from the depths of Turkey’s multidimensional history.”37 The AKP government has maintained Turkey’s traditional western orientation, but it has also added a strong Eurasian and Middle Eastern component. Moreover, the AKP government’s proactivism in diplomacy, what is termed “rhythmic diplomacy,” has paved the way for Turkey to take a more active role in international organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and establish bilateral relations in regions like Africa and Latin America.38 The “Strategic Depth” doctrine has thus led to an activist engagement in Turkey’s neighboring and overseas regions. To this end, it needs to develop a multidirectional foreign policy by using its geostrategic advantages. According to Davutoğlu, to keep abreast of the twenty-first century global security agenda,

64

Selcen Öner

Turkey, as a rising actor in the region, should contribute to regional peace, security, and prosperity, which would raise the country into an internationally proactive position.39 To sum up, since AKP took power, Turkish foreign policy has tried to establish a balance between freedom and security, it has had the goal of “zero problems with neighbors,” and adoption of multidimensional policies, underpinned by a new diplomatic discourse based on “firm flexibility” and “rhythmic diplomacy.”40 There are several policy implications of this shift in foreign and security policies based on the “Strategic Depth” doctrine adopted by the AKP government. The first was observed in relations between Turkey and the Middle East. Davutoğlu argues that Turkey’s Middle East policy should be based on four principles: providing common security for the whole region, giving priority to dialogue to solve crises, economic interdependence, and cultural coexistence and plurality.41 By looking more closely at the bilateral relations that Turkey established in the Middle East, we can see how these principles are realized. To start with, one of the first effects was the meetings of the “Extended Neighbouring Countries of Iraq,” initiated by Turkey in 2007. Based on the principle of common security and dialogue, this iniative had an influence on how to consider the Iraqi question, not only as a matter of U.S. politics in Iraq, but also as an international issue, promoting its management within the framework of the UN together with the involvement of regional powers.42 Driven by the principle of using dialogue to solve crises in the region, Turkey—unilaterally or together with partners—acted as a “mediator” and “facilitator” in negotiations and conflict management situations. For example, while no western or Middle Eastern country was willing to establish diplomatic contacts with Hamas, after its victory in the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, the AKP government welcomed them as the victor of the elections and recognized Hamas as the legitimate government. 43 Turkey also extended diplomatic efforts for peaceful resolution of the Syrian–Israeli and Israeli–Palestinian conflicts.44 Turkey has signed several economic and trade agreements with the Middle Eastern countries, particularly Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Turkey tries to attract foreign direct investments and gain access to new markets for Turkish exporters and contractors.45 An example of the realization of the principle of economic interpedendence and cultural coexistence could be the cooperation between Turkey and Syria. After a problematic period between Turkey and Syria in the 1990s, especially while PKK’s leader Öcalan was hidden by Syria, Turkey signed several bilateral agreements with Syria in the fields of trade, tourism, and security. The heads of states of both countries stated their intentions to develop an alliance against terrorism and their common vision as allies on how to ensure peace in the Middle East.46 The entry visas for the citizens of Syria and Turkey were cancelled in 2009, which has increased interactions between two countries, especially in terms of trade and tourism. Turkey–Iran bilateral relations carry particular importance in the region in terms of realization of the principle of economic interdependence, as well as regional security concerns. Firstly, Iran is Turkey’s main natural gas supplier

Continuity and Change

65

and an important trade partner. The two countries signed economic agreements on deliveries of Iranian gas to Europe through Turkey. Despite the objections of the United States, Turkey has tried to develop economic cooperation with Iran in the field of energy.47 Secondly, Turkey is seeking closer cooperation in its fight against PKK terror along the two countries’ shared border region. In 2004, Prime Minister Erdoğan visited Iran and signed a multidimensional cooperation agreement that included a joint commitment to security cooperation with Iran in the struggle against the PKK. One of the main continuing security concerns in the Middle East is the regional dimension of the PKK threat.48 Thirdly, concerning the Iranian nuclear program, Turkey shared international concerns about the development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iran, but on the other hand, it supported Iran’s right to develop a nuclear program in terms of energy. Turkey’s “no” vote at the UN Security Council in June 2010 underlined its opposition to sanctions against Iran,49 reflecting Turkey’s support for diplomatic measures to tackle this issue. In its extended neighborhood, the AKP government has undertaken various initiatives based on the principle of cultural plurality, such as the “Alliance of Civilizations” project, which was proposed by Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero during his speech at the UN General Assembly on September 21, 2004. Spain invited Turkey to co-sponsor the project and the Turkish government accepted. On July 14, 2005, it started within the framework of the UN.50 By participating in this project, Turkey has taken on a pioneering role in a global initiative.51 In short, these instances show that the AKP government has adopted a proactive and multidimensional foreign policy in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Changes in Security Discourse and Turkish Foreign Policy: The Role of the EU National security considerations have been a priority in Turkish foreign policy owing to its unique geographical position and historical background. The military has had a strong influence on domestic and foreign affairs in Turkey, and it has had the goal of protecting the country against threats emanating from inside or outside Turkey. Turkey has been in interaction with the EU since the foundation of the European Economic Community (EEC). After December 1999, when Turkey was given official candidate status at the Helsinki Summit, the impact of Europeanisation on Turkish foreign policy increased. Radaelli defines Europeanisation as a “processes of construction, diffusion and institutionalisation of formal and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms, styles, ways of doing things and shared beliefs and norms which are first defined and consolidated in the EU policy process and then incorporated in the logic of domestic discourse, political structures and public policies.”52

66

Selcen Öner

With the influence of the EU, Turkey has preferred diplomatic instruments, problem solving by dialogue, building good neighborly relations and reinforcing mutual trust.53 In terms of instruments, diplomacy and trade are increasingly prefered to coercion and pressure, with an emphasis on dialogue and “win-win” discourse. Turkey’s mediation efforts have increased, and in Aydın and Açıkmeşe’s terms Turkey has developed an increasing role as a “trustworthy regional stabilizer.”54 The EU’s security culture defines the process of desecuritization as one of its security strategies.55 In line with this, after the Helsinki Summit, Turkey started a process of desecuritization in various fields. Several issues were transferred from its security agenda to the political agenda. The EU accession process has accelerated this trend through the introduction of various reforms, especially in the fields of human rights and minority rights. 56 In 2001, Mesut Yılmaz—the deputy Prime Minister at the time—argued that EU reforms were being prevented by those who used “national security concerns” as their justification. He suggested that in order to implement the EU reforms, opening up Turkey’s security agenda for debate would constitute a first step towards overcoming the “national security syndrome.”57 In the post-September 11 era, there has been a tendency to shift away from democratization to securitization at the global level, especially under the effect of international terrorism and religious extremism. 58 In order to prevent terrorist activities, many countries have started to increase their security arrangements, which negatively affect individual civil and political freedoms. In contrast, while Turkey has continued its armed struggle against violent separatist PKK terrorist attacks, it increased individual freedoms to fulfil the Copenhagen political criteria. These included expanding the scope of individual freedoms by beginning to grant several rights to its citizens who have Kurdish origin, such as broadcasting in Kurdish and learning Kurdish through the opening of private institutions which teach Kurdish language.59 Through the Europeanisation process, the various aspects of the Kurdish issue have become differentiated in terms of terrorism on the one hand and a recognition of an ethnicity and identity issue on the other. All in all, one of the priorities for the AKP government has been to establish a balance between freedom and security, on which Turkey’s EU membership prospect has a positive influence.60 In Turkey, the bureaucratic-military elite’s mistrust of the political elite has often led them to securitize certain issues in order to maintain their power. 61 In the twenty-first century, due to the EU membership prospect, the role of traditional central players in Turkish foreign policy-making has decreased, particularly that of the Turkish armed forces.62 One of the most important institutions influencing Turkish foreign policy on issues with significant security dimensions, such as Cyprus and northern Iraq, has been the National Security Council (NSC).63 Through its recommendations, the NSC defines the threats and provides integrated domestic, foreign, and military policies about national security. However, especially since 1999, the EU has pushed Turkey to establish civilian control of the military through reforms in the composition and role of the NSC. In accordance with the demands of the EU, the

Continuity and Change

67

Turkish Parliament adopted a reform package in July 2003 that changed the NSC’s structure and decreased its influence in the decision-making system. The government also appointed a new civilian Secretary General in August 2004, made civilian members the majority in the NSC, and introduced new rules of conduct for its accountability and transparency.64 Decreasing the role of a country’s armed forces does not, however, automatically bring desecuritization. The recent slowing down of the momentum of integration with the EU and the increase in PKK attacks have shown the fragility of the desecuritization process in Turkey.65 Bilgin argues that, as long as the military remains the only actor concerning security issues, it will maintain its primary role in domestic debates. For this reason, civil society actors have to become more informed and start debates on what it means to be “secure” in Turkey. Similarly, as Bilgin argues, there is also a necessity for an informed citizenry, who are willing and able to question and challenge the state’s monopoly over security. Such activism in civil society appears to be most efficient when there is an international anchor, which is the EU in the case of Turkey.66 Especially non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have found an increasing voice in foreign policy issues.67 The EU has contributed to this process through giving funds to NGO-prepared projects, and through supporting the wider democratization process in Turkey.68 Europeanisation had positive impacts on Turkey’s managing its longstanding bilateral disputes, too. For instance, the decades-long hostility between Turkey and Greece only began to improve after the “earthquake diplomacy” conducted in 1999. There has been an increasing rapproachement, especially in the fields of tourism, civil society, and trade between the two countries.69 Since 2004, Turkey’s foreign policy regarding the Cyprus issue has taken a more accommodative position, abandoning the confrontationist one before the referendum on the island. That Turkish Cypriots supported a “yes” vote, in contrast to the Greek Cypriots’ “no” vote in the referendum on the Annan Plan, was a turning point in Turkey’s approach towards the Cyprus issue.70 However, the AKP government’s “zero-problem policy,” which desecuritized Greece in relation to Turkish foreign and security policies, has suffered somewhat from the stalemate resulting from the friction with Turkey caused by Greece’s support for Greek Cypriot’s EU membership. Although addressing the Armenian issue is not one of the criteria for EU membership, the EU has encouraged Turkey to develop closer relations and lift the embargo against Armenia, too. This has proved difficult because, on the one hand, Turkey has made solving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict a precondition for establishing relations with Armenia, while on the other hand, Armenia has argued that Turkey has to recognize the alleged “Armenian genocide” for the same reason.71 When Turkish President Gül visited Armenia on September 6, 2008, to attend the World Cup qualifying match between Armenia and Turkey in Yerevan, a new “football diplomacy” initiated a channel of communication.72 Turkey and Armenia signed an agreement at Zurich University to establish relations and reopen their borders on October 10, 2009. However, this agreement has been ratified yet by neither Turkey nor Armenia. Thus, the EU has had a

68

Selcen Öner

positive influence on increasing interactions between Turkey and Armenia, which may open new opportunities for further dialogue.

Conclusion In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Turkish foreign policy is no longer under the monopoly of the state.73 Foreign policy has become a more public theme, rather than a bureaucratic theme. The military has become less visible in public discourse on foreign policy in Turkey, while civil society and the general public have become more able to express their concerns on foreign policy issues. Issues such as Cyprus and Turkey’s contribution to the war in Iraq have provided opportunities for public debates, which provide evidence of a less statecentric and more inclusive period in foreign policy-making. Civil society has been influential, especially in the rapproachement between Greece and Turkey, 74 but also between Armenia and Turkey. For example, some members of the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) and the Arı Movement made visits to Armenia for the normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia.75 While the EU has influenced the desecuritization process of several issues in Turkey, this process may be negatively affected if there is any break in the membership negotiations with the EU or if there is an increase in terrorist attacks of PKK. Turkish foreign policy has become more proactive, primarily in neighboring regions, but also in different regions of the world in the first decade of the twenty-first century. While there has been increasing proactivism, particularly in the Middle East, the relations were strained in some periods with the West, particularly with the United States and the EU. The relations with the United States deteriorated a lot after the invasion of Iraq by the United States and Turkey’s refusal in 2003 at its National Assembly to let American troops pass through Turkish territory. Although there has been improvement of relations under the Obama administration since 2009, there are still differences in their attitudes about several international questions such as the Iranian nuclear issue. 76 Besides, when relations between Turkey and the EU lose momentum, it may lead to an increasing emphasis on a multidimensional approach in Turkish foreign policy. The regional and global policy implications of the “Strategic Depth” doctrine have raised concerns, as it might imply Turkey’s deeper involvement in the Middle East coupled with a certain level of detachment from the West. According to some scholars, the paradigmatic shift of axis from the West to East during the AKP government is a reflection of “Neo-Ottomanism.”77 At the beginning of the AKP government, there was a stronger emphasis on Europeanization, which was traced back to the reforms undertaken by the coalition government of 1999– 2002 to fulfill the Copenhagen criteria. There has been a loss of momentum in the Europeanization process of Turkey in post-2005 era. As Öniş and Yılmaz stated the degree to which “Euro-Asianism” has replaced Europeanization has been influenced by the state of relations between Turkey and the EU. 78 Overall,

Continuity and Change

69

Öniş and Yılmaz argue that Turkish foreign policy has maintained its western orientation, but in a more flexible way. 79 Soysal believes that western orientation of Turkish foreign policy is not only a consequence of longstanding collective defense engagements and foreign trade links with Europe and the United States, but also a natural outcome of cultural connections, especially with Western Europe since the first modernization efforts of the Ottoman state at the end of the eighteenth century.80 Recently, there have been debates about whether there are tensions between Turkey’s regional aspirations and its traditional alliance with the West. Certainly, it has become tougher for Turkey to balance old and new alliances as it assumes a bigger and proactive role in regional affairs. Turkey has established closer relations with Greece, but still there are unresolved historical disputes. With Armenia, relations are still in a stalemate, despite some initiatives from both sides to end the long hostility. Iran is a rival for regional influence, but on the nuclear issue Turkey prefers diplomacy to sanctions. On the other hand, close relations with Israel were damaged by clashes over the Gaza blockade. Although relations with Russia have been getting closer, the two countries are also rivals in terms of influence in the Caucasus over energy competition and Turkey’s “soft power” in the region.81 In short, there have been many continuties but also crucial changes in Turkish foreign policy in the first decade of the twenty-first century. One of the main continuities is the emphasis on “cooperative security.” Turkey prefers multilateral approaches rather than unilateral activities. In accordance with these conflict-mediation tools, multilateral diplomacy and economic interdependence are used as intruments in Turkish foreign policy.82 Several factors have influenced the changes in Turkish foreign policy, including the changes in international and regional systems, transformation in domestic politics, the role of the new foreign policy elite, in Turkey and Turkey’s interactions with the EU. 83 As a consequence, at least in the medium term, the shift in the western orientation of Turkish foreign policy is highly unlikely. Firstly, if Turkey will go on in its democratization process, secondly if it will maintain a balanced approach between its western institutional ties and proactivism its neighboring regions, and lastly if it will act consistently on the basis of universal values, Turkey can make important contributions to security and peace, especially in its neighboring regions and in the world in the twenty-first century.

Notes 1. Philip Robins, Suits and Uniforms: Turkish Foreign Policy since the Cold War (London: Hurst and Company, 2003), 380–81. 2. Pınar Bilgin, “Turkey’s Changing Security Discourses: The Challenge of Globalisation,” European Journal of Political Research 44, no. 1 (January 2005): 183. 3. Tarık Oğuzlu, “Soft Power in Turkish Foreign Policy,” Australian Journal of International Affairs 61, no. 1 (March 2007): 84–85.

70

Selcen Öner

4. The National Security Policy Document referred to as the “Red Book” is jointly prepared by the government, the intelligence units, the military and the National Security Council (NSC). It is a strategic road map that outlines domestic and foreign security threats against Turkey, Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, “Should the Red Booklet Be Released?” The Journal of Turkish Weekly, June 22, 2005, www.turkishweekly.net/print.asp?type=3&id= 1317 (accessed May 12, 2010). 5. Bilgin, “Turkey’s Changing Security Discourses,” 188. 6. In this article the concept of Europeanization is used, rather than “EU-ization” although the role of the EU in Turkish foreign and security policy is focused on. In addition to being an associate member of the European Economic Community (EEC) since 1963, Turkey has been part of the Council of Europe since 1949 and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) since 1975. All these organizations in Europe have been interconnected with each other and they all influence the nation-states in Europe. 7. Mustafa Aydın, “Securitization of History and Geography: Understanding of Security in Turkey,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 3, no. 2 (May 2003): 173– 80. 8. Nilüfer Karacasulu and Elif Uzgören, “Explaining Social Constructivist Contributions to Security Studies,” Perceptions 12 (Summer–Autumn 2007): 27–47. 9. Catherine Charrett, “A Critical Application of Securitization Theory: Overcoming the Normative Dilemma of Writing Security,” Barcelona: International Catalan Institute for Peace, December 2009. http://www20.gencat.cat/docs/icip/Continguts/Publicacions/ WorkingPapers/Arxius/WP7_ANG.pdf (accessed September 8, 2010). 10. Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework of Analysis (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1998): 32. 11. Ole Wæver, “Identity, Integration and Security: Solving the Sovereignty Puzzle in EU Studies,” Journal of International Affairs 48, no. 2 (Winter 1995): 54. 12. Ibid. 13. Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, Regions and Powers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 491. 14. Barry Buzan, “Rethinking Security after the Cold War,” Cooperation and Conflict 32, no. 1 (March 1997): 14–15. 15. Bilgin, “Turkey’s Changing Security Discourses,” 195. 16. Wæver, “Identity, Integration and Security,” 60. 17. For further detail see Füsun Türkmen, “Turkish-American Relations: A Challenging Transition,” Turkish Studies 10, no. 1 (March 2009): 109–29. 18. Ahmet Sözen, “A Paradigm Shift in Turkish Foreign Policy: Transition and Challenges,” Turkish Studies 11, no. 1 (March 2010): 103. 19. Ayşe Aslıhan Çelenk, “Democratization of the Natıonal Security Discourse and the Political Parties in Turkey,” Erciyes Üniversitesi İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi Dergisi no 33 (July–December 2009): 121. 20. The PKK, which has been fighting an armed struggle against the Turkish state, is listed as a terrorist organization by a number of states such as the United States, and by several international organizations such as the UN, NATO, and the EU. 21. Robins, Suits and Uniforms, 165. 22. Graham E. Fuller, The New Turkish Republic: Turkey as a Pivotal State in the Muslim World (Washington: Unites States Institute of Peace Press, 2008), 88. 23. Sabri Sayarı, “Turkish Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era: The Challenges of Multi-Regionalism,” Journal of International Affairs 54, no. 1 (Fall 2000): 172–74.

Continuity and Change

71

24. F. Stephen Larrabee, Turkish Foreign Policy in an Age of Uncertainty (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2002), 1. 25. Sayarı, “Turkish Foreign Policy,” 170–80. 26. Ahmet Sözen, “Changing Fundamental Principles of Turkish Foreign Policy Making” (paper presented at the Annual Conference of the International Studies Association in San Diego, March 22–25, 2006), 20–27. 27. Sayarı, “Turkish Foreign Policy,” 171. 28. Ziya Öniş and Şuhnaz Yılmaz, “Between Europeanization and Euro-Asianism: Foreign Policy Activism in Turkey during the AKP Era,” Turkish Studies 10, no. 1 (March 2009): 17. 29. Larrabee, Turkish Foreign Policy, 4. 30. Türkmen, “Turkish-American Relations,” 119. 31. Öniş and Yılmaz, “Between Europeanization,” 18. 32. Sayarı, “Turkish Foreign Policy,” 172–74. 33. Türkmen, “Turkish-American Relations,” 120. 34. Pınar Bilgin, “Making Turkey’s Transformation Possible: Claiming ‘Securityspeak’—not Desecuritization!” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 7, no. 4 (December 2007): 564. 35. Ahmet Davutoğlu, “Turkish Foreign Policy and the EU in 2010.” Turkish Policy Quarterly 8, no. 3 (Fall 2009): 12. 36. Ahmet Davutoğlu, “Turkish Foreign Policy Vision: An Assessment of 2007,” Insight Turkey 10, no. 1 (2008): 80. 37. Ibid., 12. 38. Turkey obtained observer status in the African Union in 2005. With the effect of its multidimensional proactiveness, Turkey gained 151 votes at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly on November 17, 2008, in favor of a non-permanent member seat at the Security Council for the 2009–2010 periods. See Bülent Aras, “Turkey’s Rise in the Greater Middle East: Peace-building in the Periphery,” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 11, no. 1 (March 2009): 29. 39. Davutoğlu, “Turkey’s Foreign Policy Vision,” 96. 40. Sözen, “A Paradigm Shift,” 8. 41. Davutoğlu, “Turkey’s Foreign Policy Vision,” 84–86. 42. Ibid. 43. Initially the recognition was made unilaterally, which reduced its effectiveness and legitimacy due to the lack of participation by other parties. After this unilateral experience, Turkey tried to align its position with the EU in its mediation efforts, such as during proximity talks between Syria and Israel (Öniş and Yılmaz, “Between Europeanization,” 9). Turkey’s unilateral policy concerning the invitation of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to the “Turkey–African Cooperation Summit” in Istanbul in 2008 was also criticized by the western world because of his alleged in crimes against humanity. See William Hale and Ergun Özbudun, Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism in Turkey: The Case of the AKP (London: Routledge 2010), 146–47. 44. Alexander Murinson, “The Strategic Depth Doctrine of Turkish Foreign Policy,” Middle Eastern Studies 42, no. 6 (November 2006): 953–56. 45. Şaban Kardaş, “Turkey: Redrawing the Middle East Map or Building Sandcastles?” Middle East Policy 17, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 122–23. 46. Murinson, “The Strategic Depth,” 953–56. 47. Larrabee, Turkish Foreign Policy, 8–9. 48. Kardaş, “Turkey: Redrawing the Middle East Map,” 118.

72

Selcen Öner

49. Delphine Strauss and David Gardner, “Turkey: The Sentinel Swivels,” July 20, 2010, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/50cdc5ea-942a-11df-fe00144feab49a,dwp__uuid=03d100 (accessed July 21, 2010), 52. 50. Öniş and Yılmaz, “Between Europeanization,” 11. 51. Ali Balcı and Nebi Miş, “Turkey’s Role in the Alliance of Civilizations: A New Perspective in Turkish Foreign Policy?” Turkish Studies 9, no. 3 (September 2008): 400. 52. Claudio M. Radaelli, “Europeanisation: Solution or Problem?” European Integration Online Papers 8, no. 16 (2004): 3. 53. Özlem Terzi, “What to Expect From a Europeanised Turkish Foreign Policy.” Istanbul University Research Fund Project “Turkish Foreign Policy in the Pre-accession Process to the European Union,” Project no 601/15122006. http://www.ikv.org. tr/images/upload/file/ozlemterzi-teblig.pdf (accessed May 24, 2009). 54. Mustafa Aydın and Sinem Açıkmeşe, “Europeanization through EU Conditionality: Understanding the New Era in Turkish Foreign Policy,” Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 9, no. 3 (December 2007): 274. 55. Tarık Oğuzlu and Mustafa Kibaroğlu, “Incompatibilities in Turkish and European Security Cultures Diminish Turkey’s Prospects for EU Membership,” Middle Eastern Studies 44, no. 6 (November 2008): 949. 56. Rabia Karakaya Polat, “The 2007 Parliamentary Elections in Turkey: Between Securitisation and Desecuritisation,” Parliamentary Affairs 62, no. 1 (2009): 134. 57. Bilgin, “Making Turkey’s Transformation,” 561. 58. Öniş and Yılmaz, “Between Europeanization,” 8. 59. Sözen, “A Paradigm Shift,” 114–15. 60. Sözen, “Changing Fundamental Principles,” 17. 61. Bülent Aras and Rabia Karakaya Polat, “From Conflict to Cooperation: Desecuritization of Turkey’s Relations with Syria and Iran,” Security Dialogue 39, no. 5 (October 2008): 498. 62. Terzi, “What to Expect,” 14. 63. Ibid., 12. See Ahmet Sözen, “A Paradigmatic Shift: New Principles of Turkish Foreign Policy Making” (paper presented at the Annual Conference of the International Studies Association in San Francisco, March 26–29, 2008). 64. Aydın and Açıkmeşe, “Europeanization through EU Conditionality,” 269. 65. Aras and Polat, “From Conflict to Cooperation,” 495–503. 66. Bilgin, “Making Turkey’s Transformation,” 568. 67. Terzi, “What to Expect,” 14. 68. Kemal Kirişçi, Turkey’s Foreign Policy in Turbulent Times, Chaillot Paper no. 92, ISS Paris (September 2006) cited in Terzi, “What to Expect,” 14. 69. Larrabee, Turkish Foreign Policy, 6. 70. Aydın and Açıkmeşe, “Europeanization through EU Conditionality,” 263–71. 71. Terzi, “What to Expect,” 18. 72. Öniş and Yılmaz, “Between Europeanization,” 18. 73. Hasan Kösebalaban, “The Crisis in Turkish-Israeli Relations: What is Its Strategic Significance?” Middle East Policy 17, no. 3 (Fall 2010): 49. 74. Aras and Polat, “From Conflict to Cooperation,” 500. 75. Interview with Arda Batu, Arı Movement, October 1, 2009; and withSabiha Şenyücel, TESEV, July 13, 2009. 76. Kardaş, “Turkey: Redrawing the Middle East Map,” 116. 77. Sözen, “A Paradigm Shift in Turkish Foreign Policy” (March 2010). 78. Öniş and Yılmaz, “Between Europeanization,” 16. 79. Ibid., 7–13.

Continuity and Change

73

80. Mümtaz Soysal, “The Future of Turkish Foreign Policy,” in The Future of Turkish Foreign Policy, ed. Lenore G. Martin and Dimitris Keridis (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004): 44; Strauss and Gardner, “Turkey: The Sentinel Swivels.” 81. Kardaş, “Turkey: Redrawing the Middle East Map,” 117. 82. Ibid., 119. 83. Ziya Öniş and Şuhnaz Yılmaz, “Turkey-EU-US Triangle in Perspective: Transformation or Continuity?” December 2004, http://home.ku.edu.tr/~zonis/ONIS-YILMAZTURKEY-EUUS%20TRIANGLE-REV%20DEC%202004.pdf (accessed September 8, 2009); Kardaş, “Turkey: Redrawing the Middle East Map,” 116–20.

PART II TURKEY AND INTERNAL SECURITY CHALLENGES IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Chapter Four

Beyond Military Tutelage? Turkish Military Politics and the AKP Government İsmet Akça and Evren Balta-Paker Political power relations and structures in Turkey have historically been marked by frequent recourse to, and the relative weight of, authoritarian modes of governance and forms of state in which the military as an institutional actor, and militarism as a technique of power, have occupied a central place. Various forms of domestic militarism have been a permanent feature of modern Turkish politics, from open military regimes to a national security state, from the use of (or the threat of using) organized physical coercion to the securitization of politics, from the enormous power of the military-industrial complex to ideologicalcultural forms of militarism. 1 Yet now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, this situation has slowly begun to change as Turkish politics has witnessed the emergence of dynamic power relations between the military and the civilian government. The Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP) government, which came to power in 2002, has carried out legal and institutional reforms to limit the role of the military in the political sphere, both as a requisite of the European Union (EU) accession process and also to consolidate its own political power. However, these changes are not without challenges. Hardliners within the military have perceived the AKP government as the successor to the political Islamist movement, seeing it as a threat to the secular foundations of the Turkish Republic. In order to weaken the incumbent government, military elites have undertaken several actions, ranging from coup attempts to the promotion of antiAKP public campaigns. However, having a narrow internal social base and hardly any international support, these attempts by the military have failed, and the balance of forces in Turkish civil–military relations has been gradually transformed in favor of the civilian government. 77

78

İsmet Akça and Evren Balta-Paker

This chapter argues that this transformation of civil–military relations in Turkey in the first decade of the twenty-first century is related to three factors: the presence of international conditionality, a decrease in the level of internal threats, and the emergence of a domestic political actor with the capacity and will to challenge the military establishment. Regarding international conditionality, civil–military relations have been transformed, not only in Turkey but globally, since the end of the Cold War. This trend has affected Turkey directly through the EU accession process. Following the Helsinki European Council of December 1999, the EU declared Turkey a candidate country for membership, thereby making a concrete commitment to Turkey. 2 However, the EU clearly stated that accession negotiations could not begin unless Turkey fulfilled certain political conditions.3 An issue long on Turkey’s political agenda, Turkey’s EU candidacy immediately stimulated political and legal reforms to comply with EU conditionality. Hence, the EU requirement that the role of the military be reduced in civilian politics was the initial trigger for reform in civil–military relations. However, international conditionality would not have created a similar effect if Turkey had continued to experience a significant level of internal threat as it had in the 1990s. As Desch argues, the strength of civilian control over the military is based on the degree of internal and external threat faced by a given society.4 According to him, civilian control is worst in times of low external threat and high internal threat. In fact, in the 1990s, Turkey continued to experience high levels of militarization in its domestic politics due to the conflict in the predominantly Kurdish southeast part of Turkey.5 The relative softening of the Kurdish issue after the capture of the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, in 1999, paved the way for the “normalization” of the Kurdish question and thus opened up a channel to challenge the interference of the military in domestic politics. Finally, and most importantly, it was the emergence of a political actor with the capacity and will to challenge the military establishment that enabled the transformation of civil–military relations. Since 2002, the AKP has won three successive elections with increasing electoral and popular support. This electoral support is exceptional, given that the post-1980 period was marked by a protracted crisis of political hegemony, where no single party was able to govern alone.6 The AKP’s capacity has been its ability not only to gain strong electoral support but also to develop an expansive hegemony. The AKP’s project has revitalized the neoliberal hegemony by absorbing Islamism into the International Monetary Fund and World Bank-oriented secular neoliberalism. In doing this, the AKP has reinvented the populist strategies of Turkey’s center-right and promoted a restricted political reformism within the limits of its authoritarian populism.7 The AKP’s authoritarian populism is crucial to understanding its political reformism, and also the limits to it. Populism is a mode of politics which constructs the main axis of political conflict as lying between a power bloc and a popular-national bloc. In populist political discourse, the power bloc refers to those alleged to control political power, being mainly composed of the state

Beyond Military Tutelage?

79

elites. Yet, different types of populist politics (for example right-wing or leftwing populisms) construct the power bloc and the popular-national bloc with different social contents since they interpellate different social classes and social groups into these two blocs.8 Populism can thus be either democratic or authoritarian, depending on whether it opens the political sphere to oppressed social classes and groups, and whether it politically empowers or weakens those groups.9 Turkish center-right parties, starting with the Democrat Party after 1946, generally adopted authoritarian populist politics. This authoritarian populist tradition has always constructed the main axis of political conflict as lying between an alleged Kemalist civilian and military bureaucratic power bloc and a supposed culturally and economically excluded “silent Muslim majority” national bloc, the latter including not only dominant classes, such as the bourgeoisie, but also the working class, the peasants, and the urban poor. This authoritarian populist reading of democracy has been based on the idea of representing an allegedly monolithic national will against the power bloc’s tutelage.10 Such a reading, adopted most recently by the AKP, has defined both the rationale of and the limits to center-right political reformism. On the one hand, as the military is seen as one of the main institutions guaranteeing the state elite’s tutelage over the economically and culturally excluded majority, the AKP’s hegemonic project has necessarily included coming to terms with the military elites. In addition, as the AKP is born out of the political Islamist movement, the top military elite of the period have not accepted the AKP as a legitimate political actor. This has pushed the AKP to be more reformist in civil–military relations compared to classical Turkish center-right parties. On the other hand, the AKP has reproduced “Kemalism’s distaste for ‘politicization,’”11 because it has reduced democratization to merely struggling against the state elite, relied on a monolithic and majoritarian understanding of national will, and resisted any kind of social opposition challenging the national will of the absolute majority. This authoritarian understanding of democracy has defined the inherent limits of the AKP’s civilianization agenda. In what follows, we will discuss this dynamic relationship between the military and the AKP government in the first decade of this century by dividing the epoch into three major periods, all of which signify a rupture in civil–military relations. The first period (2002–2005) is the period of reform, where the AKP undertook several reforms to transform civil–military relations to fulfill EU requirements. The second period (2005–2007) is the period of setback, where the AKP seemed to converge with the military on key political issues, although this period also witnessed a radicalization of the military’s discourse against the AKP government. The third period covers the time since the military’s ememorandum of April 27, 2007, characterized by a transformation in the balance of power between the government and the military. Especially after the July 2007 elections, when it won 46.6 percent of the vote and gained 62 percent of the parliamentary seats, the AKP’s electoral strength was applied to an open struggle as the party began to challenge the political power of the military directly through the trials of so-called Ergenekon suspects.

80

İsmet Akça and Evren Balta-Paker

The Period of Reform and Readjustment: 2002–2005 The AKP became the leading party in the November 3, 2002 elections by winning 34 percent of the vote and gaining 65 percent of the parliamentary seats.12 With this victory, the AKP became the first party since 1991 to govern without coalition partners. During the AKP’s first term, the EU became the main political lever for consolidating the AKP’s power in two ways. First, the AKP’s proEU discourse functioned as a hegemonic apparatus to get the consent of various social groups, many of which were otherwise suspicious of the party’s intentions.13 Second, it served to consolidate the AKP’s political power, both domestically and internationally, vis-à-vis Turkey’s military and secular establishment. The EU was a very important factor in the transformation of civil–military relations between 2002 and 2005. In order to comply with the EU’s Copenhagen criteria, the AKP pushed through major reforms, although another major motivation of the reform agenda in this period was to curtail the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) political prerogatives and tutelage. For example, the Seventh EU Harmonization Package (Law No. 4963), passed on August 7, 2003, made significant amendments to the composition, role, and functions of the National Security Council (NSC) and the Secretariat General. The NSC, which was previously the main institution of army influence, was transformed from being an executive decision-making board into an advisory board.14 Moreover, the internal composition of the NSC was radically altered: the majority of members were now to be civilians. Likewise, its secretariat, which had always been held by a highranking general, could now be a civilian, to be appointed by the president from a list of candidates selected by the prime minister.15 Even more importantly, the frequency of NSC meetings was decreased to once every two months instead of monthly. This amendment indirectly but effectively decreased the importance of the NSC in domestic policy-making.16 Moreover, with amendments to the laws on the Establishment of, and Broadcasting by, Radio and Television Corporations, Wireless Communication, and the Protection of Minors from Harmful Publications, the NSC’s prior authority to nominate one member to each competent board was ended.17 Besides the amendment to the structure and responsibilities of the NSC, the parliament annulled the provision in the Law on Higher Education, which allowed the General Staff to select one member of the Higher Education Council. At the same time, the softening of Turkey’s Kurdish problem, the so-called “normalization” process, provided the domestic conditions necessary for the EU reform process to occur. Turkey enjoyed a relatively violence-free period between 2002 and 2005, during which time the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) declared a ceasefire. “Normalization” further advanced when the state of emergency, which had been declared in 1987 in eight southeastern provinces and gradually expanded to cover thirteen, was lifted in the last remaining two provinces in November 2002, right after the AKP won the 2002 elections. From 2003 until 2005, the AKP pushed through some reforms related to the Kurdish problem, including abolition of the death penalty and a clampdown on the police use of torture, the release of political prisoners, greater freedom of expression and

Beyond Military Tutelage?

81

protection for the media, and some cultural, educational, and language rights— albeit very limited—for the Kurds.18 Although, the AKP was not able to create a Kurdish policy of substance during this period, it sought to find a pragmatic solution to the Kurdish problem. This solution would not include military confrontation, which would have given the army the opportunity to reassert itself further in Turkish politics. 19 While the AKP government was undertaking political reforms as a prerequisite of EU accession, the military, which had always defined itself as the forerunner of the westernization project, could not publicly oppose the EU reforms. This led some prominent scholars to evaluate the situation as another example of “concordance between politicians and officers in Turkey.”20 Others cheered the military’s extrication from politics as a consequence of Turkey’s bid to become a full member of the EU. 21 However, it was soon revealed that hardliners in the military defensively resisted the impacts of the EU reforms. They tried to regain the influence they had had prior to the EU-related democratization reforms of the AKP government through various means, among which were coup attempts. In March 2007, the Turkish weekly magazine Nokta published the diaries of the ex-commander of Naval Forces, Özden Örnek.22 By this date, the political and public agenda was already full of reports that between 2003 and 2004, military hardliners led by the then commanders of the gendarmerie, land, naval, and air forces, had prepared four coup attempts called Ayışığı (Moonlight), Yakamoz (Bioluminescence), Sarıkız (Blondie), and Eldiven (Glove). Later on, the diaries of the pro-republican journalist Mustafa Balbay and the statement given to the prosecutor’s office by the then Chief of General Staff,23 Hilmi Özkök, provided further evidence of the existence of the failed coup attempts. The hardliners behind the coup attempts perceived the AKP government as an open threat to the secular foundations of the Republic and were highly dissatisfied with the EU reform process that aimed to cut back the military’s political power. These coup attempts were unsuccessful for several reasons. First of all, hardliners in the military relied on the possibility of ratification of the Annan Plan in Cyprus as the most forceful justification for a coup. Thus, the rejection of the Annan Plan by the Greek Cypriot part of the island deprived them of necessary public support. Furthermore, there were also internal splits within the military. For example, according to the diaries of Özden Örnek, it seems that Gen. Hilmi Özkök was known for having a tough anti-coup stance. The coup planners were also well aware of the lack of both international and domestic support for a military coup.24 Unlike previous military coups in Turkish history, these coup attempts had neither the support of the Istanbul-based big bourgeoisie nor the market-dependent new middle classes, who were very sensitive to economic stability. Finally, again unlike previous coups in Turkey, there was no external support, especially from the United States, for a coup. In sum, the potential social basis of a possible coup was so narrow that it would have just mobilized the old urban middle classes and small parts of the new middle classes, whose main concern was their secularist, western lifestyles. Although there were signs that the AKP leaders were aware of the attempted coups against their government back in 2003 and 2004, trapped in power politics and being unable to

82

İsmet Akça and Evren Balta-Paker

penetrate state institutions, they simply kept a low profile against the military.25 This rather passive stance of the AKP government paved the way for a counter attack by the military in the following period, marked by the slowing down of the EU reform process and the remilitarization of the Kurdish question.

The Period of Retreat: 2005–2007 The EU reform process slowed down in the aftermath of the rejection of the proposed EU constitution in France (May 29, 2005) and the Netherlands (June 1, 2005), which was interpreted by Turkish public opinion and the government as signaling resistance to Turkey’s membership. Meanwhile, among European politicians, on both the left and right, the concept of “privileged partnership” began to gain support as an alternative to full membership for Turkey. In Germany, the Christian Democratic Union, the Christian Social Union, and the Left parties began openly to oppose full EU membership for Turkey. As a result of these developments, the EU lost its functionality as a hegemonic apparatus in internal Turkish politics. The AKP’s political stance also suffered “Eurofatigue” and adopted a more nationalist-conservative tone.26 With the EU euphoria disappearing, the military started to counterattack the AKP, which had tied its political future to EU membership. On April 20, 2005, Chief of General Staff Özkök gave a speech at the War Academy in Istanbul. His remarks covered every major issue of domestic and foreign policy, and focused especially on the Kurdish question and the EU. He claimed that the activities of the PKK had increased dramatically and accused the EU of acting as a mediator for the PKK. EU accession would be “no blessing,” he said, and it would not be “the end of the world” if Turkey did not become a member. 27 Although the EU had been the initial trigger for reforms in Turkey, these developments diminished its soft-power leverage. This development was coupled with further remilitarization of the Kurdish question, as PKK operations and the state’s “anti-terrorist” activities in southeast Anatolia regained momentum at the end of 2005 after a bomb attack in the far southeastern town of Şemdinli on November 9, 2005. When local people apprehended three alleged perpetrators of the bombing, two were identified as officers of an unofficial military organization, the Gendarmerie Intelligence and Fight against Terrorism (JİTEM), while the other was a PKK informant.28 One of the JİTEM officers was allegedly linked to then Commander of Land Forces (and later Chief of the General Staff) General Yaşar Büyükanıt, who had served in the area between 1997 and 2000.29 This incident became known as the Şemdinli case. Following the incident, major riots broke out all over Turkey’s widely Kurdish-populated southeast Anatolian region, in which a full investigation of the incident was demanded. The AKP government, in response, promised a full and transparent investigation. The Chief Prosecutor of the province of Van, Ferhat Sarıkaya, then drafted an indictment which also pointed to relations between the General Command of the Armed Forces and PKK informants. 30 The

Beyond Military Tutelage?

83

prosecutor accused General Büyükanıt of trying to influence the judicial process by defending one of the instigators of the bombing by saying he was “a good boy.”31 Sarıkaya also alleged that the bombing “was part of a series of similar attacks intended to provoke the security forces into a clampdown on the restive Kurdish region that would then unleash European criticism and jeopardize Turkey’s hopes of joining the EU.”32 The then Chief of the General Staff, General Özkök, reportedly contacted Prime Minister Erdoğan and asked for “necessary steps to be taken,” as members of the military had been accused.33 In response to the indictment, the Supreme Board of Prosecutors and Judges (Hakim ve Savcılar Yüksek Kurulu—HSYK) dismissed Sarıkaya from his post and barred him from the legal profession.34 Thus the AKP government, in the Şemdinli case, preferred to make a compromise with the military, and the government’s chance of political and juridical ways of dealing with illegal state practices in the domestic conflict of Southeast Anatolia was missed. Once the structural EU factor faded away and the military increasingly pressed the government to take a tougher stance on terrorism, the authoritarian face of the AKP’s authoritarian populism readily came to the fore. The AKP government adopted new anti-terror laws in June 2006, amending the Law on the Fight against Terrorism (Act No. 3713), which had been first passed in 1991. The amended Anti-Terror Law broadened not only the number and range of crimes which could be considered terrorist offences but also increased the penalties for such actions (such as insulting symbols of state sovereignty). The law also introduced legal restrictions on freedom of expression, the press, and the media, while reducing vital procedural safeguards for suspects of terrorist offences.35 As Patton argues, these amendments gave the military sufficient leverage to ensure that EU rights-based reforms were deemphasized and non-military solutions to the Kurdish problem were held at bay.36 Thus, the AKP’s strategy of establishing a partnership with the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) regarding the Kurdish question ended up by re-empowering the TAF. Between 2002 and 2005, the TAF relinquished much of its structured, constitutionally legitimized influence on civilian politics through EU-inspired reforms. However, setbacks to the EU project and increased militarization of the Kurdish question opened a new sphere of influence for the military. This sphere of influence was utilized mostly through informal means of leverage. 37 A shift in the military’s strategy that had already started with the so-called post-modern coup of February 28, 1997—“February 28 process”—deepened, starting in 2005.38 Accordingly, the military’s strategy shifted from a “state-centered strategy to establish hegemony to a more de-centered, individual-based and informal practice of power in society.”39 That is, if failed coups characterized the period between 2002 and 2005 with regard to the military sphere, informal mechanisms of power characterized the 2005-2007 period. The typical informal mechanism of the period included public pronouncements, usually given by members of the Turkish General Staff (TGS) at official, public occasions like commemorations, anniversaries, or graduations. On these occasions, military officials warned the government and as such pressured the public to take necessary action against them. 40 The second typical mechanism

84

İsmet Akça and Evren Balta-Paker

was pressuring the government through collaboration with civil society organizations that the military asked to be civil guardians of secularism. In Turkey, as Cizre acknowledges, “most secular NGO’s, which are considered in theory autonomous vis-à-vis the state, have, in reality, been defined, structured and mobilized as the secularist frontline partisans . . . against the anti-secular ‘enemies’ of the regime.”41 This new strategy peaked after the appointment of General Büyükanıt as Head of General Staff in July 2006. He further reinforced the selfproclaimed role of the Turkish military as the guardian of Turkish secularism. At around the same time, the public debate around the headscarf issue came to the fore. A coalition was formed against headscarves being allowed on university campuses, which included members of the judiciary, deans of major universities, the main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi—CHP), some civil society organizations, and the military. According to Saktanber and Çorbacıoğlu, this coalition presented “the Islamic headscarf as a sign of the hidden agenda of the AKP. The implication here is that the AKP will eventually replace the secular republican regime with an Islamic one.”42 Tension between the AKP government and the military further increased during the period of presidential elections in 2007. The AKP presented the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdullah Gül, as its presidential candidate. The TAF was opposed to his candidacy based on the fact that Gül’s wife wears a headscarf, as well as his own involvement with political Islam. During a press conference on April 12, 2007, General Büyükanıt stated that, “as a citizen and as a member of the armed forces, I hope someone who is loyal to the main principles of the republic and committed to the secular, unitary structure of the state—not just in words, but in essence—will be the president.”43 The presidential elections soon turned into a political crisis. In the spring of 2007, right before the start of the presidential election process, several rallies were organized by the Atatürkist Thought Association under the leadership of retired General Şener Eruygur44 in the largest cities of Turkey, such as Istanbul, Ankara, and İzmir. Millions of people—named the “Republic Protests”— gathered to defend “secularism,” chanting “Turkey is secular, and it will remain secular.”45 Sharing similar concerns, on March 14, 2008, the Chief Public Prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals formally asked the Constitutional Court to close the AKP on the basis of its anti-secular activities.46 As these rallies were taking place, the Turkish General Staff published a memorandum on its website, later called the “e-memorandum,” on April 27, 2007, warning of the danger to secularism. 47 The memorandum said the military was following with “concern” the debate over the secular system in the presidential election and would “openly display its position and attitude when it becomes necessary.” The text continued: “It is observed that some circles that have been carrying out endless efforts to disturb the fundamental values of the Republic of Turkey, especially secularism, have escalated their efforts recently. . . . An important portion of these activities was carried out with the permission and the knowledge of the administrative authorities, who were supposed to intervene and prevent such incidents, a fact which intensifies the gravity of the matter.” 48

Beyond Military Tutelage?

85

This time, however, the AKP took a tougher stance and immediately announced a counterstatement on April 28, stating that “in a democratic country governed by the rule of law, it is unimaginable for the General Staff, which is attached to the prime minister, to make a statement against the government. . . . It is regrettable that there were utterly wrong expressions about the relations between the government and the General Staff. All institutions of our state should be more sensitive and careful.”49 The AKP government, further, did not withdraw Abdullah Gül as its presidential candidate but decided to fight back by seeking popular support for his candidacy. Thus, general elections, which were originally planned to follow the 2007 presidential elections, were rescheduled for July 22, 2007.

A New Period of Civil–Military Relations? The 2007 Elections and Their Aftermath As expected, the general elections of 2007 were fought over secularism, the military–civilian divide and the presidential elections. By winning 46.6 percent of the votes, gaining 62 percent of the parliament and securing a majority of votes in 68 of Turkey’s 81 provinces, the AKP achieved a major victory in the elections. These elections made the AKP stronger than before, thereby transforming it into a powerful hegemonic party. With this newly gained strong popular support, the AKP re-nominated Abdullah Gül as its presidential candidate. On July 30, 2008, the Constitutional Court gave its verdict in the AKP’s closure trial. The court found that the AKP had shown signs of being “a focal point of anti-secular activities” but decided not to ban the party; however, it issued a “serious warning” and as a penalty decided to cut state funding of the party.50 Shortly after the verdict of the Constitutional Court, Gül was elected by the new parliament as the new President of Turkey on August 28, 2007. The success of the AKP in parliamentary and presidential elections signified a turning point, firstly in civil–military relations by eroding the power and credibility of the Turkish military, and secondly on the Kurdish question. Between 2002 and 2007, the AKP government had been able to penetrate—albeit limitedly—the judiciary and begin to exert a more extensive influence over the police. During the new period, this increasing control over the police and judiciary would become crucial as the AKP began to launch an offensive against the military based on the evidence of military-inspired plots to overthrow the government.

The Ergenekon Trials On October 20, 2008, following the uncovering of an arms dump and associated documents in an Istanbul house, the Ergenekon trial began. The trial initially involved eighty-six people, including some army generals, charged with

86

İsmet Akça and Evren Balta-Paker

involvement in the “Ergenekon coup” plot. The trial led to successive and still ongoing waves of arrests of academics, politicians, journalists, lawyers, businessmen, and high-ranking retired military officials. Among the charges leveled by the indictment are “membership of an armed terrorist group, aiding and abetting an armed terrorist organization, attempting to destroy the government of the Republic of Turkey or to block it from performing its duties, inciting people to rebel against the Republic of Turkey, being in possession of explosives, using them, and inciting others to commit these crimes, acquiring secret documents on national security.”51 The Ergenekon files revealed evidence about the three pillars of militarism in Turkey.52 The first pillar is the illegal state and military activities during the 1990s as part of the “low intensity warfare” against Kurdish political and armed movements. The second pillar is the so-called post-modern coup of February 28, 1997, which was staged against the political Islamist Welfare Party-led coalition government. The third pillar is the failed coup attempts in 2003 and 2004 against the AKP government. Despite the broad nature of the Ergenekon conspiracy, it seems that the chance for an all-encompassing coming to terms with militarism has been slipping away, for two main reasons. First, the Ergenekon trials have focused solely on the failed coup attempts, leaving aside other illegal deep state activities. For example, some ex-military officers who evidently took part in illegal practices during the Kurdish conflict in the 1990s have only been accused of being part of the Ergenekon terror organization that attempted to overthrow the AKP government. Second, the AKP government has preferred to use the trial to gain political leverage over the military. For example, the closed meetings between Prime Minister Erdoğan and Chief of General Staff Büyükanıt (on May 5, 2007), and between Erdoğan and the succeeding Chief of Staff İlker Başbuğ (first on February 7, 2009, then on March 23, 2010, with President Abdullah Gül), resulted in the release of leading high-ranking generals who had been accused of taking part in the coup attempts.53 As the Ergenekon trials have been going on, many new documents have emerged, revealing military plots such as the Kafes Eylem Planı (Cage Action Plan) (March 2009), İrtica ile Mücadele Eylem Planı (Action Plan to Fight Religious Fundamentalism) (dated April 2009), and claims about an assassination plan against a leading figure of the AKP, Bülent Arınç. In February 2010, forty people were arrested over an alleged 2003 plot (called “Balyoz”— Sledgehammer) to stir up chaos and destabilize the government to justify a military coup. Twenty military officers, including former heads of the air force and navy, have been formally charged with attempting to overthrow the government.54 The operation further increased the tension between the government and the armed forces. The Supreme Military Council meetings in August 2010 over a series of new appointments within the TAF further deepened the divide between the government and the military. Traditionally, governments do not interfere in promotions and transfers within the TAF. However, this time, the AKP government vetoed the promotions of eleven high-ranking generals due to their alleged connections to Sledgehammer coup plotters, and the military’s plans to appoint Gen.

Beyond Military Tutelage?

87

Hasan Iğsız to head the Land Forces were thwarted for the same reason. The AKP government thus gave out a strong message that it would no longer remain indifferent to the appointment or promotion of army officers, which signified the beginning of a new era where, while each institution has its own area of responsibility, the last word belongs to the elected government.55

Kurdish Opening? Whether civilians have the upper hand in civil–military relations will determine how the AKP government deals with the Kurdish problem and the party’s overall political future. Being well aware of this, the AKP government announced its so-called Kurdish opening (also called the “democratic overture”) at the end of 2009. Although details of this reform program were never made fully public, one of the most important steps for reconciliation announced was encouraging PKK members who were not involved in any armed attacks to come down from the mountains where PKK forces are based, and then be pardoned.56 The plan is also supposed to include the following elements: reinstitution of the former Kurdish names of districts and villages; eliminating the problems faced in the use of Kurdish first and last names; organizing social activities including sports, concerts, and exhibitions in the region; adopting social policies, including making the Kurdish language an elective course in schools; introducing new economic packages; implementing employment projects to reduce unemployment; amending the constitution to include a constitutional citizenship that emphasizes the cultural diversity of Turkey; strengthening local administrations; encouraging investments in the east and southeast; eliminating the obstacles to Kurdish broadcasting and private television; and amending the respective articles concerning political parties and election law that only allow campaigning in Turkish.57 The government’s amnesty approach, and thus the opening, however, backfired when thirty-four PKK members, who the Turkish government had allowed back into the country from Iraq, announced that they had no remorse for their past actions, and had returned to Turkey not to take advantage of the AKP’s amnesty, but rather to represent the PKK. These demonstrations created a nationalist mobilization in the rest of Turkey, and the AKP decided to discontinue its plan to bring more PKK members back to Turkey. 58 Military officials immediately criticized the policy, and insisted that the “terrorists” needed to disarm unconditionally and trust in the justice of the state. The problems the government experienced with its Kurdish opening are evidence of how the AKP’s authoritarian populism determined the way in which the party dealt with the Kurdish question. That is, as authoritarian populism conceives of itself as the only legitimate representative of the national will, equated to the electoral majority,59 it does not accept any other actor as an interlocutor. In the case of the Kurdish opening, this meant bypassing legal Kurdish political parties as legitimate partners in dialogue. The process of the so-called Kurdish opening witnessed not only the neglect of legal representatives of the

88

İsmet Akça and Evren Balta-Paker

Kurdish opposition movement but also involved several police operations against them. This exclusionary stance towards any oppositional actor resulted in both the renaming of the Kurdish opening as the Milli Birlik ve Kardeşlik Projesi (National Unity and Brotherhood Project) and in the opening of an avenue for remilitarization of the question by TAF and the PKK. This return to violence posed a new challenge for the AKP government. By delegating the solution of the Kurdish problem to the military, and without integrating the Kurds politically, the chances of Erdoğan’s government ruling without military inference in politics became slim.60

Conclusion Political power relations and structures in Turkey have historically been marked by forms of state in which the military as an institutional actor, and militarism as a technique of power, have occupied a central place. The frequent recourse to authoritarian modes of governance has been the major obstacle to the democratization process in Turkey. Yet now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, this situation has begun to change as the balance of forces in the civil–military relations has been gradually transformed in favor of the civilian government. How can one explain the failure of military intervention in Turkey’s political life during the eight years of AKP government? How can one further explain the change of balance between the civil–military relations in favor of the former? This chapter has argued that the transformation of civil–military relations in Turkey is related to three factors: the presence of international conditionality, a decrease in the level of internal threats, and the emergence of a domestic political actor with the capacity and will to challenge the military establishment. As a result of highly polarizing and exclusive tactics of the military elites, the AKP government was obliged to pursue a civilianization agenda in order to be able to remain in the political arena. Thus, the interaction between the civilian government and the military elites transformed the civilians into strategic democrats. In June 2011 elections, AKP won a decisive victory, taking 50 percent of the vote. The third electoral victory of the AKP was soon followed by another crisis. Three days before the Supreme Military Council meeting, on July 30, 2011, Turkey’s top military commanders, the Chief of Staff Gen. Işık Koşaner, together with the leaders of the navy, army, and air forces resigned from their posts. The decision to resign was made by the top generals when they failed to convince the AKP government to promote some of the military officers who have been charged in relation to Ergenekon trials. As of August 2011, about 250 military personnel are in jail, including 173 serving and 77 retired staff, in relation to Ergenekon trials. In a farewell message, Gen. Koşaner said it was impossible to continue in his job under this situation, as he could not defend the rights of men who had been detained. As a response, the AKP government accepted the resignations and appointed Gen. Necdet Özel as acting Chief of General Staff hours after the resignations. The resignation of top generals was without

Beyond Military Tutelage?

89

precedent in Turkish history. Yet, it had not caused a political crisis or a strong public response. Thus it was a symbolic turning point in the already transformed civil–military relations and marked the end of an era in Turkish politics.

Notes 1. Ümit Cizre Sakallıoğlu, “The Anatomy of the Turkish Military’s Political Autonomy,” Comparative Politics 29, no. 2 (January 1997): 151–66; Ahmet İnsel and Ali Bayramoğlu, eds., Bir Zümre, Bir Parti. Türkiye’de Ordu (İstanbul: Birikim Publications, 2004); Evren Balta Paker and İsmet Akça, eds., Türkiye’de Ordu, Devlet ve Güvenlik Siyaseti (İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Publications, 2010); Ümit Cizre, ed., Almanak Türkiye 2005: Güvenlik Sektörü ve Demokratik Gözetim (İstanbul: TESEV Publications, 2006); Ali Bayramoğlu and Ahmet İnsel, eds., Almanak Türkiye 2006–2008. Güvenlik Sektörü ve Demokratik Gözetim (İstanbul: TESEV Publications, 2009); Ayşe Gül Altınay, The Myth of the Military-Nation: Militarism, Gender and Education in Turkey (New York: Palgrave, 2004); İsmet Akça, Military-Economic Structure in Turkey: Present Situation, Problems, and Solutions (İstanbul: TESEV Publications, 2010). 2. Meltem Müftüler Baç, “Turkey’s Political Reforms and the Impact of the European Union,” South European Society and Politics 10, no. 1 (2009): 17–31. 3. Marcie J. Patton, “AKP Reform Fatigue in Turkey: What Has Happened to the EU Process?” Mediterranean Politics 12, no. 3 (2007): 340. 4. Ibid. 5. Tim Jacoby, “Semi-Authoritarian Incorporation and Autocratic Militarism in Turkey,” Development and Change 36, no. 4 (2005): 641–65. 6. Faruk Atay and Ceren Kalfa, “Neoliberalizmin Krizi ve AKP’nin Yükselişi,” in Küreselleşme, Kriz ve Türkiye’de Neoliberal Dönüşüm, ed. Nergis Mütevellioğlu and Sinan Sönmez (İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Publications, 2009), 303–33. 7. Cihan Tugal, Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009); Yüksel Taşkın, “AKP’s Move to ‘Conquer’ the Center-Right: Its Prospects and Possible Impacts on the Democratization Process,” Turkish Studies 9, no. 1 (March 2008): 53–72; Zeyneb Çağlıyan-İçener, “The Justice and Development Party’s Conception of ‘Conservative Democracy’: Invention or Reinterpretation,” Turkish Studies 10, no. 4 (December 2009): 595–612. 8. Ernesto Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism-FascismPopulism (London: NLB, 1977), 143–98. 9. Stuart Hall, “Popular-Democratic vs. Authoritarian Populism: Two Ways of ‘Taking Democracy Seriously,’” in Marxism and Democracy, ed. Alan Hunt (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1980), 157–85; Stuart Hall, “Authoritarian Populism: A Reply to Jessop et al.,” New Left Review 151 (May–June 1985): 115–24. 10. On Turkish right-wing populism see Nuray Mert, Merkez Sağın Kısa Tarihi (İstanbul: Selis Kitapları, 2007); İlkay Sunar, “Populism and Patronage: The Democrat Party and Its Legacy in Turkey,” in State, Society and Democracy in Turkey, ed. İlkay Sunar (İstanbul: Bahçeşehir University Publication, 2004), 121–31. 11. Menderes Çınar, “The Justice and Development Party and the Kemalist Establishment,” in Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party, ed. Ümit Cizre (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 109–29.

90

İsmet Akça and Evren Balta-Paker

12. The Republican People’s Party (CHP) came in second, winning 20 percent of the votes. Since no other political party crossed the 10 percent threshold required to gain a seat in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, the AKP won two-thirds of the seats in the parliament. 13. See Ali Resul Usul, “The Justice and Development Party and the European Union: From Euro-skepticism to Euro-enthusiasm and Euro-fatigue,” in Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party, ed. Ümit Cizre (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 175–97; Erhan Doğan, “The Historical and Discursive Roots of the Justice and Development Party’s EU Stance,” Turkish Studies 6, no. 3 (September 2005): 421–37. 14. For an evaluation of the role of the NSC and the possible effects of the EU amendments on this role, see Linda Michaud-Emin, “The Restructuring of the Military High Command in the Seventh Harmonization Package and its Ramifications for CivilMilitary Relations in Turkey,” Turkish Studies 8, no. 1 (2007): 25–42. 15. Ibid., 31. Consequently, in August 2004, a former Turkish ambassador to Greece, Mehmet Yiğit Alpogan, was appointed as the first civilian secretary general of the NSC. 16. Soner Çağaptay, “European Union Reforms Diminish the Role of the Turkish Military: Ankara Knocking on Brussels’ Door,” August 12, 2003, http://Dergiler.Ankara.Edu.Tr/Dergiler/44/674/8592.pdf (accessed June 28, 2010). 17. Şule Toktaş and Ümit Kurt, “The Impact of EU Reform Process on CivilMilitary Relations in Turkey,” SETA Policy Brief 26 (2008). 18. Political Reforms in Turkey (Ankara: Republic of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs Secretariat General for EU Affairs, 2007). 19. For more information on AKP’s Kurdish policy in this period, see Evren Balta Paker, “The Ceasefire This Time,” MERIP Online, August 31, 2005, http://www. merip.org/mero/mero083105.html (accessed November 21, 2010). 20. Metin Heper, “The Justice and Development Party Government and the Military in Turkey,” Turkish Studies 6, no. 2 (2005): 215–31. 21. Özkan Duman and Dimitris Tsarouhas, “‘Civilianization’ in Greece versus ‘Demilitarization’ in Turkey: A Comparative Study of Civil-Military Relations and the Impact of the European Union,” Armed Forces & Society 32, no. 4 (2006): 405; Aylin Güney and Petek Karatekelioğlu, “Turkey’s EU Candidacy and Civil-Military Relations: Challenges and Prospects,” Armed Forces & Society 31, no. 3 (2005): 439–62; Metin Heper, “The European Union, the Turkish Military and Democracy,” South European Society and Politics 10, no. 1 (2005): 33–44. 22. Nokta, March 29–April 4, 2007, 22. 23. For important excerpts from these sources see Ertuğrul Mavioğlu and Ahmet Şık, Kontrgerilla ve Ergenekon’u Anlama Kılavuzu. Kırk Katır Kırk Satır-I (İstanbul: İthaki, 2010). 24. Nokta, March 29–April 4, 2007, 24; Mavioğlu and Şık, Kontrgerilla ve Ergenekon’u Anlama Kılavuzu, 12–13, 282. 25. Kerem Öktem, “Return of the Turkish ‘State of Exception,’” MERIP, June 3, 2006, http://www.merip.org/mero/mero060306.html (accessed October 21, 2010); Belma Akçura, “Ergenekon Belgeleri 7 Yıl Kasada Saklandı,” Milliyet, August 7, 2008, http://www.milliyet.com.tr/Siyaset/HaberDetay.aspx?aType=HaberDetay&ArticleID=97 5630&Kategori=siyaset&Date=07.08.2008&b=Sispercent20Perdesi&ver=63 (accessed December 3, 2008).

Beyond Military Tutelage?

91

26. Usul, “The Justice and Development Party”; Ümit Cizre, “The Justice and Development Party and the Military: Recreating the Past after Reforming it?” in Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party, ed. Ümit Cizre (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 132–71. 27. Radikal, April 21, 2005. 28. Öktem, “Return of the Turkish ‘State of Exception.’” 29. Mehmet Kalyoncu, “The Assassination of Hrant Dink: Another Deadly Incident Destined to Remain Unsolved?” http://www.balkanalysis.com/2007/01/22/the-assassinati on-of-hrant-dink-another-deadly-incident-destined-to-remain-unsolved/ (accessed July 26, 2010). 30. See Öktem, “Return of the Turkish ‘State of Exception.’” The Şemdinli Investigation Commission of Parliament later revealed the existence of a secret protocol on Security, Public Order and Assistance Units (commonly called EMASYA). Signed by the General Staff and the Ministry of Interior in 1997, this protocol allows for military operations to be carried out for internal security matters under certain conditions without request from the civilian authorities. Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi, Hakkâri Merkez, Yüksekova Ve Şemdinli İlçelerinde Meydana Gelen Olayların Araştırılması Amacıyla Kurulan Meclis Araştırması Komisyonu Raporu 10 (Ankara, 2006), 322–24. 31. Patton, “AKP Reform Fatigue,” 354. 32. Cited in Serdar Kaya, “The Rise and Decline of the Turkish ‘Deep State’: The Ergenekon Case,” Insight Turkey 114 (2009): 105. 33. Öktem, “Return of the Turkish ‘State of Exception.’” 34. Ibid. 35. “Turkey’s Anti-Terror Laws: Threatening the Protection of Human Rights,” KHRP Briefing Paper, August 11, 2008, www.khrp.org/.../165-turkeys-anti-terror-lawsthreatening-the-protection-of-human-rights.html (accessed November 18, 2010). 36. Patton, “AKP Reform Fatigue,” 354. 37. Ümit Cizre, “Politics and Military in Turkey into the 21st Century,” EUI Working Papers RSC no. 2000/24 (European University Institute, 2000). 38. On February 28, 1997, the military-dominated National Security Council issued important decisions targeting the Refahyol coalition government, composed of the centerright True Path Party and the Islamist Welfare Party. Both the National Security Council decisions and the subsequent “February 28 process” aimed at impeding the supposed Islamization of Turkey. It brought about the collapse of the coalition government in June 1997. During the February 28 process, the military actively mobilized important segments of the population (business organizations, trade unions, NGOs, etc.) against the alleged threat of Islamism and got their active consent. Ümit Cizre and Menderes Çınar, “Turkey 2002: Kemalism, Islamism, and Politics in the Light of the February 28 Process,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 102, no. 23 (Spring/Summer 2003): 309–32; Cizre, “The Justice and Development Party,” 132–71. 39. Cizre, “The Justice and Development Party,” 148. 40. Toktaş and Kurt, “The Impact of EU Reform Process.” 41. Cizre, “The Justice and Development Party,” 148. 42. Ayşe Saktanber and Gül Çorbacıoğlu, “Veiling and Headscarf-Skepticism in Turkey,” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 154 (2008): 516. 43. Cited in Toktaş and Kurt, “The Impact of EU Reform Process,” 5. 44. Eruygur was later to be tried for his alleged participation in the 2003 coups against the AKP government.

92

İsmet Akça and Evren Balta-Paker

45. The first rally took place in Ankara on April 14 just two days before the start of the presidential election process. The second one took place in Istanbul on April 29, 2008. The third and fourth rallies took place consecutively in Manisa and Çanakkale on May 5, 2008. The fifth rally took place in İzmir on May 13, 2008. 46. Such as a proposed amendment to the constitution to lift the headscarf ban. 47. Toktaş and Kurt, “The Impact of EU Reform Process,” 5. 48. Milliyet, April 28, 2007. 49. Radikal, April 29, 2007. 50. Şebnem Gümüşcü and Deniz Sert, “The Power of the Devout Bourgeoisie: The Case of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey,” Middle Eastern Studies 45, no. 6 (2009): 953–68. 51. Bill Park, “Turkey’s Deep State,” The RUSI Journal 153, no. 5 (2008): 54–59. 52. For a very useful source on “Ergenekon,” see Mavioğlu and Şık, Kontrgerilla ve Ergenekon’u Anlama Kılavuzu. 53. Ibid. 54. “Top Turkish officers charged over ‘coup plot,’” BBC News, January 25, 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8531486.stm (accessed November 15, 2010). 55. “Civil-military standoff in Turkey resolved, for now,” Hürriyet, August 9, 2010, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=standoff-resolved-for-now-civil-militaryties-still-at-odds-2010-08-09 (accessed October 18, 2010). 56. Göksel Bozkurt, “Details of Kurdish Opening Get Clearer,” Hürriyet Daily News, July 31, 2009, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=details-of-kurdishopening-gets-clear-2009-07-31 (accessed November 15, 2010). 57. Ibid. 58. Soner Çağaptay, “‘Kurdish Opening’ Closed Shut,” Foreign Policy, October 28, 2009, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/28/kurdish_opening_closed_shut? page=0,1 (accessed June 28, 2010). 59. Mert, Merkez Sağın Kısa Tarihi. 60. Aliza Marcus, “Troubles in Turkey’s Backyard,” Foreign Policy, July 9, 2010, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/07/09/troubles_in_turkey_s_backyard?obref =obinsite (accessed July 9, 2010).

Chapter Five

Islamization: A Challenge to Turkey’s Secular Democracy? Selin Özoğuz-Bolgi At the start of the twenty-first century, the political agenda in Turkey has become heavily influenced by two conflicting views that classify and characterize the country. On the one hand, there has been a long-standing understanding, starting from the establishment of the Turkish Republic, that Turkey is a secular state. On the other hand, since the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP) came into power, a fear has developed among some that Turkey is shifting towards becoming an Islamic state. The possibility of a shift to Islamization has led to a questioning, both within and outside the country, of Turkey’s attachment to secular democracy. The roots of these doubts stretch back to the early Republican reforms in that, although Turkey was secularized at an official level, religion remained a strong force at a popular level. After the 1950s, various political parties implemented policies that encouraged a religious revival, which the Republican political elite contested in the belief that secularism was under threat. These tensions led to the polarization of society that continues to this day. This chapter will consider political Islam as a threat to secular democracy in Turkey based upon two important factors: first, the Turkish understanding of secularism, and second, the evolution of the AKP. Historically, Turkey developed a very particular relationship with Islam through its experience of secularization that has resulted in a specific perception of and political mobilization of the religion. In order to understand Turkish politics in the twenty-first century it is necessary to analyze how the AKP evolved as a result of the rise of politically Islamist parties in general, and the extent to which, if any, it has diverged from its predecessors. Based on the discussion of these two issues, the chapter will conclude by exploring whether the confrontation between secularism and political Islam has created a security threat for Turkey.

93

94

Selin Özoğuz-Bolgi

The argument of the chapter is that, considering the development and evolution of both the concept of secularism and the AKP’s own political direction, political Islam does not create a security threat for Turkey at present. Although frequently contested, the concept of secularism has been embedded in the Turkish social and political system for a long time. Both the preferences of the Turkish electorate, and the evolution of the AKP itself towards a more center-right de-radicalized form of political Islamism, suggest that any security threat to Turkish secular democracy has receded considerably.

A Synopsis of Turkey’s Secularization Process For the Ottoman Empire, the nineteenth century was a period of modernization as European Enlightenment ideas became an example of the “modern.” Throughout its history, the Ottoman Empire had maintained strong relations with France, and so the French Enlightenment particularly influenced the Empire’s final period, including the writing of the constitution of the Turkish Republic. The secularization process itself actually began long before the formal establishment of the Republic, and the pre-reform Ottoman context can certainly not be described as theocratic; while officially an Islamic state, the Ottomans operated a secular administration. Furthermore, Islamic law (sharia) was only applied to family law and contract law because the administration of the Ottoman Empire required a wider scope of legislation. Regarding such legislation, the ulema took a prominent role, verifying that such secular legislation conformed to Islamic precepts.1 The ulema’s function was thus to provide religious legitimacy to the secular policies of the state, meaning that Islam was a cultural and political bridge between the state elite and the public at that time. During the nineteenth century, this situation sparked a modernization movement. The main reason for this reformation was that the Ottoman Empire was showing signs of weakness in relation to Europe. To respond, the Ottoman rulers decided to acquire technical knowledge and adopt the institutions necessary for a more effective political system from Europe. They called these reforms Tanzimat. State institutions were modernized on the European model, and new codes of law and new types of courts were introduced. However, after several Ottoman military defeats, the Empire had to abandon territory in the Balkans, which led to a significant flow of Muslim refugees into Turkey, creating in turn the need to form a new identity based on Islam. Hence, the state began to use Islam as social cement, and the earlier modernization process faced an ideological reaction.2 After the “Young Turk” revolution of 1908, both the modernizing constitution and parliament were re-established. These changes paved the way for the establishment of the Turkish Republic, which marked the beginning of a series of changes in laws and public rules. In particular, the new establishment, under the direction of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, consigned religion to the private sphere, banning all religious influences on the state and public life in general. For exam-

Islamization: A Challenge to Turkey’s Secular Democracy?

95

ple, the Kemalist establishment banned religious symbols from public life, abolished religious organizations or placed them under the state’s control, and outlawed popular mystical orders. They changed the calendar from the Islamic to the Gregorian, and the alphabet from Arabic to Latin. Men and women were discouraged from wearing traditional dress. The last remaining Islamic laws, concerning family law, were replaced by new secular laws. 3 These new Republican laws were all adapted from the legal systems of Western Europe, specifically those of France, Germany, and Switzerland. From the beginning of the founding of the Turkish Republic, Atatürk’s ambition was to modernize Turkey, which meant bringing the nation closer to Western European culture. The Kemalist ideology was not anti-Islam, but considered that religion should be natural and rational, in which case there was no need for mediation between the individual and God. Accordingly, Ottoman religious institutions like the caliphate and the ulema were regarded as obstacles to the goals of a modern nation state, so Atatürk abolished the former and put the latter under state control through the Directorate General of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı—DGRA). Movements operating outside the state’s control, such as Sufi orders, were prohibited, although various religious orders continued to operate underground. Constitutionally, Turkey became a secular nation-state. Thus, the building of a nation-state and the choice of secularism was launched by the new Kemalist establishment.

Evaluation of Implementing Secularism in Turkey The main criticism in Turkey of the way secularism occurred is that it was rather imposed from above instead of coming from, desires of the public. The main problem therefore is that the reforms lack the necessary cultural foundations. Tibi suggests that if secularizing social change is too rapid for the people to accommodate, then it is more likely that they will hold on to religion in order to maintain their identity in the face of change. 4 In Republican Turkey, the emphasis on imposing a new secularist nationalist identity violated various traditional values, especially those related to Islam.5 This reflects a general difficulty with such reformist efforts. As Esposito puts it, “a critical problem that all religious reformers of whatever faith face is the relationship between their reformist thought and what for many is the authority of tradition, the need to demonstrate some kind of continuity between tradition and change.” 6 The secularization process received popular support, especially in the urban areas, but soon after it was recognized that the reality of Islamic identity could not be ignored. The second factor that critics argue underlies re-Islamization is the particular form that secularism has taken in Turkey: the so-called state-Islam. Turkish secularism is termed “laicism” because it was adapted from the French model.7 This is significant because “secularism” and “laicism” are actually used for similar but yet again for slightly different concepts. According to Davison, this was a deliberate choice of terminology in Turkey because of the relationship between the state and religion: “In one sense ‘secular’ political arrangements

96

Selin Özoğuz-Bolgi

that delineate separate spheres for religion and politics by separating the two may do so precisely on Christian grounds of maintaining a distance between affairs of the world (state/politics) and affairs of the tradition.” 8 The aim of differentiating between both spheres is to provide a high measure of autonomy, not just for the state and politics, but for religion, too. 9 Laicism presents itself as public, neutral, and value-free, and assumes that religion is precisely the opposite. Pursuant to this concept, the public sphere is the domain of reason, objectivity, deliberation, and justice; hence laicism is against religion stepping into the public sphere. In laicism, religion should have no place of power or authority in modern societies, and the relationship between religion and politics is made clear in such societies, regardless of their preexisting culture, history, or civilization.10 In Turkey, laicism has often appeared to be an anti-religious and anticlerical doctrine, seeking to control religion while abolishing it from the public sphere.11 It certainly gives a forceful role to the state to control religion and watch closely for religious infringements in the public space. Laicism as perceived in Turkey takes a skeptical view of any convergence of religion and politics beyond the strict boundaries marked out by the law. 12 In Turkey the perception of laicism is that any association of religion with politics may affect the democracy in Turkey negatively or that it may even possibly be a threat to national identity. Therefore the state is heavily involved in religious matters and has the role of protecting the democratic state system. In addition to the concept of state-Islam, this involvement of the state in the religious sphere is often described as a “control-oriented” secularism.13 In Turkey the state exercises strong control over religion. Even more, as Davison pursues, the state in Turkey shapes the content of belief and norm. 14 He further suggests that although the Republican elite demoted Islam from its previous place of constitutional and legal significance, they did not remove religion from the state.15 Furthermore, the conception of secularism as a separation of religion and state was never the understanding in Turkey. Especially in the formative years of the Republic, the Kemalist elite regarded religion as an important force with the potential to challenge the state. 16 Mardin’s “center-periphery” argument offers a similar explanation: according to him, the establishment of secularism was a means for the “center” (the state establishment) to control the “periphery.”17 The so-called state-Islam emphasizes social conservatism and nationalism in combination with a moderate understanding of Islam. Thus, ironically, Turkey’s secular system now has the religious concept of state-Islam embedded within it.18 The existence of the DGRA and its subordination to the state evidenced the “control-oriented” secularist account of the place of religion in modern Turkey.19 In particular, the DGRA was delegated the power to protect Turkish national identity. The founding of the DGRA was authorized to oversee all issues regarding Islamic faith, with its head to be appointed according to the recommendation of the prime minister. To prevent any undesirable Islamic influence that would shift people away from the correct and appropriate version of Sunni Islam, the DGRA promoted the state-Islam through the mosques, while the Ministry of

Islamization: A Challenge to Turkey’s Secular Democracy?

97

Education created appropriate textbooks for the compulsory courses on religion that aimed to do the same task.20 Consequently, “laicism” as practiced in Turkey is a form where the concept is perceived as highly controlling of religious activities, especially in the political sphere.

Discussion of Political Islam in Turkey and the AKP After World War II, the modernization project which was started by the Kemalist establishment had a slight shift due to the global changes. These changes had an effect on domestic politics in Turkey, and they were mainly created by U.S. pressure, which wanted to prevent the communist movement from expanding itself. Nonetheless, the fear of communism allowed the Islamic movements to represent themselves in the political arena, which created for the first time a multiparty system in Turkey. The leader of the Islamic parties, Necmettin Erbakan, later played a central role in the political Islamic movement, which originated from the National Outlook Movement (Milli Görüş—NOM). This makes it possible to make some generalizations about these parties and their political stances, since the same political actors were involved. For example, they all made a clear stand against the EU and NATO and advocated an Islamic common market. Such discourse and policies estranged the secular political elite, the military, and the public from the political Islamist parties.21 Erbakan’s party was closed down during the 1980 military coup, on the grounds that the party had an Islamic discourse which was against the modern and secular democratic system in Turkey. As a consequence, Erbakan and others were banned from politics. However, after 1987, expoliticians were finally allowed to act in the political arena, and Erbakan was the leader of the party again, which was called this time the Welfare Party. This party preserved the anti-Kemalist stand, like the ones before. His party once more gained parliamentary seats in the 1994 and 1995 general elections, drawing its support mainly from small traders and Anatolian entrepreneurs. The political interests of the party’s supporters ranged widely, from social and economic reform to replacing the secular state system with an Islamic one.22 In 1997, the National Security Council (NSC) wanted Erbakan to accept eighteen recommendations supporting the secular state system in Turkey.23 The NSC also labeled “political Islam” as being one of Turkey’s most important security concerns. Unable to resist the pressure coming especially from the military, but also from governmental, judicial, and nongovernmental organizations, the Welfare Party resigned from the government in June 1997. This incident is commonly referred to as the 1997 “soft coup.” In 1998, the Turkish Constitutional Court banned the party and also Erbakan from politics for five years. The Welfare Party was quickly succeeded by the Virtue Party. Although this Party was eager to distance itself from the Welfare Party, most of the parliamentary seats were held by ex-Welfare deputies.24 The Virtue Party was not very successful on an electoral basis, and was in any case, like its predecessor, banned in

98

Selin Özoğuz-Bolgi

2001 for the same reasons as before. The party’s supporters quickly re-entered the political system as the Felicity Party, with a similarly strong religious agenda. However, this time a division emerged within the party, with a moderate wing believing that less emphasis on religion would enhance their chances in future elections. This group, emerging from the same roots as the NOM, formed the AKP in 2001, which presented itself as a conservative party with respect to Islamic values but without an explicitly religious agenda.25 In the 2002 elections, the party won 34.3 percent of the popular vote and increased this in the 2007 elections to 47 percent. When AKP first came to power, party officials declared that they had responded to a call from their grassroots asking for better governance, higher standards of democracy, and respect for rights of every sort, and quickly started following the steps towards EU integration. 26

The AKP and Transformation of Political Islam into Conservative Democracy The AKP’s own definition for their party does not include being Islamist by any means. The party prefers to be called “conservative democrat,” which actually creates correspondence to other conservative democrat parties in countries with established secular democracies. However, there are various speculations from scholars in the area on the stand and also the choice of terminology of the party. As for Cizre, the ambiguity over the Islamic identity of the AKP and their relationship with Islam is purposeful.27 Kösebalaban, for example, argues that Islam still continues to be a part of the AKP’s identity.28 Duran agrees, claiming that the change in the party’s political discourse does not mean that all ties with its Islamic roots have been cut. Rather, the party still keeps its affinity with “Islamist ontology.” He argues, Despite its vagueness, the term conservative democracy serves the intentions of the JDP (AKP) leadership very well. It gives an identity to the party without disturbing the international community and the secularist establishment in Turkey while at the same time assuring its Islamist electorate that Islam continues to play an important role in the party’s identity and policies.29

According to Tibi, the fact that the AKP has offered no explanation of the distinction between Islamism and Islamic conservatism makes its reformist claims vague. Thus, the AKP’s participation in legitimate democratic institutions is a matter of convenience rather than representing a commitment to democraticsecular values.30 Despite the claims of the AKP accepting secularism, suspicions remained, as with the AKP there is the risk of further Islamization of Turkey towards the East instead of the West. The concerns about the AKP’s intentions arise essentially from the party’s policies regarding the role of Islam in society. The AKP claims that its aim is to solve the problems of Islamic identity through reaching a consensus with the secular establishment. While it says it has accepted secularism as stated in the constitution, the party is critical of the current practice of

Islamization: A Challenge to Turkey’s Secular Democracy?

99

secularism in Turkey because, according to Erdoğan, the constitution discriminates against religious people and inhibits religious freedoms. 31 Another example that raises concerns is that in 2004, AKP tried to introduce a law to criminalize adultery, with penalties of six to twelve months imprisonment, but attempted policy has stayed in many peoples’ minds as evidence of a hidden agenda of Islamization.32 Such conduct of the AKP puts emphasis on the thought that the contention of the party being committed to secularism is for being able to stay in the Turkish political system without the fear of being closed down. Be it for convenience or for genuine commitment to democracy and secularism, there are certain factors that helped the AKP transform political Islam as a general code for right-wing Turks into a conservative democratic one. These include EU process, international context, and the domestic dynamics in Turkey. Earlier Islamic parties in Turkey had focused their foreign policies on the Middle East and Asia as a reaction against the secularist establishment and their aspirations towards the western countries. However, in the last decade there has been a reversal in this discourse since the AKP came to power. After the soft coup of 1997, Islamist groups began to view the EU accession process as a source of protection against the authority of the Kemalist state, since the EU was pushing for a new social contract for Turkey. In this context, to get EU support, the politically Islamist groups had to make changes in their ideologies. Hence, the AKP included in its political discourse global values of human rights, democracy, and pluralism. Thus, the domestic and international circumstances led the AKP to introduce a more democratic and liberal reading of Islam. The EU membership process was conducive to the AKP’s selfidentification with conservative democracy. As already mentioned, by stating that the party’s ideology is a form of conservative democracy, Erdoğan wants to create a parallel with Christian democrat parties that are accepted within the system of the EU.33 The fact that the military and the judiciary system are against the presence of politically Islamist parties has made the EU accession process an important policy area for the AKP. They regard it as providing leverage in their struggle with those institutions. Realizing this, AKP started to support the Copenhagen criteria and started to employ related concepts, such as democracy, freedom and rights, in their political discourse. Coincidentally, at an international level too, Islamic discourse has shifted toward invoking universal values like democracy, human rights and the rule of law, which coincided with the AKP’s own transformation attempts, and hence supported their transformation.34 Thus the interesting, if not ironic, outcome in Turkey’s case is that pressures from the political electoral system have led the AKP to promote the kind of democratic and pluralistic discourse that they are accused of wanting to undermine.35 Transformation from politically Islamist to a conservative democracy discourse of the AKP was also made possible with the newly emerging middle class of the more rural regions that have a rather more traditional outlook. The party’s pragmatism in insisting on a conservative democratic rhetoric instead of the old Islamic discourse allowed them to mobilize the already rising Anatolian bourgeoisie that held this more traditional outlook. 36 Economic liberalization

100

Selin Özoğuz-Bolgi

that was implemented in recent decades stimulated specifically the emergence of this new Anatolian middle class, which consists of the parts that did not identify themselves with the Kemalist understanding of secularism. 37 Religious symbolism has always been a means to attract votes in the Anatolian periphery. 38 The Islamic parties, based largely on regional and local organizations, have thus been well-placed to represent this newly emerging middle class,39 the new “counterelite,” as Jung calls it. The attraction of the AKP to these voters was mostly because the AKP “express[es] the aspirations of new counter-elite that attacks the vested interests of Turkey’s westernized elite.”40 Another factor that contributed to the transformation of political Islam discourse during the AKP era is that it is not a monolithic party. There is a segment that is clearly Islamist and follows in the footsteps of the NOM, but there is another segment that, while it also originates from the NOM, wants to go further with more liberal policies. Finally, there is a third segment that has joined the ranks of the AKP from center-right parties. Besides that, the party is an allembracing one: “the leadership set a profile loyal to the central values of the Republic as well as those of Western democracy. For their part, the founders of the party aimed at a broader-based support than they would have had if they had presented the party as the descendant of the NOM.” 41 Given these complexities, it was inevitable that the party had to abandon its old discourses of the former politically Islamist parties.

Political Islam: A Threat to Security in Turkey? Political Islam and its compatibility with democracy are widely debated. The call for questioning compatibility of these two concepts lies in the common belief, especially in the West, that Islam by its disposition requires a theocratic state. The starting point of the questioning of Islam’s compatibility with secular democracy rests on the contentions of Huntington. 42 According to Huntington, the conflicts of the future will be related to Islam and the West. This hypothesis characterizes Muslims as a single group that is mostly antagonistic to the West. 43 Democracy evidently requires openness, pluralism, and equality, which appears to be possible with the acceptance of secularism. Secularism on the other hand is thought to be a European achievement, as it is perceived as coming from Christianity, in particular from Protestantism. It therefore renders anything that does not come from the same root as incompatible with it. This leads to the assumption that countries with an Islamic background, from a different cultural and religious tradition, cannot be secular or democratic in the proper sense. This is the most important reason why Islam in general is considered from this perspective as incompatible with secular democracy. One implication of this assumption is that any attempt at bringing Islam into politics represents a threat to the security of secularism and democracy. Before discussing the situation in Turkey it is vital to define the concept of “political Islam” firstly. Different scholars provide various definitions of politi-

Islamization: A Challenge to Turkey’s Secular Democracy?

101

cal Islam. Owen’s view is that political Islam is a response to the perceived failures of secular ideologies.44 Hurd’s definition is as follows: “Political Islam is a diverse and multifaceted set of discursive traditions in which moral and political order is negotiated and continuously renegotiated in contemporary Muslim-majority countries.”45 Teti and Mura argue that historical experiences show that a variety of phenomena can be characterized as political Islam, ranging from violent extremism to marginal political representations. 46 Political Islam is frequently recognized as a divergence from, or a disturbance to, the secular public sphere, as a throwback to a pre-modern political order, or a combination of these features. Broadly, secularist epistemology creates a particular understanding of normal politics that renders a particular meaning to political practices in Muslim-majority societies. The result of this line of thought is conceptualizing Islam exclusively as regressive, often relating it to fundamentalism.47 However, the quick association of Islam and fundamentalism ignores the causes of the emergence of radical ideologies and violent practices and the relationship between political oppression and radical politics generally. 48 The circumstances can change the nature and the perception of political Islam, as can historical background, geo-political location, and social and economic dynamics. Despite this, the term is still used for every country and case with the same wording. In fact, it is not wrong to suggest that political Islam varies depending on its political context, rather than being based on some essence of the religion of Islam itself. Hence, it should not be interpreted as one and same thing all over the world. Movements and political parties of an Islamic nature reveal a wide range of ideologies and political purposes reacting to dissimilar injustices, such as oppression, authoritarianism, or foreign interference. The real challenge therefore is to understand the issues that create reactionary movements of Islamic nature. Concerning the case of Turkey, the Republic’s westernization, secularization, and democratization have been considered as modernity and progress. The military coups of 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997 all aimed, among other goals, to prevent political Islam from adversely affecting the current secular democratic state system. However, before accepting the arguments that had been put forward by those interventions, it is of essential importance to find answers to questions like if the Islamist parties’ intentions were in reality to abolish the democratic secular state system. Moreover, especially subsequent to the rise of the AKP, if all the parties with an Islamic background should be considered as having similar intentions. Part of the answer lies in the way secularism was perceived and implemented so far in Turkey. Referring to Mardin’s “centerperiphery” argument, Göle suggests that the cultural gap between the elites of the center and those at the periphery was the cause of the struggle between the secularists and the Islamists.49 Jung elaborates this argument further and suggests that AKP’s rise is a manifestation of the growing influence of the periphery’s counter-elite in Turkey.50 The secularist principle in Turkey played an important role in the identity construction of the society. Therefore, it is not surprising that the recent expressions of politicized Islam found a place in the political realm. It seems “self-evident that the rising counter-elite articulate its

102

Selin Özoğuz-Bolgi

interests in the counter-language of Kemalism.”51 The rise of religious political identification in Turkey is part of a broader struggle against the authoritarian control of religion by the Kemalist establishment. It is a challenge to the statist definition and division of religion and politics. The problem reveals itself in the fact that, frequently, secularism is treated like a political ideology of its own. My view is that political Islam is not a threat to the security of Turkey for reasons that I will outline below. First, the development of political Islam, which has generally evolved as a response to European imperial pressure due to, first of all, the impact of imperialism through occupation and oppression 52 and secondly, authoritarian domestic governments. Political Islam was a response to these political practices.53 In some Muslim majority countries, like for example in Egypt, Islam was used as an ideological vehicle for nationalist resistance.54 In Turkey’s case, Western domination, occupation, or colonization were not involved. Rather, Turkey chose to adopt the western model of secularization and democracy by itself. Although it was initially decided by the state elites, hence a top-down model, it was nevertheless taken by choice and not imposed by foreign forces. The second reason why political Islam is not a threat to the security of Turkey’s secularism and democracy is that the tradition of secularism is even older than the Republic itself. As mentioned earlier, in the Ottoman Empire, religion through religious law did not dominate decision-making. Legal secularization was not an innovation of the Kemalist movement, but had in fact gradually taken shape over a long time.55 The fact that, in Turkey, democratization since World War II has been accompanied by the emergence of Islam as an important political force should be seen as a normal phenomenon. 56 According to the research conducted by WRR there is no indication that moderate Islam will lose its current character so as to endanger Turkey’s secular democratic system. The great majority of the population wants nothing to do with fundamentalism, preferring to vote for parties with more moderate political affiliations. Turkish people support the secular character of the state and reject any introduction of Islamic law. 57 Surveys show that the Turkish population is religious, but not fundamentally religious. The majority is opposed to religion playing a role in political life, believing religion to be part of the private area, meaning also that the state should stay out of religion. 58 In the long run, experience suggests that the preferences of the voters lie in more moderate and center-right parties. Therefore, any political party that wants to stay in power inevitably needs to smooth away its radical or marginal tendencies and incline to moderation in its ideology. Given that the threat to secularism is eliminated with the rise of the AKP there can be observed rather a new conception with the party; a discussion has opened up concerning the type of secularism that Turkey should adopt, specifically for a secularism that, instead of keeping religion under state control, allows more religious freedom. The mere existence of this discussion shows that there has been maturity in the level of democracy in Turkey, rather than the appearance of a threat to its security.

Islamization: A Challenge to Turkey’s Secular Democracy?

103

Conclusion The secularization process in Turkey was implemented from above when the Turkish Republic was established. Although the secularization was well received in the urban areas, religion continued as a strong bond among the people in the rural areas. Moreover, the way secularism was perceived by the state establishment was particular. Based on the Republican understanding and the foundation of laicism, the state establishment and the military institutionalized a form of “state-Islam,” which persists until today. Namely, secularism was perceived as a tool to protect the nation-state, and therefore the state was profoundly involved in how Islam should be understood and practiced in Turkey. All the stated facts inevitably created a tension within the public which had reflected itself in the political arena as well. The political representation of Islam in the former years, from the mid1940s on, was all generated by the same political Islamic movement NOM. These political parties were not supporting any relations of Turkey with the EU or NATO, nor were they keen on the free market structure created by the West. But from 2000 onwards, the AKP, also originating from the same movement, diverged itself from the ones before itself. The AKP denied being an Islamist party; its own definition for the party’s identity was “conservative democrat.” By accepting secularism and the liberal economic system, and by supporting the EU accession process, the AKP has positioned itself as more of a center-right party than a politically Islamist one. This has been partly deliberate, and partly due to domestic and international conditions. The AKP government used the EU accession process and the international climate for its own leverage, but later, party officials realized that in order to attract a wider constituency and stay in power, they needed to change their Islamic worldview. Hence, they deliberately reinvented themselves as a center-right party. Islamic movements in Turkey do not create a security threat towards the secular democratic state system. Turkey’s experience with secularism so far, although established by the state, was a smooth one compared with experiences in Muslim countries where there were imperial oppressions or fiercely authoritarian domestic governments. This was also partly due to the Ottomans, who introduced legal secularization on matters which were not private. The fact that there were Islamic parties should not be considered as an abnormal phenomenon in a country which gradually tries to transform itself into a democratic state. Research and experience suggests that the preference of the Turkish population is in favor of moderate center-right parties. The great majority in Turkey accepts the country’s secular democratic system, and it is rather highly unlikely that an Islamist party with an agenda to replace the current state system with a theocratic one could succeed. In conclusion, I suggest that when democratic ways are opened to politically Islamic-inclined parties, it is more likely that, rather than becoming more radical, they will become more moderate. This means that oppression cannot be the

104

Selin Özoğuz-Bolgi

solution for opposing such movements. Rather, democratic participation can improve the state’s security, as Fuller argues: “Opening the political process enables people to sort out the effective moderates from the rhetorical radicals and reactionaries.”59 That is, opening up the political arena to pluralistic views may enhance future democratic consolidation, while calming radical movements and disputes.

Notes 1. “Ulema” is the name for the educated class of Muslim legal scholars. 2. WRR, Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, The European Union, Turkey and Islam (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004), 48. 3. Ibid., 7. 4. Bassam Tibi, Islam between Culture and Politics (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001), 125. 5. Ellen Key Trimberger, Revolution from Above: Military Bureaucrats and Development in Japan, Turkey, Egypt and Peru (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1978), 112. 6. John L. Esposito, “Retreat from the Secular Path: The Democracy-Secularism Debate in the Muslim World,” Le Religioni Nelle Relazioni Internazionali no. 12 (March 2010): 53. 7. Throughout the document, “laicism” and “secularism” will be used interchangeably for reasons of simplicity. Only here in discussing the possible difference of their separate meanings will the distinction be highlighted. While Turkish laicism has its origins in France, it has gone much further than the latter in state’s control over religion. Stepan does not agree with the benchmarking of Turkish and French laicism being similar, either, and observes that in 1905 in France that type of a control over religion was never the issue. Alfred Stepan, Arguing Comparative Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 245. 8. Andrew Davison, “Turkey, a ‘Secular’ State: The Challenge of Description,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 102, no. 2–3 (Spring/Summer 2003), 333–34. 9. Gabriel Almond, “Comparative Political Systems,” Journal of Politics 18 (1956): 398. 10. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008), 121. 11. Esposito, “Retreat from the Secular Path,” 52. 12. Hurd, The Politics of Secularism, 94. 13. For a discussion on the “control account” and the “separation account” of secularism and the tension between these two accounts see Davison, “Turkey, a ‘Secular’ State,” 341; and Pınar Bilgin, The “Securityness of Secularism? The Case of Turkey,” Security Dialogue 39, no. 6 (December 2008): 596–98. Bilgin gives a list of the scholars who had touched upon this issue in addition to a through analysis. 14. Davison, “Turkey, a ‘Secular’ State,” 339. Davison rests this statement with reference to Article 136 of the 1982 Constitution, which says that laicism is a foundational principle. For a similar comment and the discussion on Article 136, see Dietrich Jung, “Secularism: A Key to Turkish Politics,” Intellectual Discourse 14, no. 2 (2006): 135. 15. Davison, “Turkey, a ‘Secular’ State,” 337.

Islamization: A Challenge to Turkey’s Secular Democracy?

105

16. Binnaz Toprak, “The State, Politics, and Religion in Turkey,” in State, Democracy and the Military: Turkey in the 1980s, ed. Metin Heper and Ahmet Evin (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), 120. 17. Şerif Mardin, “Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?” Daedalus 102 no. 1 (1973): 169–90. 18. WRR, The European Union, 8. 19. The DGRA is responsible for the administration of all mosques, and the appointments of imams (preachers) and all other religiously employed personnel, so that they have become in effect state employees. See Davison, “Turkey, a ‘Secular’ State,” 337; Binnaz Toprak, “Islam and the Secular State in Turkey,” in Turkey: Political, Social and Economic Challenges in the 1990s, ed. Çiğdem Balım et al. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), 35. 20. WRR, The European Union, 53. 21. Senem Aydın and Ruşen Çakır, “Political Islam in Turkey,” CEPS Working Document, no. 265 (2007): 1. 22. Jenny White, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), 3. 23. The National Security Council was created after the military coup in 1960 and it has been part of the constitution. The NSC is operating next to a civilian council of ministers. This institution is widely recognized as the strong influence of the military in the political sphere. The NSC and the Turkish military have the role of protecting Kemalism and hence the modern democratic state system in Turkey. 24. Haldun Gülalp, “Globalizing Postmodernism: Islamist and Western Social Theory,” Economy and Society 26, no. 3 (August 1997): 433–34. 25. WRR, The European Union, 51–52. 26. Erol Külahçı, “EU Political Conditionality and Parties in Government: Human Rights and the Quest for Turkish Transformation,” Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 7, no. 3 (2005): 400. 27. The description of the AKP by Cizre is “a pragmatic-conservative and Islam sensitive party.” Ümit Cizre, “Introduction: The Justice and Development Party: Making Choices, Revisions and Reversals Interactively,” in Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party, ed. Ümit Cizre (Oxon: Routledge, 2008), 1–6. 28. Hasan Kösebalaban, “The Impact of Globalization on Islamic Political Identity: The Case of Turkey,” World Affairs 168 (2005): 31. 29. Burhanettin Duran, “The Justice and Development Party’s ‘New Politics’: Steering toward Conservative Democracy, A Revised Islamic Agenda or Management of New Crises?” in Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey, ed. Cizre, 85–86. 30. Bassam Tibi, “Europeanizing Islam or the Islamization of Europe: Political Democracy vs. Cultural Difference,” in Religion in an Expanding Europe, ed. Timothy A. Byrnes and Peter J. Katzenstein (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 218–22. 31. Menderes Çınar, “Turkey’s Transformation under the AKP Rule,” Muslim World 96, no. 3 (2006): 474. 32. European Commissioner Verheugen had to put a lot of pressure on the party to abandon this project before they consented. 33. M. Hakan Yavuz, “Islam and Europeanization in Turkish-Muslim Socio-Political Movements,” in Religion in an Expanding Europe, ed. Byrnes and Katzenstein, 245–46. 34. Cizre, “Introduction: The Justice,” 4. 35. Andrea Teti and Andrea Mura, “Islam and Islamism,” in Routledge Handbook of Religion and Politics, ed. Jeffrey Haynes (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), 103.

106

Selin Özoğuz-Bolgi

36. Cizre, “Introduction: The Justice,” 5. 37. WRR, The European Union, 56. 38. Jung, “Secularism,” 137. 39. M. Hakan Yavuz, Islamic Political Identity in Turkey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 227–31. 40. Jung, “Secularism,” 129 41. Cizre, “Introduction: The Justice,” 3. 42. Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993), 22–49; Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). 43. WRR, The European Union, 45. 44. Roger Owen, State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (London: Routledge, 2004), 156. 45. Hurd, The Politics of Secularism, 130. 46. Teti and Mura, “Islam and Islamism,” 102–3. 47. For a further discussion on political Islam having a negative connotation, see Hurd, The Politics of Secularism, 117–19; and also for a reference and connection to terrorism and totalitarianism, see Melanie McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 220. 48. Teti and Mura, “Islam and Islamism,” 102. 49. Nilüfer Göle, “Secularism and Islamism in Turkey: The Making of Elites and Counter Elites,” Middle Eastern Journal 51, no. 1 (1997): 52. 50. Jung, “Secularism,” 130. 51. Ibid., 141. 52. In Egypt there were reform movements moderated by religious scholars in order to meet the challenge of European imperialism. The reason for these political Islamist movements was to gain independence from British occupation. The continued British presence led to radicalization of the Islamist movements. (For further historical context of political Islam in Egypt see Cizre, “Introduction: The Justice,” 96–97. 53. Teti and Mura, “Islam and Islamism,” 99. 54. WRR, The European Union, 56. 55. Ibid., 59. 56. Ibid., 9. 57. In the 2002 elections, the voters had a choice between the more religiously inclined Felicity Party and the AKP. Compared to the FP, the AKP was more moderate on Islam, and as a result won by an overwhelming majority. Ibid., 57. 58. Ali Çarkoğlu and Binnaz Toprak, Religion, Society and Politics in Turkey, Tesev Publications, November 16, 2006. 59. Graham E. Fuller, “The Future of Political Islam,” Foreign Affairs 81, no. 2 (March–April 2002): 59.

PART III TURKEY AND EXTERNAL SECURITY CHALLENGES IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Chapter Six

Turkey’s New Cyprus Policy: Transforming a Military Base into a Basin of Cooperation Ahmet Sözen This chapter explores the changing contours of Turkey’s security concerns and subsequent security policies with regard to its relations with the Cyprus conflict and the peace process. Turkey’s being announced as a candidate country for full membership in the European Union (EU) in the 1999 Helsinki Summit was a very important turning point in Turkish foreign and security policy. After this, it was common sense for Turkey to change its Cold War security perceptions where issues were highly “securitized” and “bureaucratized” and adopt a new paradigm.1 The new paradigm would be more regional and global in scope and the issues much less securitized and bureaucratized. Later, the coming to power of the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—Justice and Development Party) governments with a clear foreign policy agenda—known as Foreign Minister Davutoğlu’s “strategic depth” doctrine—made it possible for Turkey to follow a security discourse and policy based on soft power, which has complemented Turkey’s undisputed hard power. This shift of understanding and adaptation of a hard security policy closely associated with soft security policy has also triggered a normalization of the military–civilian relations in the domestic front, where the traditional Turkish military–bureaucratic elites have started to lose their tutelage on the regime in Turkey. Today the elected political elites are now holding the upper hand in foreign and security policy issues, which have widely become open to public debate. Thus, Turkish foreign and security policies have entered into a phase of de-securitization2 and de-bureaucratization in the twentyfirst century. Similar to the paradigm shift in the overall Turkish foreign policy during the AKP government, Turkey’s security considerations vis-à-vis Cyprus have also changed. The shift was from a military and strategic perspective to one which is 109

110

Ahmet Sözen

based on soft power, and regional cooperation and integration that includes at least Turkey and Greece on the one hand and the Greek and Turkish Cypriots on the other. This, without doubt, has been reflected not only in Turkey’s policy vis-à-vis the Cyprus conflict and the peace negotiations, but also in its relations with Greece. Greece, once perceived as a primary national threat, is currently identified as an ally of Turkey with a common vision and fate for the future. In this chapter, firstly I describe the general contours of Turkey’s foreign and security policy in the twentieth century, in which I identify the place of the Cyprus issue. Here, I attempt to answer the question: How was (is) the Cyprus issue seen by the traditional ruling elite in Turkey? Secondly, I attempt to elucidate how the Cyprus issue is managed in the new Turkish foreign and security policy under the AKP government. The chapter ends with a conclusion that includes a wrap-up of the main arguments as well as the future implications for Turkish foreign and security policy vis-à-vis the Eastern Mediterranean region.

Contours of Turkey’s Foreign and Security Policy in the Twentieth Century: Where Was (Is) Cyprus? When the Republic of Turkey was established in 1923 the state perceived three major threats. Two of the threats concerned themselves with internal dynamics, namely religious fundamentalism and ethnic separatism. On the other hand, the external threat to the Republic was the fear of Soviet invasion of Turkey or at least its political domination of Turkey. Especially during the Cold War, Turkey’s alignment with the “West” became quite clear. Receiving economic aid from the United States through the Marshall Plan and military aid through the Truman Doctrine (1947) were initial milestones of the alliance. These were followed by Turkey’s membership to Council of Europe (1949) and sending Turkish soldiers to the Korean War (1950). Turkey’s becoming a member of NATO in 1952 and an associate member of the EEC in 1963 were the two culmination points in Turkey’s “external west-integration”3 during the Cold War. Turkey’s primary role as a military post in the southeastern flank of NATO was to be a reliable and strong watchdog (or gendarme) of the containment strategy of the United States. All in all, aligning with the West was seen as the only rational strategic option for Turkey in the context of the Cold War discipline that the two super-powers imposed on their allies.4 Turkey’s aligning with the West was also in line with Atatürk’s vision (and his legacy) for the young Turkish nation, that Turkey should be part of the contemporary civilized nations, which he equated with the western world. Following this line of legacy together with the incremental need for strong military capabilities during the Cold War, Turkish foreign and security policy had remained under the absolute control of the conservative statist ruling elite, also known as the Turkish “military–bureaucratic establishment.” This establishment has long been considered to be the best guard against internal and external threats posed to the republic.

Turkey’s New Cyprus Policy

111

The Turkish military–bureaucratic establishment comprises Kemalist military elements as well as civilian bureaucrats who regard themselves as the guardians of the secular republic—praetorian soldiers. For them, foreign policy and security issues are too important to be left to the debate in the public domain. Rather, such issues as the political regime should be within the competence of and under the tutelage of the Turkish military-bureaucratic ruling elite. Thus, foreign- and security-related decisions were by and large made until very recently by the appointed state elites (the Turkish military–bureaucratic establishment) rather than the elected government elites.5 With the end of the Cold War, the dominant paradigm—Realpolitik—was challenged and questioned by liberal perspectives—by the liberalist paradigm. Throughout the globe, a spirit of optimism was becoming dominant right after the Cold War. The idea was that the issues of high politics of the Cold War (i.e., war, security/defense, military issues, and so forth) were losing their priority and importance and that the issues of low politics (economy, democracy, human rights, environmental and social issues) were filling in the vacuum created by the departure of the issues of high politics. In a way, the axis of world politics was moving away from geo-politics to geo-economics, and several norms and values, such as democracy, human rights, and the market economy, were becoming globally popular and even almost universally endorsed in the 1990s. It was at this point that Turkey could not adapt to the global trends successfully. Turkey, by and large, followed its Cold War conservative and narrowvisioned foreign and security policy during the 1990s.6 In the 1980s, though very brief, former Prime Minister and President Turgut Özal’s liberalization policies—mostly on the economic front—and the global rise of soft issues like human rights and democracy had started a public debate on the role and the legitimacy of the regime based on the tutelage of the Turkish military–bureaucratic establishment. Yet in the early 1990s, the idea that Turkey was designing and revising its foreign and security policy, including the tutelage regime of the Turkish military–bureaucratic establishment, was against a tough domestic and a constantly transforming international background which was full of uncertainties. The capacity, attention, and room for maneuver for Turkish foreign and security policy were heavily curtailed by three chronic domestic problems in the 1990s. First of all, Turkey had to struggle with high inflation and severe economic crises during the 1990s.7 Secondly, it was almost impossible to design and apply a rational structural economic program in an environment where there was political instability due to several different coalition governments.8 Thirdly, Turkey was fighting against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) during the 1990s. The war against the PKK not only drained Turkey’s attention and energy, but also cost Turkey billions of dollars.9 Curtailed by domestic problems as well as the tutelage regime and challenged by the post-Cold War era’s international uncertainties, Turkish foreign and security policy was unable to fully usurp the new opportunities of the postCold War era. Instead, Turkey followed its traditional principles in foreign and security policy-making in order to respond to the challenges of the post-Cold War era. Besides the newly opened geographies, such as the Balkans, the Cauca-

112

Ahmet Sözen

sus, and Central Asia, where Turkey made very modest moves, Turkey used caution, conservatively followed its traditional clichés (continuity), and tried not to rock the boat (status quo) in its traditional relations with its neighbors and in relations with the United States, the European Union (EU), and the Middle East in most of the 1990s. In short, Turkey spent the last decade of the twentieth century mostly in a mode of muddling through.

Cyprus as Traditionally Perceived by Turkey’s Ruling Elite The Turkish political elite (and the public) have been ambivalent about relations with the West (EU and the United States) and the Middle East. This is due to the Sevres syndrome—a perception that there are always enemies who are out there trying to find the right moment to grab a piece of land from Turkey—that the Turkish Kemalist elite inherited from the latest stage of the Ottoman Empire.10 As Jung argued, “Turkey’s foreign relations are still under the impact of the traditionalist Kemalist worldview. On the one hand, there is the latent mistrust towards both the West and the Middle Eastern neighbors. On the other hand, this worldview is mirrored by the narrow notion of security—limited to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state—that characterizes Turkish politics.”11 A clear reflection of this worldview is Turkey’s foreign policy approach regarding Cyprus. The Turkish military–bureaucratic establishment, as the ruling elite, has always regarded Cyprus as a strategically vital region for the security and defense of Turkey. By and large, there are two categories of security discourse used by the Turkish military–bureaucratic elites in their attempt to legitimize their foreign and security policies vis-à-vis Cyprus: (i) perception of encirclement in case Cyprus is “lost” to an unfriendly power, such as Greece, and (ii) perception of Cyprus as a “geographic part and a natural extension of Anatolian heartland,” in which case Cyprus is treated as an integral part of Turkey’s defense and security.12 To start with, the Cyprus issue became a part of Turkey’s foreign and security policy agenda in the 1950s, as a dimension of Greece’s encirclement policy. The debate was on what would happen to Cyprus when the British would withdraw, just like they would in other colonies at the age of decolonization. The transfer of the Dodecanes islands to Greece after World War II had already fostered the Sevres syndrome in the Turkish state elite, who came out with the idea that “Turkey would be de facto encircled”13 if Greece took control of Cyprus— through the Greek Cypriot community who was enthusiastic in uniting the island with their “motherland” Greece, known as Enosis. Hence, it was Greece, rather than Cyprus per se, which was perceived as the real security threat for Turkey vis-à-vis Cyprus. The Cyprus issue became a “national cause” for Turkey especially in the 1970s. Turkey’s military operation on July 20, 1974, which took place as a reaction to the Greek coup d’état for Enosis on July 15, 1974, was an outcome of Greece’s encirclement policy. As Ismail argued, “Possession of Cyprus by Greece through Enosis, would have meant the encirclement of the southern

Turkey’s New Cyprus Policy

113

shores of Turkey as well. Therefore, Turkey had to destroy the de facto situation created by the coup of 15 July with the military intervention of July 20.”14 For Olgun, “Stuck in its southern underbelly, Cyprus is a major source of concern for Turkey, which could be used as the “southern element in the containment of Turkey.”15 Similarly, Çay argued, “leaving the island to Greece is almost like Turkey’s nervously waiting for the dagger to be stuck to its underbelly.”16 Based on these certain justifications pointing out the importance of Cyprus for Turkey’s foreign and security concerns, former Turkish Foreign Minister Şükrü Sina Gürel described that the Cyprus issue was a “national cause” for Turkey because: Turkey struggled to champion the human rights of a people (Turkish Cypriots) that Turkey regards as its kind in Cyprus. In that sense, Turkey involved in Cyprus in order to protect them. The island of Cyprus would have been important for Turkey even in case of no Turkish Cypriots living there. Because Turkey would never want to leave an island so close to us and in control of Turkey’s ports in the south to a power that would be an opponent to Turkey. Especially, when our experience from World War II is taken into consideration. That is, Cyprus’ strategic importance can be understood if we remember the time when the Dodecanese islands were occupied by a foreign power (Greece) and we were not able to breathe in our ports in the West and we were only able to breathe through our ports in the South.17

For the military–bureaucratic establishment of Turkey, Cyprus was geographically a natural extension of Turkey. Former Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes stated that “Cyprus is but the continuation of Anatolia and constitute[s] one of the pivotal elements as regards its security.”18 However, after the declaration of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) in 1983, the use of “motherland–babyland” (anavatan–yavruvatan) discourse became so popular that it replaced the “natural extension” argument with a new argument “equating the survival of the TRNC with that of Turkey.”19 The “motherland–babyland” “metaphor would serve to emphasize both indissoluble and sacred linkages between ‘motherland’ Turkey and ‘babyland’ Cyprus and the unity of their fate and destiny.”20 Hence, for the Turkish military–bureaucratic elites, whether described as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” a “missile launching pad,” a “control tower,” or a “springboard for the conquest of Anatolia from the south,” Cyprus should never be lost to Greece. In parallel, whether Cyprus was described as a “natural extension of Anatolia” or as “babyland” with “indissoluble and sacred” ties with “motherland” Turkey, it should be perceived as a natural dimension of Turkey’s defense and security. In either case, for the Turkish military–bureaucratic elite the security of such a strategically important island necessitated the use of hard power, such as military intervention if needed and the stationing of Turkish troops on the island. Until recent years, Cyprus issue was highly “securitized” and “bureaucratized” by the Turkish military–bureaucratic elite.21 Besides being a “national cause,” it was a highly technical issue that necessitated a state-level administra-

114

Ahmet Sözen

tion. In that regard, framing the issue as a matter of “state policy” that could be handled solely by the “foreign policy elites” prevented the discussion of the issue in the public realm. This resulted in a lack of emergence of alternative arguments or novel ideas on the solution of the Cyprus issue. This led “to the institutionalization of a regime fetishising such concepts as security, stability and “national sensitivities” in Turkey.”22

Changing Paradigm of Turkish Security Policy towards Cyprus in the Twenty-first Century: A Multi-track Approach Turkish foreign policy-making and the security approach that was based on the geographical and historical depth vision in the twenty-first century influenced the design of Turkey’s security policy as regards Greece and hence Cyprus.23 Starting with the 1999 EU Helsinki Summit, where Turkey was declared a candidate country, the traditional Turkish foreign and security policy behavior have experienced a shift. This shift has been particularly swift since the November 2002 general elections that brought the AKP to the government.24 The role of the AKP for national foreign policy-making has been a transformative one, especially as a consequence of the vision introduced by Ahmet Davutoğlu, the foreign minister and former chief foreign policy advisor of Prime Minister Erdoğan. Besides that, there has been a foreign and domestic policy nexus in international politics as Davutoğlu argues, international politics is a very dynamic process that requires “vision-based” strategies in foreign policy-making rather than “linebased” or “crisis-based” strategies which produce only reactive (or defensive) policies.25 The immediate implication of this approach has well been observed in the case of Cyprus, where Turkey adopted a multi-track approach utilizing soft power capacities and capabilities. During the AKP era, Turkey has prioritized its soft power potential. As coined by Davutoğlu, Turkey started to use its “geographical and historical depth” in its relations with neighbors, intended to be based on “zero problem” and “maximum cooperation.”26 A solely militarized and securitized approach to foreign policy needed to be supplemented with a soft-security approach, since issues were too complex and problems demanded political solutions in the postCold War era.27 Following this view, Turkey has focused on its relations and cooperation with its neighbors in multiple sectors, mostly in soft power capabilities in economy, culture, and education (although it has not abandoned entirely its hard-security concerns). Unlike its earlier static and unidimensional foreign and security policy strategies, Turkey has adopted a “vision-based” strategy in the making of Turkish foreign policy. This new strategy bases itself on five fundamental foreign policy principles, namely (i) balance between freedom and security, (ii) zero problems with the neighbors, (iii) multi-dimensional and multi-track policies, (iv) new

Turkey’s New Cyprus Policy

115

diplomatic discourse based on firm flexibility, and (v) rhythmic diplomacy.28 These are quite novel principles, compared to such traditional principles as caution and status quo, of the traditional Turkish foreign policy-making. The immediate implication of a paradigm shift from hard to soft power as a result of Foreign Minister Davutoğlu’s policy of zero problems with neighbors and his new diplomatic discourse based on firm flexibility has been progressive bilateral relations firstly with Greece. During the AKP era, Turkey silently stopped using casus belli and abandoned the “win-lose” approach to security that the state had adopted towards Greece during the Cold War. The government projected the idea of bi-lateral dialogue and even international arbitration in solving the problems in the Aegean with Greece. As a result, Greece was for the first time not defined as a threat in the National Security Policy Document (NSPD).29 Contrary to the connotation of Greece as “primary threat” in the previous NSPD, the new document regarded Greece, together with Iran, Iraq, and Russia as “new allies” with whom Turkey cooperates and establishes “common vision.”30 As a clear sign of the change of threat perception as stated in the NSPD, and a clear implication of “zero problem” policy, Davutoğlu suggested that Greece and Turkey should establish their common future together to reach “maximum cooperation.” He stated, “The fate and the future of Turkey and Greece are the same. . . . When the two countries establish their common future together, there will not be a need for mutual defense.”31 In return, Greece also welcomed and responded constructively to the zero problem initiative of Turkey. To many observers, due to a combination of both external and internal developments, Turkey has implemented its soft power much more than it traditionally had in its foreign and security policy issues. 32 Unlike its traditional securitized Cyprus policy, Turkey under the AKP government has followed a new Cyprus policy which is based on the use of soft power, such as extended diplomacy and economic instruments, which have never been employed in that extent in Cyprus before. The rapprochement with Greece since the 1999 Helsinki summit was the beginning of the new orientation in Turkish foreign and security policy, which was accelerated since the beginning of the AKP government in 2002. Turkey carefully refrained from its traditional verbal threats and nationalistic discourse towards Greece and took very positive steps in the Cyprus negotiations in New York, Nicosia, and Bürgenstock (Switzerland) during February and March 2004, which produced the first comprehensive solution plan for Cyprus. 33 This UN blueprint (known as the “Annan Plan”) called for the unification of Cyprus in a loose federal structure and the membership of the unified island in the EU. That the Greek Cypriot side refused the plan with a 76 percent majority prevented the normalization of relations between Turkey and the “united” Cyprus.34 Nonetheless, Turkey continued to support the UN-led peace negotiations which currently continue. Since 2004, Turkey has actively supported the UN efforts and the peace negotiations that aim to find a comprehensive solution to the Cyprus problem based on established UN parameters, which are establishing a bi-zonal, bicommunal federation based on the political equality of the two communities in Cyprus. In that sense, Turkey’s efforts to pursue the policy of “zero problems

116

Ahmet Sözen

with neighbors” have to be reciprocated by Cyprus, as it takes two to tango. That is, in addition to refusing a solution based on established UN parameters, the Greek Cypriot-led Republic of Cyprus as an EU member continues to be a serious block in front of Turkey’s accession process to be an EU member. In other words, instead of reciprocating the AKP’s new cooperative policy on Cyprus, the Greek Cypriot leadership tries to use Cyprus’ EU membership as leverage to get serious concessions in Cyprus from Turkey. In a nutshell, the Greek Cypriot leadership tries to force the Turkish side to agree on a Cyprus settlement where the Turkish Cypriots will be a reduced to a minority from the founding partner of the state as envisaged in all UN solution parameters. The AKP era has marked a serious change to Turkey’s foreign policy and security approach to the Cyprus challenge. During the 2002 elections, the AKP pursued an electoral campaign in which the ‘no solution is the solution in Cyprus or the “status quo in Cyprus is the solution” policies of the military– bureaucratic establishment were rejected. Instead, the AKP suggested that the “Belgian model”35 should be seriously considered for the solution of the Cyprus problem. Even more, Prime Minister Erdoğan repeatedly stated that Turkey’s Cyprus policy was to base itself on the “win-win” philosophy. During the New York negotiations in early 2004 before the Cyprus referenda, Erdoğan stated that the Turkish side would always be “one step ahead” in the Cyprus negotiations. This was a clear sign of a new principle of Turkish foreign policy at work: firmflexibility. As Davutoğlu explained, the firm-flexibility principle is “knowing what you want and being firm on this issue, yet being as flexible as possible in demanding and negotiating on this with the other side.”36 Accordingly, the AKP’s policy on Cyprus rested on being firm in demanding a solution, while being flexible on the methods of reaching that solution. Davutoğlu believed that a solution in Cyprus was a part of a bigger jigsaw puzzle. Aside from good neighborly relations between Turkey and Greece, a solution in Cyprus has been essential for Turkey’s greater objective to transform the Eastern Mediterranean into a basin of peace, cooperation, stability, and security, also in terms of energy resources. Accordingly, in a recent exclusive interview with Davutoğlu, he stated that in Cyprus, Turkey has two objectives. The first objective is “to establish an arrangement in Cyprus where the existence, security, freedom and economical welfare of the Turks living in Cyprus are guaranteed and assured.” The second objective on the other hand is “to maintain the balance in Eastern Mediterranean and to turn Eastern Mediterranean, as a whole, into a basin of stability.” In terms of solutions to the Cyprus issue and to maintain these objectives, the foreign minister suggested: Solution is the solution that materializes these two objectives as well as a sustainable one. . . . We have followed a very consistent policy along this line. . . . In 2002, there were difficult political conditions. . . . (But) Then, in order to have a lasting and just peace, we were after a solution whose basic parameters were composed well. Same now, too. . . . Such a solution safeguards Turkey’s interests and guarantees the future of the Turkish community on the island. Once these parameters are established, one needs to fill them with the details.

Turkey’s New Cyprus Policy

117

Just like (bees) filling the comb, peace needs to be achieved through earnest37 ness and sincerity. We (Turkey) support every step taken in this direction.

In another interview on January 13, 2010, Davutoğlu stated that there are “golden opportunities” in Cyprus and stressed again the importance of reaching a solution in Cyprus: We are open to all methods, as long as these methods do not prolong the process (of reaching a solution in Cyprus). . . . Turkish-Greek relations are on the right (positive) perspective. We think that good neighborly relations (between Greece and Turkey) will contribute to the settlement process in Cyprus. Papandreou government supports this process. We do not have a threat perception (from Greece). I do not think that our Greek neighbors perceive a threat from Turkey. On the contrary, we have bright neighborly relations ahead and the so38 lution of the Cyprus problem will contribute greatly to this bright future.

The start of hydrocarbon explorations in the Eastern Mediterranean by the (Greek Cypriot) Republic of Cyprus in cooperation with Israel in 2011 increased the tension with Turkey. Turkey protested that the Greek Cypriot government had no right to unilaterally declare an exclusive economic zone and start oil and natural gas explorations on behalf of the whole island where the Turkish Cypriots are excluded. After an initial verbal spat hinting that Turkey might use its navy to preempt the exploration, the Turkish government returned to its soft power policy. Turkey signed a “Continental Shelf Delimitation Agreement”39 with the TRNC, started joint land-based hydrocarbon explorations in North Cyprus, and continued to support a federal solution along the established UN parameters.40 A constructive solution to the Cyprus challenge is a political imperative. As well, an important sign of utilizing soft-power is the volume of economic activity. Thus on the economic front, the amount of financial aid to North Cyprus has never been as high as it is during the current AKP government. The Turkish government pays for the majority of the infrastructure construction, such as highways, schools, and mosques.41 It encourages Turkish investors to invest in tourism in the TRNC.42 The support the government gives to Turkish students to study in the universities in North Cyprus by providing scholarship incentives also shows the volume of investment efforts in TRNC. On the other hand, as an important implication of soft power policy, Turkey took the initiation of the long-awaited water-pipeline project in Cyprus. On July 19, 2010, Turkish and North Cyprus authorities signed the $450 million project that will bring water from Turkey to North Cyprus through underwater pipelines. The project, with the addition of $150 million, can be modified in the future to also include electricity from Turkey.43 All in all, Turkey also uses economic instruments to respond to the challenge of the decades-long Cyprus issue through implementing a soft-power strategy. The Cyprus issue not only has posed a challenge to Turkey’s traditional hardline security politics but also it has been a battleground on which the military–bureaucracy elites have competed with the government elites for the control

118

Ahmet Sözen

of the regime in Turkey. This has been debated in accordance with the democratization in Turkey. Changes in the Turkish foreign and security policy cannot be understood separately or independently from the domestic dynamics. Indeed there is a very strong link between the domestic reforms and democratization steps carried out and the shifts away from the traditional securitized foreign and security policies in the 2000s. In particular, since the 1999 Helsinki Summit, Turkey has behaved rather like an EU member state—committed to solving its foreign policy and security issues through dialogue and peaceful diplomacy. 44 Along this line, the normalization of civilian–military relations in Turkey has become central to the democratization of the country. The quasi monopoly of the military–bureaucratic elites on the foreign and security issues had to come to an end and give way to a regime where the elected ruling elites (the government) rather than the military–bureaucratic elites call the shots. Though the military–bureaucracy tutelage seems to have come to its end, especially with the Ergenekon trial45 and the most recent Supreme Military Council46 decisions, nonetheless it is not over yet. However, despite the domestic tension between the government elites and the conservative nationalistic opposition supported by the military–bureaucratic elites, the democratization steps and the reforms for eventual EU membership have triggered a domestic debate. Through the AKP government’s use of a de-securitized discourse, the government is blamed for its pro-solution, “one-step-ahead” Cyprus policy as if it were selling the “national cause” down the drain or “losing Cyprus.” The AKP government has criticized the opposition for being pro-status quo and supportive of continuation of the military–bureaucracy tutelage on Turkey.47 As a result, democratization of the country would foster a de-bureaucratization and de-securitization of foreign and security issues in Turkey, which has been clearly seen in the case of desecuritization of Cyprus.

Conclusion The end of the Cold War, which can be termed as a paradigm shift on the systemic level, provided Turkey with new opportunities together with lots of uncertainties with potential threats. The end of the Cold War has expanded the Turkish foreign and security policy horizons. However, during most of the 1990s Turkish foreign policy failed to adapt to the new dynamic international system. Instead, Turkish foreign and security policy in the 1990s muddled through, due mostly to the chronic domestic problems that curtailed the capabilities and capacities of the country. Turkish foreign and security policy in the new millennium, however, has started to respond to the paradigm shift in the systemic level due to the end of the Cold War by filling in the new expanded playing field with new or modified strategic visions and tools on multiple numbers of issues which were nonexistent in the earlier periods of the Turkish Republic. Hence, since the beginning of the new millennium objective observers have witnessed new contours—

Turkey’s New Cyprus Policy

119

in terms of softer elements—in Turkish foreign and security policy. The Cyprus issue is, by no means an exception in this new paradigm. Unlike traditional securitized policies, Turkey’s “win-win” and “one-stepahead” policies in Cyprus, accompanied by its clear and proactive support of the UN mediation efforts for a comprehensive solution in Cyprus, manifested itself very clearly by Turkey’s open support of the UN peace plan in 2004. Since then, Turkey continued to openly support a solution based on established UN parameters in Cyprus. Although Cyprus is still the weakest link in the Eastern Mediterranean, due to the irresolution of the conflict in the island, it is clear that the vision of an Eastern Mediterranean as a basin of stability, peace, and cooperation is a much more real one than a decade ago. Complete realization of such a vision is beneficial for Turkey as well as all the countries in the region, since that would mean substantially reduced defense spending as well as dramatic reductions in the current transaction costs between the countries of the region. As long as the current Davutoğlu-stamped AKP foreign policy is maintained—that is, supporting a solution based on the established UN parameters— there are more prospects for a solution of the Cyprus problem compared to the past. Turkey’s increased use of soft power coupled with its insistence on solving the Cyprus issue through established UN parameters will inevitably force the Greek Cypriot side to make a hard decision: either to settle for a UN-sponsored settlement or leave the negotiation table and pay the price. The price ranges from a Taiwanized North Cyprus, where TRNC—similar to Taiwan—normalizes its relations with the international community without a formal recognition, to a Kosovoized North Cyprus, where a certain number of countries recognize the TRNC. The foreign policy architect of the current Turkish government, Davutoğlu, claims that supporting a solution based on the established UN parameters in Cyprus is part of a grand vision of peace, stability, and maximum cooperation and wealth sharing in the Eastern Mediterranean. In this grand vision there are, besides the other neighbors, Greece and a settled Cyprus problem where the Greek and Turkish Cypriots enjoy a just and lasting solution. Judging from Davutoğlu’s recent track record, there is no doubt about his good will. However, actualization of his vision will be tested by many factors in the future, including but not limited to the normalization of military–civilian relations in the domestic front and the level of entrenchment of his new principles in Turkish foreign policy. So far the elected ruling elites seem to be winning the game against the traditional Turkish military–bureaucratic elite.

Notes 1. Alper Kaliber, “Securing the Ground Through Securitized ‘Foreign’ Policy: The Cyprus Case,” Security Dialogue 36, no. 3 (September 2005): 319–37. 2. Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1998).

120

Ahmet Sözen

3. See Dietrich Jung, “The Sevres Syndrome: Turkish Foreign Policy and its Historical Legacies,” American Diplomacy, 2003, www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/archives_ roll/2003_07-09/jung_sevres/jung_sevres.html (accessed September 2, 2010). 4. Ahmet Sözen, The Cyprus Conflict and the Negotiations: A Political and International Law Perspective (Ankara: Can Reklam, 1998), 2. Az Oğuzlu also put it, “Turkey’s Kemalist legacy, the role of the military officers in the foundation of the Republic, the geography of Turkey, and the external developments in Turkey’s vicinity are all considered as factors that make Turkey a hard power and a securitized Turkish foreign policy a likely outcome.” Tarık Oğuzlu, “Soft Power in Turkish Foreign Policy,” Australian Journal of International Affairs 61, no. 1 (March 2007): 83. 5. For a number of accounts on this, see Ali Bulaç, “Askeri Vesayet,” Zaman, June 30, 2010, www.zaman.com.tr/yazar.do?yazino=1001034 (accessed August 30, 2010); Şahin Alpay, “Vesayetçiler İçten ve Dıştan Atağa Geçti,” Zaman, July 8, 2010, www.zaman.com.tr/yazar.do?yazino=1003579&title=vesayetciler-icten-ve-distan-atagagecti (accessed August 30, 2010); “Askeri Vesayetin Hukuki Altyapısı,” Radikal, August 5, 2010, www.radikal.com.tr/Radikal.aspx?aType=RadikalHaberDetay& ArticleID=1010234&Date=05.08.2010&CategoryID=97 (accessed August 30, 2010). 6. For an in-depth analysis of Turkey’s security culture and the role of the military, see Ali L. Karaosmanoğlu, “The Evolution of the National Security Culture and the Military in Turkey,” Journal of International Affairs 54, no. 1 (Fall 2000): 199–216. 7. For further details, see Ziya Öniş, “The Turkish Economy at the Turn of a New Century: Critical and Comparative Perspectives,” in Turkey’s Transformation and American Policy, ed. Morton Abromowitz (New York: The Century Foundation Press, 2000), 95–115. 8. For further details, see William Hale, Turkish Foreign Policy: 1774-2000 (London and Portland, Or.: Frank Cass Publishers, 2000), 195–99. 9. For further details, see Svante E. Cornell, “The Kurdish Question in Turkish Politics,” in Dangerous Neighborhood: Contemporary Issues in Turkey’s Foreign Relations, ed. Michael S. Radu (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2003), 123–42; Michael S. Radu, “The Rise and Fall of the PKK,” in Dangerous Neighborhood, 143–64. 10. Jung, “The Sevres Syndrome.” 11. Ibid. 12. Kaliber, “Securing the Ground,” and Kaliber, “Re-imagining Cyprus.” 13. Former Turkish Prime Minister Fatin Rüştü Zorlu, quoted in Işıl Kazan, “Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean, Seen from Turkey,” in The European Union and the Cyprus Conflict: Modern Conflict Postmodern Union, ed. Thomas Diez (New York: Manchester University Press, 2002), 54–69, at 58. 14. Sabahattin İsmail, 20th July Peace Operation: Reasons, Development and Consequences (Istanbul: Kastaş, 1989), 171. 15. Mustafa E. Olgun, “Turkey’s Tough Neighbourhood: Security Dimension of the Cyprus Conflict,” in Cyprus: The Need for New Perspectives, ed. Clement H. Dodd (Cambridgeshire: Eothen, 1999), 232. 16. See the theme of the book by Abdulhaluk Çay, Kıbrıs’ta Kanlı Noel, Forum Turkey, 1989, www.frmtr.com/kitap-ozetleri/1663646-kibrista-kanli-noel-1963-a.html (accessed August 19, 2010). 17. See the interview with former Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Şükrü Sina Gürel, www.turksolu.org/ileri/08/gurel8.htm (accessed August 18, 2010). 18. Quoted in Fahir Armaoğlu, Kıbrıs Meselesi 1954–1959 (Ankara: Sevinç Matbaası, 1963), 133.

Turkey’s New Cyprus Policy

121

19. Kaliber, “Re-imagining Cyprus,” 115. 20. Ibid. 21. Kaliber, “Securing the Ground.” 22. Kaliber, “Re-imagining Cyprus,” 113. 23. Ahmet Sözen, “A Paradigm Shift in Turkish Foreign Policy: Transition and Challenges,” Turkish Studies 11, no. 1 (March 2010): 103–23. 24. Ahmet Sözen, “Turkish Democratization in Light of its EU Candidate Status,” in The Constitution for Europe and an Enlarging Union: Union in Diversity?, ed. Kirstyn Inglis and Andrea Ott (Amsterdam: Europa Law Publishing, 2005), 279–305. 25. For an in-depth analysis, see the TV interview of Davutoğlu by Gürken Zengin, CNN Turk Special Editorial, February 17, 2004. 26. Sözen, “A Paradigm Shift,” 109–10. 27. Oğuzlu, “Soft Power,” 90. For an in-depth analysis of the role of globalization on Turkey’s security concerns, see Ali L. Karaosmanoğlu, “Globalization and its Impact on Turkey’s Security,” in The Europeanization of Turkey’s Security Policy: Prospects and Pitfalls, ed. Ali L. Karaosmanoğlu and Seyfi Taşhan (Ankara: Foreign Policy Institute, 2004), 11–24. 28. Sözen, “A Paradigm Shift.” 29. Dubbed as the Red Book, the country’s top security document lists the threats Turkey faces as well as policies as to how Turkey should deal with these threats. The content of the NSPD has always been negotiated by the government and the army. The document was once regarded as even above the constitution until recent years when the Turkish military–bureaucratic elite had the upper hand in the foreign and security policy domain. 30. For an outline of the most radical changes in the top security document of the country since the end of the Cold War, see Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, “Kırmızı Kitapta Köklü Değişim,” Milliyet, August 23, 2010. www.milliyet.com.tr/kirmizi-kitapta-kokludegisim/asli-aydintasbas/siyaset/yazardetay/23.08.2010/1279655/default.htm (accessed August 23, 2010). 31. See the press statement by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu together with his Greek counterpart Dimitris Droutsas, http://www.beyazgazete.com/video/2010/04 /08/turkiye-yunanistan-iliskileri-trtturk.html (accessed August 24, 2010). 32. Oğuzlu, “Soft Power”; Cengiz Çandar, “Turkey’s ‘Soft Power’ Strategy: A New Vision for a Multi-Polar World,” Seta Policy Brief 38 (December 2009): 1–12; Wendy Kristiansen, “Turkey’s Soft Power Successes,” Middle East Online, February 11, 2010. http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/opinion/?id=37160 (accessed September 2, 2010). 33. In effect, Turkey’s relations with the Greek Cypriot part of the Republic of Cyprus (RoC) have not been normalized since 1963, when the RoC turned into a de facto Greek Cypriot state after the forceful expulsion of the Turkish Cypriot community of the RoC from the state machinery. 34. The plan was supported by 65 percent of Turkish Cypriot votes. 35. The AKP suggested the “Belgian Model” as a solution to the Cyprus problem in its election campaign in 2002. According to the AKP, Cyprus settlement could be similar to Belgium where there are basically two main communities—Dutch-speaking Flemish in the north and the French-speaking Valoons in the south—as the main founding elements of the federation. In the same vein, the Greek Cypriots in the South and the Turkish Cypriots in the North of the island can form a similar federal structure, where each will be quite autonomous in its internal affairs, but will share power in the central government similar to the case of Belgium.

122

Ahmet Sözen

36. The prime minister’s chief advisor for foreign policy, Ahmet Davutoğlu, explained publicly the new principles in Turkish foreign policy for first time to CNN Turk, Special Editorial (February 17, 2004). 37. Exclusive interview with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu on the TV program, January 7, 2010, Kanal 24, Küresel Oyun. 38. See the press statement by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, www.abvizyonu.com/ab/Davutoğlu-kibrista-altin-firsatlar-var.html (accessed August 24, 2010). 39. For more detail, see http://www.mfa.gov.tr/no_-216_-21-september-2011_press-statement-on-the-continental-shelf-delimitation-agreement-signed-between-turkeyand-the-trnc.en.mfa (accessed February 29, 2012). 40. For a recent analysis of the Cyprus peace talks, see Ahmet Sözen, “Heading Towards the Defining Moment in Cyprus: Public Opinion vs Realities on the Ground,” Insight Turkey 14, no. 1 (January 2012): 109–29. 41. Regarding the construction of new mosques and organizing summer courses on religious education, there was a huge debate in North Cyprus where the teachers unions accused the AKP government of trying to Islamize the Turkish Cypriots and turn the society into a society of religious communion. For more information, see http://haber.sol.org.tr/devlet-ve-siyaset/akp-kibrisi-cemaatlestiriyor-haberi-16654 (accessed August 30, 2010). 42. During the last few years, several five-star hotels were built in North Cyprus by the Turkish investors. Within 2010, there were gigantic investments: the Cratos Premium Hotel worth $220 million and the Lara Park Hotel worth $140 million. For more detail, www.hurriyet.com.tr/ekonomi/14282955.asp and ekonomi.haberturk.com/turizm /haber/534383-turk-turizminden-kibrisa-dev-yatirim (accessed August 30, 2010), both. 43. For more information, www.sabah.com.tr/Gundem/2010/07/19/kibrisa_su_ mujdesi (accessed August 30, 2010). 44. Sözen, “Turkish Democratization.” 45. The Ergenekon Trial is the famous case that started in 2008 where dozens of retired as well as current military and security personnel are being charged with “membership in an armed organization,” “attempting to eliminate the government by force and violence or to prevent it from doing his job either partially or completely,” “provoking an armed rebellion against the government” and “carrying on an armed rebellion against the government.” bianet.org/english/english/110338-brief-history-of-the-ergenekon-case (accessed September 2, 2010). 46. The Supreme Military Council is Turkey’s highest military decision-making organ which takes place in the General Staff Headquarters and is presided over by the prime minister. The council meets once a year, where the promotion and retirement of military personnel are assessed, in addition to the cases of the military personnel against whom disciplinary action was taken. This year there was clear tension between the government and the military regarding the promotions, which was finally solved with the government decisions being adopted instead of the military’s, which had been usually the tradition until 2010. 47. The government in its public campaigns, such as in the recent meetings to gather support for the referendum on the constitutional changes scheduled on September 12, 2010, describes the status quo as “preventing greater Turkey” to emerge as a global actor. For a very sober account on the recent AKP policies as well as their limitations, see Henry J. Barkey, “Turkey’s Moment of Inflection,” Survival 52, no. 3 (June–July 2010): 39–50.

Chapter Seven

Turkey’s Changing Relations with the Middle East: New Challenges and Opportunities in the 2000s Özlem Tür In August 2009, during a visit to Baghdad, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said, “We do not only see Iraq as a friend and a neighbor but a great partner that we will shape our future with and a country which we should integrate with.”1 He went on to say that, just like with Syria, the new slogan with Iraq would be “common destiny, common history, common future” (El kader el mushterek, et tarih el mushterek, el mustaqbel el mushterek).2 Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been sending similar messages since 2002, and has gone so far as to declare: “A Turk cannot live without an Arab, he who says otherwise is mad.”3 By the end of the 2000s Turkey had begun holding joint cabinet meetings with Syria and Iraq, where possibilities for integration with these countries were being debated. Considering the conflictual nature of Turkey’s relations with the Middle East only a decade ago, such developments were both surprising and intriguing. This chapter aims to analyze the perceived change in Turkey’s relations with the Middle East since the late 1990s, the dynamics behind this shift and the extent of this more recent sense of cooperation and partnership.

The 1990s—A Decade of Conflict Until the end of the 1990s Turkey’s relations with the Middle East had been problematic. Traditionally, the Middle East has been perceived by the Turkish military–bureaucratic elite as a region mired in instability and backwardness. Turkey remained aloof to the developments in the region until the end of the 1980s. Cold War dynamics had played an important role in this situation, putting

123

124

Özlem Tür

Turkey and its southern neighbors, Syria and Iraq, into ideologically divergent camps. The end of the Cold War, rather than bringing an end to these controversies, instead further pulled Turkey and its southern neighbors apart. The securitization of Turkish foreign policy during the 1990s did not lead to any real change as the Cold War ended.4 The threat from the Soviet Union has been replaced by an increasing threat from Turkey’s southern neighbors, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.5 The National Security Policy Document of 1992, while putting Kurdish separatism as the most important threat confronting Turkey, underlined Syria, Iraq, and Iran (with their support of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party—PKK) as Turkey’s main sources of threat.6 The PKK and regional water issues became the major source of conflict with Syria and Iraq, while the threat posed by Iran to the secular nature of the Turkish regime constituted another problem. By the late 1980s, the PKK and water issues had become linked to each other, and relations with Syria became increasingly strained in the following decade. Tensions reached such a level that in 1998 the two countries came to the brink of war. With Iraq, the establishment of the no-fly zone in the north of the country after the first Gulf War was seen as a move that enabled the PKK to find shelter, and this created a security concern for Turkey. Many cross-border operations into Iraq were initiated during this period—the 1995 operation being especially important because of its scope and the reaction it generated from the Arab world against Turkey. With Iran, especially after assassinations of prominent journalists and scholars in Turkey were linked to Iran, Iran became perceived as another important security challenge to the Turkish regime and its secular nature. Turkey, increasingly encircled by “hostile” countries, securitized its foreign policy and began to read the developments in world politics through this lens. This feeling of insecurity became an important factor bringing Turkey and Israel closer during this decade, leading to the signing of a series of agreements in 1996. After a decade of intense conflict, the end of the 1990s witnessed a series of developments that changed this relationship between Turkey and the Middle Eastern countries. Two of these incidents are significant, namely (i) the expulsion of Abdullah Öcalan from Syria, and Turkey’s signing of the Adana Accords with Syria, and (ii) Turkey’s declaration of the military defeat of the PKK in 1999. These developments released Turkish foreign policy from its captivity in the PKK issue and related security priorities. In the following period, Turkish foreign policy under then-Minister of Foreign Affairs Ismail Cem became more active and adopted a “regionally-based foreign policy” that increased the level of cooperation with Turkey’s immediate neighbors and extended neighboring regions. Relations with the Middle Eastern countries were de-securitized and cooperation began. It is interesting to see how, within only a decade, this cooperation reached such unprecedented levels during the first decade of the 2000s.

Turkey’s Changing Relations with the Middle East

125

The 2000s—A Decade of Cooperation, on the Way to Integration? It is possible to argue that Turkey’s relations with the Middle East during the 2000s were characterized by change. It is thus possible to divide Turkey’s relations with the Middle East in the 2000s into three major periods: (i) 1999–2002, years of a normalization and the beginning of dialogue with the Middle East; (ii) 2002-2007, years of intense cooperation and increasing Turkish presence in political, economic and social aspects of Middle Eastern life; (iii) 2007–2011, a deepened relationship; (iv) 2011 onwards, a rethinking of Turkey’s Middle East policy due to challenges and opportunities presented by the Arab Spring.

1999–2002—Years of Normalization and Beginning of Cooperation As argued above, from the end of the 1990s, Turkey’s relations with the Middle East began to change. For example, after the signing of the Adana Accords, relations with Syria improved very rapidly. PKK training camps in Syria were closed down, Syria’s logistical support for the organization ended, Turkey and Syria agreed to establish a direct telephone link, special representatives were appointed for each country’s diplomatic missions, and a system for monitoring security-enhancing measures and their effectiveness was initiated.7 In June 2000, the then Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer attended Hafiz al-Asad’s funeral ceremony, enhancing relations symbolically between the two countries, and paving the way to a further deepening of relations, which came with the signing of a security cooperation agreement. After 1998, as Turkey’s relations with its neighbors were being normalized, the systemic changes due to the September 11 attacks became important. The new environment has provided new challenges and opportunities for Turkey. While on the one hand bringing wars to Turkey’s neighborhood as a part of the “War on Terror” and therefore creating challenges, this new environment provided an opportunity for Turkey to stand out as an example for having managed to reconcile Islam and democracy. 8 During this period, Turkey began to be declared “a model” for the Muslim world by many circles in the West. The argument relied largely on the idea that Turkey was unique, being the only NATO member with an overwhelmingly Muslim population. Moreover, the secularism of Turkey was seen as an alternative to the fanaticism and fundamentalism propagated by reactionary regimes in the region. 9 The Turkish model and the emergence of Turkey as a soft power in the region has been debated since this period. In addition to the impact of September 11, as Altunışık argues, there have been other regional developments and reasons that “contributed to an environment conducive for rethinking in Turkey.”10 These were “the decreasing importance of Arab nationalism, in tandem with a deepening political and economic crisis which has led to a crisis of legitimacy as well as the dilemmas created

126

Özlem Tür

by the ascendancy of political Islam.” Turkey’s domestic context has also contributed to this “rethinking,” “particularly those having to do with political and economic modernization, improvement of relations with the EU and its parallel reform process.”11 “The evolution of political Islamist movement” in the form of the coming to power of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP) would further contribute to this process in the coming years.

2002–2007—The Iraqi War, the Coming to Power of the AKP and Intense Cooperation Between 2002 and 2007, two important developments played a very significant role in enhancing Turkey’s relations with the Middle East: the AKP’s coming to power in 2002 and its vision for Turkish foreign and security policy, and the War in Iraq (2003). The pre-Iraqi war period was marked by negotiations between the AKP government and the U.S. administration on the topic of Turkey’s contribution to the War. U.S. ships navigating in the Mediterranean Sea were ready to deploy American forces onto Turkish territory in order to open a northern front in Iraq before the war initiated. The majority of the Turkish Grand National Assembly voted “yes” to the deployment of the U.S. troops on Turkish soil, but this was short of the constitutional majority necessary to ratify the decision. The “March 1 Motion,” which was the “technical” “no” vote, had important consequences not only for Turkish–U.S. relations but also for Turkey’s relations with the Middle East region at large. In the years that followed, the Iraqi invasion proved more costly than anticipated, and Iraq became afflicted by sectarian divisions and a ruthless insurgency. The U.S. administration singled out Turkey as the reason for failure in Iraq. The tension caused by this elevated after US troops arrested a group of Turkish officers in what was perceived to be a humiliating way in Suleimaniyeh in 2003. Turkey re-securitized its foreign policy following Saddam Hussein’s ouster, which brought back security concerns over the strengthening of Kurdish groups in the north and a possible future dissolution of the Iraqi state. While straining relations with the U.S., the “no vote” increased the popularity of Turkey among the Arab public at large. This move was interpreted in the Arab world as Turkey siding with them against U.S. interventionism. This peak in Turkish popularity on the Arab streets was a novelty not seen in decades.12 Without any doubt, the war in Iraq brought Turkey to the Middle East and compelled it to play a more active role. This, on the one hand, stemmed from the need to fill the vacuum left by Iraq and to prevent any further increase in Iran’s role, and on the other hand, was to prevent the dissolution of Iraq and the creation of a Kurdish state. Turkey could play a very active role filling the power vacuum that emerged after the collapse of Iraq. The U.S. intervention in Iraq changed the balance of power in the Middle East in an unprecedented way. The pro-western Arab regimes, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, that had already been challenged as a result

Turkey’s Changing Relations with the Middle East

127

of the September 11 attacks had further lost their prominence and influence in the region.13 With the collapse of Iraq, being named as “an Arab region without a heartland,” the power vacuum in the Middle East was to be filled by the nonArab states—Iran, Turkey and Israel—and non-state actors.14 The increasing power of Iran has especially been important in this context, alarming “Israel, Turkey, and the core Arab states in equal measure, encouraging a further reworking of the regional balance of power.”15 The rise of Shi’a influence amplified by the creation of a Shi’a crescent in the Middle East consisting of Iran, Iraq’s Shi’a majority, Syria and Hezbollah, became a widely argued concern during this period.16 How Turkey would deal with this challenge became an important question. In addition to opening the door to the rise of Iranian regional influence, the war in Iraq created security concerns regarding the aforementioned U.S. interventionism and the potential disintegration of Iraq, which again compelled Turkey to become more active in the region. Turkey’s lack of support for the U.S. war effort had led the U.S. to rely on other actors in Iraq, the most important of which were the Kurdish groups. As the insurgency increased in Iraq, the Kurdish-populated region became strategically important for the US because of its relative stability. To the contrary, the PKK presence in Northern Iraq and the resumption of PKK activities in Turkey from 2004 made this region a source of threat for Turkey. However, given the other troubles in Iraq and considering the state of Turkish–U.S. relations, the U.S. administration was reluctant to do anything to disturb the calm in the north, and until 2008, Iraq re-emerged as a security concern for Turkey. Turkey’s regional presence took the form of its participation in multiple organizations, the promotion of its profile in these organizations and the enhancement of its diplomatic relations around the region on multiple levels. Its growing security concerns over the developments in Iraq also were another commonality with many Arab countries. These security concerns were shared by Syria and Iran, bringing these three countries closer to each other. As Hale noted, the “no vote” “removed what would certainly have been a serious cause of conflict between Turkey and Iran.”17 Turkey since 2003 had brought Iraq’s neighbors together on a platform of common security concerns. Since 2002, in addition to the changing balance of power in the region in the wake of the Iraq War, the other major factor steering Turkish relations with the Middle East has been the coming to power of the AKP government and its vision of foreign policy. By the time the AKP came to power, Turkish foreign policy was already enjoying positive and cooperative relations with the Middle Eastern countries. However, with the rise of the AKP—“Turkey’s Transformers,”18 called by Abramowitz and Barkey—and with the appointment of Ahmet Davutoğlu by Prime Minister Erdoğan first as chief advisor on foreign policy issues, and then as Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2009, Turkish foreign and security policy, priorities, objectives, and methods began to be redefined.

128

Özlem Tür

Turkish Foreign Policy and the AKP Era: The Framework of Change The impact of Davutoğlu on foreign affairs has been so striking that some scholars have dubbed Turkey’s post-2002 foreign policy an era of “Davudism.”19 His foreign policy vision is apparent in his writings, the Strategic Depth being the core of these, which were written before and during his appointment to the advisory post and since his tenure as foreign minister from 2009.20 These writings, which relate closely to Turkey’s relations with the Middle East, place emphasis on the necessity for “change” in the understanding and methods of foreign policy making, as well as on the need for a redefinition of geography and history. Firstly, the AKP vision involved a change in the traditional Turkish foreign policy, which is often referred to as being static, reactionary and passive.21 The AKP call for change in this static foreign policy orientation came at a time of “great world transformation.” In criticizing the traditional, Kemalist foreign policy, which defined Turkey as a “bridge,” Davutoğlu argues that Turkey should transform itself from a peripheral, flank country in a bridge role into a central country. More specifically, he prefers a pro-active foreign policy based on “rhythmic diplomacy” that focuses on the importance of direct talks, enhanced diplomatic initiatives and active participation in international organizations. These instruments have become especially visible where Turkey acted as a mediator in various Middle East crises. Davutoğlu claims that “none of our foreign policy objectives is reactive. We are not trying to respond [to] crisis. But our foreign policy is visionary; a vision based on human rights, historical continuity, geographical continuity, peace and stability, and economic interdependence. This visionary approach, we hope . . . contribute [to] the surrounding regions and [to] the global peace.”22 Secondly, change at a time of transformation is seen as essential in this foreign policy vision because the world is witnessing the emergence of a new geopolitics and order. According to Davutoğlu, the end of the Cold War obliged countries like Turkey to redefine their geographical location. He argues that Turkish foreign policy needs to be “redirected” in line with the necessities of the new order: You must reinterpret your geography and history when international context is changing. What I tried to do was to reinterpret geography and history within this new international context. How was this interpretation [?], my assumption was this, “Turkey has to reintegrate with the neighboring zones.” Turkey should not be alienated from the neighboring zones. This is the destiny of this country. We cannot have permanent enemies. We have to have permanent friends or a new approach of reintegration with the neighboring zones. We have to have, of course, the objective of full membership to EU, but even for this objective we have to deal with our neighborhood, as well.23

Turkey’s Changing Relations with the Middle East

129

The impact of Davutoğlu on foreign affairs can be seen especially in his understanding of geography. He argues that after the end of the Cold War a new geopolitics emerged wherein the formerly alienated regions started to interact on cultural, economic or political grounds. He underlines that in the new geopolitics, “a new concept of global political governance should be formulated based on a new concept of security and freedom for all humanity, not just for some people, for some continents or for some nations. Also an economic global order needs to be formed with a new value, a just distribution.”24 Taken at its extreme, these ideas might be seen as a manifestation of defiance against Western supremacy and Western political, economic and cultural hegemony. On the cultural scene as well, Davutoğlu claims that there was a need “for a new thinking, a new inclusive cultural order as the cultural concepts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries cannot be valid in the new century.” 25 Therefore, according to Davutoğlu, the need for a new concept of political, economic and cultural order lies at the core of the worldview of the AKP government.26 From this perspective, Turkey, by redefining its geography, is thought to have found its roots, its real soul in its local region, and it has become a significant and powerful regional player. As Davutoğlu argues, “Turkey has become an important actor in the region (the Middle East) and is not building relations with Lebanon via Paris, just like Baghdad via Washington. Turkey is there in the region and will continue to be there and every actor that wants to be influential in the region will relate to Turkey with its weight [there].”27 For the AKP government, Turkey, in this new global order, needs to position itself accordingly, and through pro-active politics, play a prominent role in the regional system. However, this foreign policy reorientation has given rise to criticisms that Turkey has shifted the axis of its foreign policy from the West to the East, particularly to the Islamic world. Thirdly, in addition to the geographical redefinition, a historical dimension needs to be revisited and redefined. Davutoğlu talks about a historical responsibility of Turkey towards her neighboring regions, which had been previously ruled by the Ottomans. Along this line of thinking, Turkey has responsibilities in its surrounding regions that stem from their shared Ottoman past. A combination of the redefinition of the geography and the redefinition of history—the desire to return to a rather “romanticized Ottoman past”—lies at the core of the AKP’s foreign policy vision, which is best reflected towards the Middle East region. This redefinition of geography and history brings with it the idea that the current regional borders were artificially created by western powers, irrespective of geographical characteristics. By this logic, Turkey’s current borders with its southern neighbors are artificial, and there is a need to reintegrate with the neighboring regions in order to overcome this artificiality. The newly formulated policies of “zero-problems with neighbors,” “security for all” and “economic interdependency and integration” find their reflections in Davutoğlu’s message: For example, Turkish-Syrian territory is not natural at all. Throughout the centuries, there was not such a border between Turkey and Syria or between [Gazi]Antep and Aleppo. Antep and Aleppo, they were “twin cities” for thou-

130

Özlem Tür sands of years, then suddenly there was a border. First it was a national border between Turkey and Syria then it became a border of two poles during [the] Cold War and we had to protect that border with mines. . . . Mosul and Diyarbakir, Arbil and Mardin, they were not alienated from each other throughout the centuries. Suddenly, all these cities were alienated from each other. . . . These cities have lost their importance as well because they have lost their hinterlands.28

As this argument suggests, there is not only the need to rebuild this hinterland through an economic interdependency and the elimination of borders (the lifting of visa requirements for regional neighbors in 2009 was a turning point for this, as will be seen below), but also, once regions are integrated, peace is expected to prevail in this thinking. Looking at the neo-functionalist integration of the EU, economic integration is thus seen as a key for building and maintaining peace in the region. These arguments make better sense when the role of the business community in Turkish foreign policy-making is taken into consideration and the geoeconomic dimension of foreign policy is taken into account. 29 The AKP’s foreign policy vision includes in it an active role for businessmen and civil society in general. In Strategic Depth, Davutoğlu argued that “the activities of civil society, business organizations and numerous other organizations” are a part of the new foreign policy vision30 and later also continued to underline the point that the business community in Turkey has become one of the driving forces of foreign policy.31 Many studies emphasize the link between the AKP and the business communities, arguing that there is a “business mentality” behind Turkey’s foreign policy in general and opening up to the Middle East in particular.32 At a time when relations with the European Union were not bringing expected economic benefits, the Middle East became an important region for trade. 33 Kirişçi uses the “trading state” as a conceptual framework to understand the current Turkish foreign policy. Based on the argument of Rosecrance, Kirişçi writes that since the mid-1990s, “Turkey . . . has been in the process of becoming a ‘trading state,’ as foreign trade has steadily grown and come to constitute a growing proportion of its economy.”34 Thus, this process led Turkey to follow a policy of economic interdependence in its relations with most of its neighbors in the 2000s, the Middle East constituting the primary example.35 Turkey as a G-20 member and the world’s sixteenth-largest economy, with a GDP of approximately $736 billion in 2010, would become the center of economic activity in the region.36 In line with the model of the trading state, the tools of foreign policy also began to change, as its use of soft power in dealing with Middle Eastern neighbors has put forward. As Keridis puts it for the AKP, national interest was not only defined in terms of military strength and security but also in terms of soft power.37 Developments from 2002 onwards confirm the increased emphasis on soft power, debate on the “Turkish model” and the redefinition of history and geography in Turkey’s relations with the Middle East.

Turkey’s Changing Relations with the Middle East

131

Issues and Developments in Turkish–Middle Eastern Relations (2002–2007) Against this backdrop, Turkey’s relations with the Arab countries have become notably closer since the early era of the AKP government. In particular, Turkey began to get more actively involved in the Palestinian issue, 38 and relations with Syria developed despite heavy U.S. criticism. Then Turkish President Sezer’s visit in April 2005 was especially important in this context. Criticism of Sezer’s visit to Damascus was voiced by then U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman, who was reported to have described “the US, EU countries and Egypt [as being] in consensus to place sanctions on Syria, and that they were expecting Turkey to support the decisions of the international community.”39 Edelman further implied that this visit would result in Turkey’s marginalization by the international community. Despite such criticism, whether Turkey’s seemingly autonomous policy concerning its relations with Syria in particular, and with the Middle East in general, in defiance of the United States, could also be regarded as a pursuit of a coordinated policy between the United States and Turkey became an important debate during this period. Oktav pointed out that “Turkey’s stakes in its relationship with the United States appear to be too high to be completely risked for the sake of improving bilateral relations with Syria. No government in Turkey, including the AKP government, has been willing to forfeit its ‘alliance’ with the United States.”40 Uzgel, on the other hand, argued that despite the visibility of U.S. opposition to Turkey’s relations with Syria, implicitly the U.S. supports closer relations between the two countries. He noted that Syria allying itself with Turkey, a western ally, would pull Syria away from Iran, which would clearly be in line with U.S. and Israeli interests in the region. 41 The developments over the following years in U.S.–Syrian relations seemed to confirm this opinion. Calls for engaging Syria began to be heard more loudly as the U.S. media pursued the topic of how to normalize relations and involve Syria in regional developments. Syria was on the agenda of the United States, a development understood by the leadership in Turkey and especially among the AKP. 42 Turkey’s initiation of close relations with Syria despite U.S. criticism was taken on the grounds that they were in the region’s interests, and resulted in a change of opinion in the international arena as well. Constructive bilateral relations with Syria boosted the confidence of Turkey in its relations with other countries and groups in the region. In subsequent years, Turkey has tried a similar pattern of pursuit with other countries in the region. For instance, Turkey has attempted to involve Hamas in regional politics since the Palestinian elections of 2006, and voted “no” on the UN Security Council’s proposal to place sanctions on Iran, despite criticism from the international community. Encouraged by the Syrian experience, Turkey began to pursue a rather independent foreign policy. The Palestinian issue became a highly prioritized issue on Turkey’s foreign policy agenda, especially after the 2006 Palestinian elections, when Khaled Mashal, the leader of Hamas, has come to Turkey. Despite heavy criticism from

132

Özlem Tür

Israel, Turkey declared that talking to Hamas was a part of its official strategy to “talk to all parties” and communicate its messages of democracy and dialogue with every group and sect in the region. Turkey pursued this practice in its relations with Lebanon as well, talking to every sect in the country and helping to build a balanced polity. This approach bore fruit during the 2008 crisis in Lebanon. In a similar fashion, Turkey had previously facilitated the process of bringing together Iraqi Sunni groups and the U.S. authorities in Iraq, contributing to the attempts to convince Sunni groups to participate in the 2005 Iraqi elections. 43 The amelioration of Turkey’s relations with its Middle Eastern neighbors during this period led to divided opinions about Turkish foreign policy.44 One camp has viewed the change in Turkey’s relations towards the Middle East as positive—unconditionally appreciative of the AKP policies. Contrarily, another camp is critical of government policies on two grounds: They argue that these practices bring Turkey closer to radical Islamic groups, which is a challenge to its secular characteristic. They also argue that Turkey has become a silent and rather compliant partner of the United States, acting as part of a pre-designed grand strategy within which Turkey has become a pawn. A third camp, while supportive of Turkey’s foreign policy activism, is concerned with and suspicious about the implications of such activism. They criticize the AKP government for having pursued principles, like zero-problems, security for all, and dialogue, in the realm of foreign policy but has failed to implement these principles in domestic politics. In fact, they accuse the AKP of having become more authoritarian at home.45

2007–2011—Deepening and Integration From 2007 onwards Turkey’s relations with the Middle East region deepened to unprecedented levels, marked by the establishment of bilateral High Level Strategic Councils with Syria and Iraq separately, where both cabinets, Turkey and Syria, and Turkey and Iraq, would meet regularly and decide on important issues jointly. The abandonment of a conflictual foreign policy has also been visible with Turkey’s mediation efforts concerning regional conflicts, and the lifting of visa requirements with neighbors. Turkey’s aspirations to mediate conflicts in the region, especially between Syria and Israel, Syria and Iraq, and between the Lebanese groups, have been considerable. Davutoğlu praises Turkey’s mediation efforts, as Turkey has been the only country able to talk to nearly all countries and groups in the region, Israel recently being exempted from this list: After all, why are Turkey’s prime minister, president, and minister of foreign affairs paying continuous visits to the Middle East? Because they are the only leaders who can contact all Middle Eastern leaders. If, for instance, there were no diplomatic relationship between two powerful countries such as Iran and Egypt, and if their leaders did not meet, there would be little possibility for establishing order in the Middle East. . . . Turkey has undertaken many positive

Turkey’s Changing Relations with the Middle East

133

promoter roles among Middle Eastern states in recent years, some of which have been visible and some invisible to the public eye. Those countries have found every confidence in Turkey. Today, Turkey and its diplomatic means have proven to be the strongest and most reliable channels, not only between states, but also between communities and non-state actors. All parties acknowledge this. When a message or a concern has to be delivered from one place to another, Turkish channels are utilized.46

Among Turkey’s mediation efforts, one of the most significant has been along the Syrian-Israeli track.47 Turkey’s role as a mediator in the conflict between Israel and Syria came to the agenda in 2004. According to Israeli sources, it was Israel that hesitated; “it took Israel three years to accept the offer.”48 But by 2007, public opinion had matured, the groundwork for indirect talks was prepared, and four rounds of indirect talks were ultimately held. Just as the fifth round was underway, it was cut off by Israel’s Operation Cast Lead. Although the mediation brought no results in solving the conflict, it was important in showing Turkey as a trustworthy player in the region—both to Arabs and to Israel—until 2009. It was also important in showing the extent of Turkish-Syrian relations.49 For example, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad expressed in an interview that Syria deeply valued Turkey’s support and that Turkey had its blessing to communicate Syria’s messages to any party: “We have full trust in Turkey. Let me give you an example: Even if we do not ask them, [Turkey] talks about us to Washington, tells our opinions. This is very important. Besides, the role it played in negotiations with Israel was very important. Because of this, relations have come to a point where Turkey can speak for us.” 50 Turkey also played a mediator role in Syria’s troubled relations with Iraq after a series of bombs exploded in Baghdad’s Green Zone in August 2009. The Maliki government had blamed the Syrian government for the bombings and held Damascus responsible for supporting terrorist activities and aiming to destabilize Iraq. The Iraqi ambassador had been called back as a result. As the tension escalated, Davutoğlu traveled to Baghdad and Damascus to “learn about the opinions of both parties over the developments and to communicate Turkey’s position within this context.” Davutoğlu proposed to Iraq: “Tell us every message you want to have communicated to Syria and give us all the evidence and information, and we will pass it on to the Syrian side.” 51 In the period that followed, Turkey brought the foreign ministers of Iraq and Syria together in Istanbul. At the meeting, Turkey not only mediated the crisis but also invited both countries to establish a tripartite border security mechanism aimed at combating PKK, al-Qaeda and Ba‘athist forces in Iraq.52 The tension was eased in the following period as a result of this effort. The new visa regime implemented in 2009 opened a new chapter in Turkey’s relations with the Middle East. That Turkey lifted visa requirements with Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iran was considered to be the creation of a “Şamgen,” replicating the Schengen visa-free zone of the EU.53 As Davutoğlu expressed, “We are lifting borders that were artificially laid and becoming the people of one hinterland. We are turning economic cooperation into an economic unity. We are hoping that this will be a model for all our neighbors.” 54 By

134

Özlem Tür

means of increased economic interdependency in the region, regional tensions would be sidelined and peace would be maintained. Davutoğlu stated, “Now, do you expect any low-level tension between Turkey and Syria? No. If I assume that, not these leaders but possible other leaders . . . want to create problem between Turkey and Syria, people [will] rebel against their leaders, I mean people of Antep and people of Aleppo. Because, now they are getting a benefit . . . out of these good relations. This is the best way to peace.”55 Among several implications of the argument that economic cooperation breeds peace in the region is Turkey’s policy towards Iraq. As Davutoğlu declared, despite the domestic opposition in Turkey “to isolate Northern Iraq in the economic sense, close the border, close the Habor Gate,” the government “believes that the best way to peace is economic interdependency. Today the Northern Iraqi economy is integrated with the Turkish economy. When I went to Arbil last year as the first Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs to visit Arbil, at the Bazaar of Arbil, they celebrated, they welcomed, and it was like a Turkish city: Turkish advertisements, companies, etc. Now how can you close borders to them? Closing borders would not bring peace or security; making borders irrelevant brings you security, like in the EU case.”56 As argued above, contrary to the amelioration of a constructive activism towards Muslim neighbors, including Turkey’s role in the mediation processes and the economic integration with the region have contributed to Turkey’s emerging soft power in the region. 57 Turkey’s relations with Israel have deteriorated steadily since Israel’s December 2008 Operation Cast Lead. This deterioration can mainly be explained by the disappearance of factors that had brought Turkey and Israel together during the 1990s, including the changing of the balance of power in the region after the War in Iraq and developments in the Palestinian issue. There is also the question that relations also worsened due to the AKP’s ideological stance against Israel.58 Relations were cut off after the Mavi Marmara incident, and the deterioration of relations and Prime Minister Erdoğan’s harsh criticism of Israel’s policies have further increased Turkey’s popularity on the Arab streets.

2011 Onwards—Rethinking Turkey’s Middle East Policy Since the eruption of events in Tunisia and later in Egypt, Turkey found itself faced with new challenges and opportunities. The AKP has welcomed the changes in Tunisia and Egypt, has quickly embraced the idea of change in these countries, calling Mubarak to respond to popular demand and step down as the popular uprising was still going on.59 Turkey provided credits to Tunisia and offered help in the rebuilding of the state mechanism after Ben Ali. However, when the events erupted in Libya and later in Syria the challenges became more obvious. Turkey hesitated to act with the NATO forces in intervening into Libya, making Erdoğan to make controversial statements during this period. Initial-

Turkey’s Changing Relations with the Middle East

135

ly Erdoğan argued that they will not let any foreign power to intervene into the country, while later becoming a part of NATO’s military offensive against the Qaddafi regime. This can be read as Turkey’s independent policy towards the region being limited by its responsibilities stemming from its alliances— NATO—in this case. The issue became especially complicated as the events began in Syria. Turkey’s initial response was that it can help the Asad regime to reform. Considering the depth of the relations of the past decade, Turkey had the idea that the relations have reached such a critical stage that Turkey could make Asad listen to Turkey’s advice and that Turkey could guide Syria through the arduous process of reform. However, this only lasted for a short term, as despite advise from Turkey, Damascus was far away from implementing real and satisfactory reform measures and began hard-handedly suppressing public protests.60 The Syrian case is important in forcing Turkey to reconsider some important pillars of its Middle East policy, like zero problems with neighbors and a vision of a “borderless Middle East.” The deterioration of relations with Syria reversed the cooperation and deepening trends in the relationship and led once again to crisis and conflict with the Syrian regime. Iran, as the staunch ally of Syria, has strengthened its relations with Syria during this period, also leading to straining of Turkey-Iranian relations. This was mainly because of the two countries’ position, policy and recommendations for the future on Syria diverging radically from each other. In a few months, Turkey’s zero-problems with neighbors seem to be transformed to many problems with neighbors, due to the recent events. The economic losses due to events in Libya and later in Syria— not only in terms of trade but also investments—have also been significant in this context. Despite these challenges, the developments have also presented Turkey once again more rigorously as a model for the region, especially for postuprising countries. Turkey, once again, was presented as a democratic country with a Muslim population, ready to transfer its own experiences to these countries in the process of re-organizing the state mechanism and making new constitutions. Within this framework, it is important to underline that Turkey is not without its limits. Going beyond the question of the acceptability of the Turkish model for the region and whether the Turkish “model” could be implemented in other contexts, Turkey’s own Kurdish issue and itself being in a rather difficult new constitution-making process needs to be noted.

Conclusion It is possible to argue that the AKP government and Ahmet Davutoğlu have shaped Turkey’s relations with the Middle East after coming to power in 2002. Finding an already suitable environment for a more active role in the region, the AKP government based its policies on the theme of change. Bringing peace and security to the region through the creation of economic interdependency and dialogue seems to be the major concern. This goes hand in hand with the idea of positioning Turkey as the leader of the region as well. However, to what extent

136

Özlem Tür

these policies have become successful are questionable. Apart from a lively economic relationship and much travel around the region by policy-makers, as well as the freer movement of people, what has Turkey achieved in its relations with the Middle East? Even at the height of its relations with Syria, Turkey seemed to be lacking any concrete agreements regarding the Hatay issue and water rights to the Tigris and Euphrates. Turkey has alienated Israel for the sake of relations with Hamas, and therefore handicapped its position as the single party capable of communicating with every regional group, its strength until 2008. Its non-objective stance on the Palestinian issue has had the same result, and has led to its exclusion from the recent Arab-Israeli peace process, to which Egypt and Jordan were invited. Although the achievements have had their limitations, it is interesting to see how the foreign relations policies pursued in the Middle East fit in with the AKP government’s policies at home. This is what Han has described as a good example of “omnibalancing”—in order to stay in power the government “not only tries to deter the external threats but also uses the foreign policy to keep the domestic contenders in check.”61 Foreign relations are seen as generators of support in the domestic arena, appealing through the economy, mobilizing identity issues and morality—the use of a discourse of unity with Muslims, supporting the oppressed and opposing the tyrant. Particularly since the AKP began its second term in office in 2007, it is possible to observe that foreign policy issues in general, but mostly those relating to the Middle East, have begun to be used for gathering or enhancing the domestic popularity of the government. This can be seen especially in issues relating to the Palestinian problem, which has traditionally been a popular and an important issue for the Turkish public. During the 1970s, the issue was undertaken as a cause by leftist groups. In the 1990s and 2000s, the issue was upheld mainly by Islamist circles, but it also began to appeal to a much broader constituency, and has been embraced as a human rights issue. Within this context, the government has been more active in bringing the Palestinian issue to the agenda of world politics. This has primarily been done by attacking Israel in public speeches and on international platforms, such as the Davos Summit of 2009. Rather than having an effect on the international context, these actions have resulted in an increasing popularity of the government domestically. Street demonstrations and support for the AKP’s anti-Israeli statements have become common practice during this period. The Mavi Marmara incident, a civil initiative to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza and thus to break the Gaza blockade, was openly supported by the government. The Israeli attack on the ship which resulted in the deaths of Turkish citizens on board brought a new dimension to Turkish-Israeli relations and became an important tool used by the government to gather support. As the incident unfolded and public demonstrations broke out, the ongoing question of whether Turkey was shifting its axis from West to East began to be discussed with more urgency. On the international scene as well, as observers watched Ankara’s integration with Damascus and alliance with Tehran, there emerged a wide discussion on “Who lost Turkey?”62

Turkey’s Changing Relations with the Middle East

137

The AKP government has rejected the speculation about a shift in axis and has tried to explain Turkey’s activism in the region as part of an organic process. Portraying Turkey’s relations with the region in previous decades as artificial and “foreign-imposed,” the closer ties have been put forward as normal, or what Prime Minister Erdoğan has called “the river finding its natural path.” However, especially since 2007, it seems that relations with the region have become something more than normalization. The Turkish government appears to be prioritizing domestic constituencies at home while courting the people on the streets elsewhere in the region, rather than working with their respective governments or the world community and international organizations. Turkey’s closer relations with the Middle East seem to provide opportunities for the economic benefit of its supporters through policies aimed at economic interdependence. Thus, foreign policy becomes a supporting ground for the ruling party. The AKP also sends the message, both domestically and to the international community, that its actions are taken from a morally superior position, as when it is talking to alienated and isolated groups, trying to include them in diplomatic processes or sending the right messages to these disaffected parties when no other actor will communicate with them. However, this policy does not always bring morally upright results. In diplomacy, both the carrot and the stick are necessary, and talking to every party, including those that the international community is actively trying to isolate, like Hamas or Sudan’s al-Bashir, might serve to legitimize the party’s unilateral actions rather than persuade it to act in accordance with international consensus. Under the AKP government and Davutoğlu’s vision, Turkey’s relations with the Middle East have reached impressive levels. Not only have relations between states been improved, but also relations between peoples. However, despite these achievements, the party’s success should not be exaggerated, nor should its limitations be ignored when evaluating effective foreign policy. Despite all the achievements in deepening the relationship, as the example of the latest developments with Syria proves, the relations still remain fragile and short of creating larger constituencies to affect and limit state behavior.

Notes 1. “Savaşın Eşiğinden Sınırsız Dostluğa,” Zaman, October 14, 2009. 2. Ibid. 3. “Türk Arapsız Yaşayamaz, Kim ki Yaşar Der, Delidir,” Radikal, June 10, 2010. 4. Concepts of securitization and desecuritization coined by the Copenhagen School, in contrast to traditional approaches to security, examine how a certain issue is transformed by an actor into a matter of security. In the words of Buzan, Waever and de Wilde, “Securitization is an extreme version of politicization that enables the use of extraordinary means in the name of security.” See Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998), 25.

138

Özlem Tür

5. For a detailed analysis of Turkey’s foreign policy from 1990s to 2000s see Özlem Tür and Ahmet K. Han, “A Framework for Understanding the Changing Turkish Foreign Policy of the 2000s,” in Turkey in the 21st Century, ed. Özden Zeynep Oktav (Surrey: Ashgate, 2011), 7–29. 6. Malik Mufti, “From Swamp to Backyard: The Middle East in Turkish Foreign Policy,” in The Middle East Enters the Twenty First Century, ed. Robert O. Freedman, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002), 80–110. 7. Meliha Altunışık and Özlem Tür, “From Distant Neighbors to Partners? Changing Syrian-Turkish Relations,” Security Dialogue 37, no. 2 (June 2006): 229–48. 8. Fuat Keyman, “Globalization, Modernity and Democracy: In Search of a Viable Domestic Polity for a Sustainable Turkish Foreign Policy,” New Perspectives on Turkey 40 (2009): 7–27. 9. George Gruen, “Turkey’s Regional Role in the Aftermath of September 11, 2001,” American Foreign Policy Interests 24 (2002): 3–29. 10. Meliha Altunışık, “The Possibilities and Limits of Turkey’s Soft Power in the Middle East,” Insight Turkey 10, no. 2, (2008): 42–43. 11. Ibid. 12. By the end of the decade, Turkey’s popularity in the Middle East reached very high levels. For this point see Mensur Akgün, Gökçe Perçinoğlu, and Sabiha Senyücel Gündoğar, “The Perception of Turkey in the Middle East 2010,” Tesev Publications, February 2, 2011. 13. Anoush Ehteshami, “Middle East’s New Power Dynamics,” Current History 108, no. 722 (2009): 398. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., 395. 16. Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future (New York: W.W. Norton Company, 2006). 17. William Hale, “Turkey and the Middle East in the New Era,” Insight Turkey 11, no. 3 (2009): 154. 18. Morton Abramowitz and Henri J. Barkey, “Turkey’s Transformers: The AKP Sees Big,” Foreign Affairs, 88, no. 6 (November/December 2009): 118–28. 19. Çağrı Erhan, Türk Dış Politikasının Güncel Sorunları (Imaj: Ankara, 2010), 3. 20. Ahmet Davutoğlu, Stratejik Derinlik (İstanbul: Küre, 2001). 21. For a comprehensive discussion of Turkish foreign policy in the 2000s, see Özlem Tür and Ahmet K. Han, “A Framework for Understanding the Changing Turkish Foreign Policy in the 2000s” (forthcoming in Özden Zeynep Oktav, ed., Turkey in the 21st Century: Quest for a New Foreign Policy? under contract with Ashgate). 22. Speech by Ahmet Davutoğlu at the Conference on Turkey’s Foreign Policy in a Changing World at the University of Oxford, published with the title “Turkish Vision of Regional and Global Order: Theoretical Background and Practical Implementation,” Political Reflections 1, no. 2 (June–August 2010): 50. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid., 40. 25. Ibid. 26. For an analysis that looks at Turkey’s relations with the Middle East from a “worldviews” perspective see Meliha Altunışık, “Worldviews and Turkish Foreign Policy in the Middle East,” New Perspectives on Turkey 40 (2009): 169–92. 27. Davutoğlu’s statements on CNN Türk, January 2, 2008, 20:30–23:22. 28. Davutoğlu, “Turkish Vision of Regional,” 42–43.

Turkey’s Changing Relations with the Middle East

139

29. Şaban Kardaş, “Turkey: Redrawing the Middle East Map or Building Sandcastles?” Middle East Policy 17, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 122–23. 30. Davutoğlu, Stratejik Derinlik, 83. 31. Ahmet Han, “The World of Business Now Spearheads Foreign Policy,” an interview with Ahmet Davutoğlu, Turkish Time, April–May 2004. 32. For a detailed analysis of AKP’s relations with the business community see Şebnem Gümüşçü and Deniz Sert, “The Power of the Devout Bourgeoisie: The Case of Justice and Development Party in Turkey,” Middle Eastern Studies 45, no. 6 (November 2009): 953–68. 33. For a detailed analysis of the political economy of Turkey’s relations with the Middle East see Özlem Tür, “Economic Relations with the Middleeast Under the AKP– Trade, Business Community and Reintegration with Neighboring Zones,” Turkish Studies 12, no. 4 (2011): 589–602. 34. Kirişçi, “The Transformation of Turkish,” 33. 35. Ibid., 42. 36. The Economist Pocket World in Figures 2011 (London: Profile Books, 2010), 228. 37. Dimitris Keridis, “Foreign Strategies and Domestic Choices: Balancing between Power Politics and Interdependence,” in The Future of Turkish Foreign Policy, ed. Lenore Martin and Dimitris Keridis (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004), 329. 38. For example, Prime Minister Erdoğan in a 2004 speech said that Israel was doing state terror against the Palestinians. His statement, after the March 1 motion, further increased Turkey’s and Erdoğan’s popularity in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein was not every group’s enemy in the region after all, but Ariel Sharon definitely was. 39. “ABD: Suriye’ye Bastırın,” Radikal, March 15, 2005. 40. Özden Zeynep Oktav, “The Limits of Change: Turkey, Iran, Syria,” in Contentious Issues of Security and the Future of Turkey, ed. Nurşin Ateşoğlu Güney (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 93. 41. İlhan Uzgel, “Dış Politikada AKP: Stratejik Konumdan Stratejik Modele,” in AKP Kitabı–Bir Dönüşümün Bilançosu, ed. İlhan Uzgel and Bülent Duru (Ankara: Phoneix, 2009), 364. 42. Thomas Friedman, “Talking Turkey to Syria,” New York Times, July 26, 2006. 43. Meliha Altunışık, “Turkey’s Changing Middle East Policy,” UNISCI Discussion Papers, no. 23 (May 2010): 154. 44. For a detailed discussion see Nur Bilge Criss, “The Parameters of Turkish Foreign Policy under the AKP Governments,” UNISCI Discussion Papers, no. 23 (May 2010): 9–22. 45. For a similar categorization and a critical approach to the AKP’s foreign policy mainly because of its “use and abuse of history,” see Criss, “Parameters of Turkish,” 10. 46. Ahmet Davutoğlu, “Turkish Foreign Policy Vision: An Assessment of 2007,” Insight Turkey 10, no. 1 (2008): 85. 47. For a discussion on Turkey’s third party roles in the Middle East see Altunışık, “Turkey’s Changing Middle East Policy,” 157–61. 48. Interview with Alon Liel, who was part of the negotiations. Jerusalem, November 22, 2008. 49. For details of Turkish-Syrian relations see Özlem Tür, “Turkish-Syrian Relations in the 2000s—Where are We Going?” UNISCI Discussion Papers, no. 23 (May 2010): 163–75. 50. Mehmet Ali Birand, “İsrail’e ve Avrupa’ya Sırtını Dönmüş bir Türkiye Cazip Değil,” Posta, November 8, 2009.

140

Özlem Tür

51. “Davutoğlu Devrede,” Milliyet, September 1, 2009. 52. Uğur Ergan, “Türkiye-Suriye arasında Üçlü Mekanizma Kurulacak,” Hürriyet, September 17, 2009. 53. “Erdoğan: Şengen de Var, Şamgen de Var,” Sabah, September 17, 2009. 54. Zeynep Gürcanlı, “Türkiye-Suriye için Fransız-Alman Modeli,” Hürriyet, October 13, 2009. 55. Davutoğlu, “Turkish Vision of Regional,” 47. 56. Ibid., 48. 57. The popularity of Turkish soap operas in the Arab world is also shown by some analysts as a proof of Turkey’s increasing soft power in the region. For a discussion on the soft power of Turkey in the Middle East see Altunışık, “The Possibilities and Limits,” 41–54. 58. For a detailed analysis of Turkish-Israeli relations and different approaches, see Ofra Bengio, “Altercating Interests and Orientations between Israel and Turkey: A View from Israel,” Insight Turkey 11, no. 2 (April–June 2009): 43–55; Gökhan Bacık, “Turkish-Israeli Relations after Davos: A View from Turkey,” Insight Turkey 11, no. 2 (April– June 2009): 31–41; İlker Aytürk, “Between Crises and Cooperation: The Future of Turkish-Israeli Relations,” Insight Turkey 11, no. 2 (April–June 2009): 57–74. For an analysis of how relations with Israel have become a part of Turkey’s domestic politics see Ali Balcı, “Türkiye’nin Dış Politikası ve İsrail: 1990lar ve 2000lere İlişkin bir Karşılaştırma,” Ortadoğu Etütleri 2, no. 2 (January 2011): 117–36. 59. “Başbakan Erdoğan Mübarek’e Seslendi,” Haberturk, February 1, 2011. http://www.haberturk.com/dunya/haber/597069-basbakan-erdogan-mubareke-seslendi. 60. Eyüp Can, “Türkiye Esad’a Nasıl Seslenecek,” Radikal, August 9, 2011. 61. Ahmet K. Han, “From ‘Strategic Partnership’ to ‘Model Partnership’: AKP, Turkish-US Relations and the Prospects under Obama,” UNISCI Discussion Papers, no. 23 (May 2010): 108. 62. Soner Çağaptay’s answer is “Turkey Lost Turkey,” Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2010.

Chapter Eight

Switching Sides or Novel Force? Turkey’s Relations with Israel and the Palestinians Nathalie Tocci Turkey’s security policies in the Middle East have attracted much attention as of late. Indeed, Turkey’s policies towards Israel, the Palestinians and the broader Arab-Israeli conflict have undergone a systemic shift. In the 1990s Turkey’s approach was marked by a strategic military relationship with Israel and support for the Oslo process. Its relationship with the Palestinians and the Arab world more broadly were characterized by tension and suspicion. Today TurkishIsraeli cooperation has continued, yet with the outbreak of the second intifada and the aggravation of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Turkish-Israeli political relations have deteriorated, reaching an all-time low in 2010. Concomitantly, Turkish-Palestinian relations have deepened, and unlike the United States and the European Union (EU), Turkey has kept open political channels with Hamas. In light of these dynamics, this chapter assesses Turkey’s transformed foreign and security policies towards Israel and Palestine, explaining what brought about these changes, and what their implications might be. This chapter first maps the transformation in Turkey’s approach towards Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). It then examines the complex interplay of factors, including international, regional and domestic dynamics, which have shaped the nature of Turkey’s relations with Israel and the OPT as well as Turkish involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict more broadly. The chapter then explores Turkey’s impact on the larger region, focusing on what Turkey’s potential is to alter the conflictual dynamics bedeviling the Middle East, a potential that hinges on Turkish policies continuing to be guided by universal rights and law.

141

142

Nathalie Tocci

Mapping the Change in Turkey’s Policies towards Israel and Palestine Turkish foreign policy towards Israel, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict has been marked by three sets of changes over the last decade: the deterioration of relations with Israel, the improvement of relations with the Palestinians, and a newfound Turkish role in mediation in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Deterioration of Relations with Israel Turkey has historically enjoyed open relations with Israel. In 1949, it was the first predominantly Muslim state to recognize Israel. By doing so, Turkey provided Israel with a critical political, social and economic window on the Middle East and conferred to Israel a higher degree of legitimacy in the region. Yet open ties to Israel have never implied neglect of the Palestinians. The Turkish public in particular has been sensitive to the plight of the Palestinians. 1 The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) opened its office in Ankara in 1979, before the European Community (EC), let alone the United States, accepted the existence of the Palestinians as a people (beyond their status as refugees) and contemplated recognizing the PLO as their legitimate representative. Despite this bedrock of constant interests and relations, Turkey’s ties to Israel and Palestine—to the Middle East more broadly—alternated erratically over the years. Turkey on the one hand participated in the ill-fated 1955 Baghdad Pact, amassed troops on the Syrian (1957)2 and Iraqi (1958) borders, and allowed the United States to station troops in Adana during the 1958 Lebanon crisis.3 On the other hand, it sided with Egypt on the eve of the 1967 war, participated in the deliberations of the 1969 Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Rabat in 1969,4 denied the United States use of its airbases to re-supply Israel in the 1973 war while allowing the Soviet Union over-flight rights to support Syria, and expanded economic ties with the Gulf, Iraq and Iran in the 1980s.5 When it comes more specifically to Israel, in the 1990s, Turkey’s approach crystallized in two pillars: a strategic military relationship with Israel and diplomatic and economic support for the U.S.-brokered Middle East Peace Process. After years of strained relations in the 1980s as a result of former Turkish Prime Minister and President Turgut Özal’s opening to the Middle East, Turkish-Israeli relations dramatically improved in the 1990s.6 In 1992 the two countries signed a tourism agreement.7 This was followed by a framework agreement in 1993 comprising tourism, economic cooperation and educational exchanges; an environmental cooperation agreement in 1994; a free trade agreement in 1996; and cooperation in the fields of telecommunications, postal services and drug trafficking. The core of the relationship was military-strategic however. In February 1996 Turkey and Israel signed a Military Training and Cooperation Agreement, which outlined a set of joint training and intelligence-sharing activities, including Israeli access to the Konya airbase and Turkish airspace for training purpos-

Switching Sides or Novel Force?

143

es, Israeli modernization of the Turkish air force, and Israeli provision of military technology to Turkey. This agreement was followed up in August 1996 by a further deal on military technology transfers, joint military research, intelligence-sharing, regular strategic policy planning dialogue and bilateral and multilateral military exercises. Largely due to this burgeoning military relationship, bilateral trade boomed from $100 million in 1991 to $2 billion in 2000, with Turkey becoming a lucrative market for the Israeli defense industry. 8 Over the 1990s, Turkey’s military relationship with Israel caused acute concern in the Arab world, particularly in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. In view of this skepticism, the Turkish architects of the strategic relationship with Israel— the military and bureaucratic establishments in Ankara—attempted to rally credit at home and in the Arab world by avidly supporting the Middle East Peace Process. Hence, Turkey participated in the Arms Control and Regional Security Working Group of the Madrid multilateral process and in 1993 guided a workshop on military exchanges in that context. In 1997 Turkey joined the Temporary International Presence in Hebron.9 Also in the context of the Oslo peace process, Turkey contributed financially to the nascent Palestinian Authority and the Occupied Territories,10 and proposed the (somewhat far-fetched) project of a “peace pipeline” to transport Turkish water to Syria, Israel and Jordan, an idea which dated from the mid-1980s and was resurrected in the optimism of the 1990s. In the 1990s Turkey thus activated itself in the Arab-Israeli peace process to rally favor domestically and in the Arab world. Yet attitudes in Palestine (and elsewhere in the Arab world) towards Turkey remained at best lukewarm and at worst openly critical.11 Views of Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East were overwhelmingly colored by the burgeoning strategic relationship with Israel, a relationship which was as cherished in Tel Aviv and Washington as it was despised in Ramallah, Damascus and Beirut. In the twenty-first century Turkey’s relations with Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict have been marked by stark change. As for TurkishIsraeli relations, some degree of cooperation has continued.12 In 2005 prime ministers Tayyip Erdoğan and Ariel Sharon agreed to establish a hotline for the exchange of intelligence on terrorism-related matters. In January 2007 Turkey and Israel concluded negotiations over the Med Stream project, an offshore water pipeline to connect Turkey and Israel across the Mediterranean. In November 2007 Shimon Peres became the first Israeli president to address the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi—TBMM). In October 2008 Turkey and Israel agreed on the construction of an oil pipeline between Ceyhan and Ashkelon. Despite, as we shall see below, Turkey’s criticism of the 2006 Lebanon war, in 2007 and 2008 Turkish-Israeli military cooperation continued apace, through joint military exercises,13 intelligence-sharing,14 and defense-industrial cooperation.15 Yet in the new millennium, Turkish-Israeli ties clearly reached their peak. 16 Bilateral trade increased, but unlike the boom of the 1990s, in the 2000s trade grew from $2 billion in 2000 to $2.8 billion in 2008.17 With the collapse of the Oslo peace process and the outbreak of the second intifada, Turkish-Israeli polit-

144

Nathalie Tocci

ical relations deteriorated. In 2002 Turkish Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Jenin. 18 In 2006 Prime Minister Erdoğan declared Israel’s war on Lebanon as “illegitimate.”19 At the Davos World Economic Forum in January 2009, immediately after Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, Erdoğan accused Israel (and his co-panelist Shimon Peres) of crimes against humanity. After the Davos crisis Turkey and Israel attempted to mend fences. Meetings were held at foreign minister level, and Turkish President Abdullah Gül sent a prominent member of the Turkish-Jewish community to meet President Peres and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in early 2009. Yet attempts to restore relations in 2009 were reversed again in October 2009 when Turkey withdrew an invitation to Israel to participate in the military exercise “Anatolian Eagle,”20 and Israel abhorred an episode of a TV series (Ayrılık) on Turkish Radio Television Corporation (TRT) showing Israeli forces deliberately targeting Palestinian children.21 Following the TV series affair, diplomacy on both sides scrambled again to restore relations.22 But to no avail, as the relationship was catapulted into crisis again when Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon publicly humiliated Turkey’s ambassador to Israel in January 2010.23 Finally, the relationship tumbled to an all-time low in June 2010 when the Israel Defense Forces killed nine Turkish citizens on board a Turkish vessel, part of an international flotilla, carrying humanitarian goods to Gaza in defiance of Israel’s closure of the Strip. Recalling the downgrading of diplomatic relations in 1980 when Israel declared Jerusalem as its undivided capital, Ankara recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv in June 2010. The crisis continued to simmer over the summer and fall of 2010, as Turkey insisted on an apology from Israel, an international investigation on the flotilla incident and the lifting of the siege on Gaza, and Israel belatedly accepted only an international investigation and a marginal easing of the closure of the Strip. The United Nations (UN) investigation, however, only made matters worse, as the “Palmer Report” accepted the legitimacy of Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza and thus reduced Israel’s incentives to apologize to Turkey. For the first time in history Turkish-Israeli ties suffered a bilateral crisis rather than being marked by disagreement dictated by contrasting positions over the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Turkish-Israeli relationship, far from being the unbreakable military alliance of the 1990s, has unequivocally undergone an underlying structural turn.24

The Improvement of Relations with the Palestinians Turkish–Israeli relations have inversely correlated with Turkish-Palestinian ties. When it comes to the Palestinians, some Turkish actions have continued to be articulated within the broad contours of the Oslo process. These include former President Demirel’s participation in the 2000 Mitchell Commission, the growing aid delivery by the Turkish International Cooperation and Development Agency (Türk İşbirliği ve Koordinasyon Ajansı Başkanlığı—TIKA) to the OPT (approximately $10 million since 1996),25 the meeting in November 2007 between Israeli President Peres and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Ab-

Switching Sides or Novel Force?

145

bas in Turkey, the Turkish Foreign Ministry sponsorship of a Young Palestinian Diplomats Training Program, and the “Industry for Peace” (Barış için Sanayi Girişimi) project by the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (Türkiye Odalar ve Borsalar Birliği—TOBB) to develop the Erez industrial zone straddling the Gaza Strip.26 All these initiatives have been premised on the existence of a peace process based on the principle of land for peace and the many attempts to resurrect it. Yet beyond these initiatives articulated in the framework of the 1990s to improve relations with the Palestinians, Turkey has undertaken three specific actions over the last decade whose logic is distinctly different from the “Oslo logic,” yet whose repercussions are arguably more important. 27 First is the opening of Ottoman archives on property certificates, which has represented a critical asset in the Palestinian and international struggle against Israeli house evictions and demolitions in Jerusalem. Particularly given the international consensus on Jerusalem representing the capital of Israel and Palestine and Israel’s accelerating Jewish settlement in the city, Turkey’s role in opening the archives is important.28 Second, Turkey supported the report of the Human Rights Council headed by Justice Goldstone in 2009, which condemned both Israel and Hamas of war crimes in Gaza and Israel and recommended measures to ensure accountability. The Goldstone report represented a milestone in the arduous task of reinserting international law in the international community’s approach to the conflict. Third, Turkey, like other European countries such as Norway and Switzerland, but unlike the EU and the United States, has maintained open political channels with Hamas, particularly with Hamas’s political bureau in Damascus, with which Turkey has enjoyed closer relations in recent years. Following Hamas’s electoral victory in January 2006 Turkey recognized the new Palestinian government and invited Hamas’s political bureau leader Khaled Meshal to Ankara in February 2006. This caused stark reactions on both sides of the IsraeliPalestinian divide.29 Turkey’s relationship with Hamas has raised concerns within the Palestinian Authority and Fateh, in view of their acrimonious struggle against Hamas. Yet Turkey has maintained relations with the Authority, and its contacts with it are far more frequent and organic than those with Hamas. Moreover, insofar as any Israeli-Palestinian agreement hinges, inter alia, on Hamas’s acceptance, given the movement’s control of the Gaza Strip and rootedness within Palestinian society, Turkey represents one of the few western channels to engage Hamas.

A Newfound Turkish Role in Mediation Beyond Israel’s bilateral relations with Israel and the OPT, in recent years Turkey has also engaged for the first time in the arduous task of mediating the manifold aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Rather than simply backing politically and economically the peace process, Turkey has attempted to move onto its steering wheel. Ankara’s most notorious initiative regarded its mediation between Israel and Syria.30 The Turkish initiative dates back to January 2004 in the

146

Nathalie Tocci

context of Syrian President Bashar al-Asad’s visit to Turkey. At the time, not least because of the U.S. strategy of isolating Syria, 31 Israel rejected the offer of an official restart of negotiations. This led to the launch of a track-two process instead. By September 2004 the initiative developed into a more structured process, which lasted until July 2006. The 2006 Lebanon war and Israel’s recognition of Hezbollah’s capabilities raised Israel’s perceived need to move forward on the Syrian track. This induced Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to call for his Turkish counterpart’s mediation in September 2006 at track-one level. The process was delayed by Israel’s bombing of Syria’s military installation in September 2007 (incidentally flying through Turkish airspace) and preparations took place between March 2007 and May 2008. 32 Between May 2008 and December 2008 Israel and Syria undertook four rounds of official indirect talks via Turkish shuttle diplomacy. According to both sides, more was achieved than ever before, even though they had entered the process with different and not fully compatible expectations. President Asad aimed at breaking Syria’s international isolation, demonstrating to the United States and the EU that Damascus was a serious partner for peace. Prime Minister Olmert aimed at negotiating with Syria in order to weaken the Iran-SyriaHezbollah link. In other words, neither side was committed to a peace deal and thus expected a breakthrough. Notwithstanding, Syria for the first time made a written territorial offer (six reference points on the map) on the Golan Heights, expecting an Israeli response. Israel responded with a set of security questions (related to Syria’s stance vis-à-vis Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran following an agreement), to which Syria responded in written form, yet in a manner deemed too vague by Israel. During his visit to Turkey on December 23, 2008, Olmert was expected to deliver written responses to the Syrian offer, which he did not, primarily because of the lack of domestic consensus within Israel. Erdoğan and Olmert had a five-hour-long dinner in telephone conversation with Asad. The launch of direct talks appeared to be in the offing. Five days later Israel launched Operation Cast Lead and the process broke down. Turkey has also attempted mediation between Israel and Hamas.33 Given Turkey’s open political channels to Hamas, Ankara has offered to mediate on two occasions between Israel and the Islamist movement. The first was over a prisoners’ exchange deal in the aftermath of the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in June 2006. Then Turkish Prime Minister advisor Ahmet Davutoğlu traveled to Damascus several times to broker a deal involving Hamas’ release of Shalit in return for Israel’s release of a disputed group of Palestinian prisoners. Following the failure to yield a breakthrough, UN Human Rights Rapporteur in the Occupied Territories Richard Falk regretted, “[I]t is tragic that this effort failed, and was at the time criticized. In retrospect, both the wellbeing of the Gazan civilian population and the security of Israel would have greatly benefited by taking advantage of the Turkish initiative, and moving to implement the readiness of Hamas to establish a ceasefire.”34 The second instance of Turkish mediation between Israel and Hamas was during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in December 2008–January 2009. Given their boycott of Hamas, neither the United States nor the EU had any effective

Switching Sides or Novel Force?

147

leverage on Hamas to utilize over the course of the Israeli offensive in order to secure a ceasefire on its side. Egypt played a crucial role, yet the well-known problems and mistrust between Hamas and Cairo opened a space for Turkey. Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoğlu readily used it by holding two meetings with Hamas leader Meshal and shuttling between Damascus and Cairo in order to secure a ceasefire by Hamas in return for an Israeli ceasefire and the lifting of Israel’s closure of Gaza. The EU, and in particular French President Nicolas Sarkozy, publicly recognized and advocated for Turkey’s mediation. 35 Following the end of Cast Lead, Turkey’s efforts were praised by the Arab League, Syria, France and the EU. 36 Since then, however, Turkey’s role in mediation has been dormant. Many in the West and Israel have argued that this is the product of the acute deterioration of Turkish–Israeli ties since 2009.37 Others have suggested instead that rather than Turkey’s role in mediation, it is the peace process as such which is in the deep freeze.38

A Multilevel Analysis of Changes in Turkey’s Relations with Israel and Palestine What explains this dramatic transformation in Turkey’s Middle Eastern policies and in particular its relations with Israel and Palestine? Factors operating at the international, regional and domestic levels go far in explaining this change. At the international level, Turkey’s relations and its identity struggle with the West and the EU in particular help explain the transformation of Turkey’s ties to Israel and Palestine. As the Cold War eclipsed and the Soviet Union crumbled in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Turkey’s desire for a Western affiliation accentuated. Turkey applied for EC membership in 1987 and pushed for inclusion in the EC customs union in the mid-1990s. Yet Turkey’s EC application was turned down in 1989 by the European Commission. True, in 1995, Turkey and the EU concluded an agreement foreseeing the former’s entry in the customs union. In a context in which the EU was developing an explicitly political (and not purely economic) dimension, entry in the customs union fell short of providing Turkey with its long-sought identity anchorage to Europe. In Turkish eyes, this desire of an identity anchorage to the EU was rebuffed again in 1997, when the Luxembourg European Council denied Turkey candidacy for membership. To assuage its need for a strong affiliation to the West, Turkey thus turned elsewhere.39 It is in this context that Turkey embraced the notion of a strategic alliance with Israel in those years, which bolstered Turkey’s western credentials, at least in Washington.40 The alliance with Israel also brought with it support of the American Jewish lobbies and allowed Turkey to circumvent U.S. congressional restrictions on the delivery of arms supplies, due to Turkey’s policy on Cyprus, Armenia, the Kurds and human rights in those years. 41 In the 1990s the strategic alliance with Israel thus partly substituted for Europe by providing an identity anchorage to Turkey in the midst of the global flux of the early post-Cold War years. After

148

Nathalie Tocci

1999 the scene changed. With the launch of Turkey’s accession process at the Helsinki European Council in December that year, and the ensuing domestic political reforms that came with it, Turkey’s domestic need for a western identity anchor was partly met. Likewise, Turkey’s relationship with both the United States and the EU improved as a result of its domestic transformation. This changed the Turkish political calculus that underpinned its relations with Israel. From a Turkish perspective, bilateral ties with Israel were no longer dictated by the need to reaffirm Turkey’s belonging to the West and its tactical pursuit of material benefits. With Turkey’s domestic transformation and its upgraded relationship with the EU since 1999, the bilateral relationship with Israel continued to be important and useful, but no longer indispensable.42 The question on the minds of many by 2009 and 2010 is whether Turkey has turned full circle. Has Turkey’s feeling of rejection by the EU, particularly since the opening of accession negotiations in 2005, induced an identity-driven U-turn towards the Middle East,43 this time by deepening relations with the Arab world and Iran and turning away from Israel? 44 There is no reason why Turkey’s rapprochement with the Middle East implies a distancing from Europe. In fact Turkey’s role in its southern neighborhood and its accession process with the EU could be mutually reinforcing. On the one hand, it is precisely the EU-inspired process of domestic transformation in Turkey which underpins Turkey’s opening to the Middle East. Whereas in the past, Turkish foreign policy used to be the exclusive domain of a restricted circle within the government, foreign ministry and armed forces, today, a wide array of state and non-state actors, alongside public opinion, push and pull Turkish foreign policy in different directions, including towards an increased openness towards the Middle East. On the other hand, Turkey and the EU, at least in principle, share many of the same goals and interests in the Middle East, including a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine. In other words, the talk about an axis and identity shift in Turkish foreign policy appears to be at best exaggerated and at worst misplaced. When Turkey, in the 1990s, opened relations with the former Soviet space, concerns about “losing Turkey” to the East did not permeate western debate about Turkey. The fact that Turkey’s opening to the Middle East is engendering such a discourse in the West says more about American and European approaches to the Middle East than about Turkey’s “reorientation” to the region. This said, if Turkey’s accession process does falter, the likelihood of Turkey’s domestic transformation needing an alternative identity anchorage may increase, as occurred when Turkey strengthened its relationship with Israel in the 1990s, partly as a means to reconfirm its western credentials in light of the EU’s snubbing of Turkey’s EU accession aspirations in those years. Turning to regional dynamics, a critical determinant of Turkish-Israeli relations is the shift in Turkish-Syrian relations and more widely in Turkish-Arab relations over the last decade. The end of the Cold War eroded much of the rationale for the broader Turkish-Arab tension, which pitted pro-western Turkey against the pro-Soviet Arab Middle East.45 But the accentuation of the TurkishSyrian conflict in the 1980s and 1990s over Syria’s support for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), its claims over the Turkish province of Hatay (former

Switching Sides or Novel Force?

149

Sandjak of Alexandretta), and its resentments over Turkey’s management of the water flow of the Euphrates river, continued to poison Turkish-Arab relations, generating deep suspicion of Turkey amongst Arabs in general and Palestinians and Syrians, in particular.46 So high was the tension with Syria, that Turkey was silently opposed to the launching of the Israeli-Syrian track in the context of the Oslo process in the mid-1990s.47 In the midst of the aggravating Turkish-Syrian relationship in the second half of the 1990s, which culminated in a near war in October 1998, the TurkishIsraeli strategic relationship blossomed. By aligning with Israel in the 1990s, Turkey aimed partly at encircling Damascus, thereby generating considerable angst both in Damascus and in the broader Arab world. This was epitomized by Syria’s push for a Communiqué of the Arab League in January 1996 by seven Arab states criticizing Turkey. In other words, the Turkish-Arab tension fueled and was fueled by the decades-old regional alignment pitting Arab states against non-Arab states and formed the bedrock of the deepened Turkish-Israeli alliance in the 1990s.48 In the twenty-first century instead the conflict with Syria has dissolved. In response to the near war in 1998, Damascus expelled the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, and since then has progressively shelved the question of Hatay and has negotiated with Turkey arrangements over the sharing of water from the Euphrates.49 More broadly, following Syrian acquiescence to Turkish demands regarding the PKK, Syria and Turkey signed the Adana Agreement, 50 which launched a multifaceted process that included economic, military, and intelligence cooperation. This process led to the possibility of improved bilateral political relations, which occurred when former Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer attended the funeral of former Syrian President Hafez al-Asad in 2000. In January 2004 Syrian President Bashar al-Asad visited Turkey and was reciprocated in December that year by Prime Minister Erdoğan. In its aftermath, relations continued to improve, leading to the signing of a bilateral visa-free agreement and the establishment of a Strategic Cooperation Council in October 2009. 51 With improved Turkish-Syrian ties, Turkey’s relationship with the Arab world has also evolved. Some Arab countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia have watched Turkey’s entry in the Middle East with caution, watchful of Ankara’s ambitions to play a leadership role in which they have considered to be their terrain. Yet on the whole, the Turks have been accepted by Arab states that welcome the pragmatic and business-savvy nature of Turkish diplomacy. 52 With the improvement in Turkish-Syrian and Turkish-Arab relations, the balance of power logic which drew together Turkey and Israel in the 1990s has vanished. In addition, the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has also played a critical role in shaping Turkey’s Middle East policies in the new century. As already mentioned, Turkish public opinion has traditionally been sensitive to the plight of the Palestinians. 53 As such, Turkey’s alliance with Israel in the 1990s had not been an easy sell domestically. What made it possible was the existence of the Oslo peace process in those years, and Turkey’s ardent support for it. The twenty-first century, however, has seen the dramatic collapse of the peace process, shattering the bedrock upon which the Turkish-Israeli relationship had

150

Nathalie Tocci

flourished. In turn, with the spiraling of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the diffusion of tensions between Turkey and the Arab world, Turkey’s relationship with Israel has become increasingly conditional on the evolution of the former. Whereas in the past the Turkish-Israeli relationship had been shaped by two opposing forces—the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Arab-Turkish conflict—with the evaporation of the second, Turkish-Israeli relations have become increasingly conditional on Israel’s conduct in the first. 54 Hence, at the height of the second intifada, Turkish Prime Minister Ecevit reserved the harshest of words for Israel. By contrast, as the intifada diffused and Israel “disengaged” from the Gaza Strip, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP) government praised the Israeli initiative. But relations soured again in 2006, when Prime Minister Erdoğan vigorously criticized Israel’s thirty-four-day war in Lebanon. Relations improved again in 2007-2008 when Turkey mediated between Israel and Syria and ceasefire reigned between Israel and Hamas. Finally, since Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in December 2008–January 2009 and the election of the hardliner Netanyahu government in Israel in February 2009, Turkish-Israeli ties have plummeted to an all-time low. In short, the ups and downs in Turkish-Israeli relations over the last decade have mirrored closely those in the Arab-Israeli conflict.55 Finally, domestic developments in Turkey must be borne in mind when assessing the change in Turkish-Israeli/Palestinian relations. When assessing the domestic level of explanation both structural and agency-related factors are of the essence. At the structural level, Turkish democratization has made the government more accountable and sensitive to public opinion. Whereas past governments could easily ignore the public, nowadays the AKP government feels obliged for electoral as much as populist reasons to take public opinion into account. Nowhere has this been clearer than in the contrast between Turkey’s participation in the 1990-91 Gulf War and the March 2003 rejection of the TBMM to the U.S. request to use Turkish territory for a second front attack against Iraq. In addition, without a more responsive public and greater freedom of expression, for example, it would have been difficult to imagine the debates that made it possible for Turkey to reverse its policy towards Cyprus in 2004, Armenia in 2008-2009 and Iraq since 2007. Yet equally true is the fact that without democratization it is doubtful that the Turkish government would have been as critical as it has been of Israel lately. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the Turkish reaction to the Gaza flotilla crisis, where a mix of nationalist and “Islamist” feelings have been fueled by the populist rhetoric of Turkish leaders. Alongside a greater responsiveness to public opinion, Prime Minister Erdoğan’s attitudes towards Israel are no secret and have been repeatedly expressed, particularly since Israel’s offensive against the Gaza Strip offensive in 2008-2009, as epitomized by his outburst at Davos. Erdoğan has benefited from the support he received for his remarks both in Turkey and the Arab world. It should be noted, however, that his fiery rhetoric is not confined to Israel and Palestine. Beyond the Middle East, on other salient questions on the international agenda, one can cite Erdoğan’s defense of Sudanese President Omar Bashir, for example. Also domestically, the prime minister has the reputation of speak-

Switching Sides or Novel Force?

151

ing brashly in order to arouse populist support, on issues as diverse (and not Islam-related) as the Armenian residents in Turkey, the Kurdish question as well as the H1N1 flu. This, however, only confirms the impression that while the reorientation of Turkish foreign policy in the Arab-Israeli conflict is praiseworthy in many respects, its value is belittled by the rhetoric of the prime minister himself.

Conclusion Turkey’s activism in the Arab-Israeli conflict hub is not new. Its interventions in the past played into the balance-of-power logic of the broader ArabIsraeli/Soviet-American conflict. In the 1990s, Turkey’s security policies were marked by assertiveness and confrontation. While Turkey’s military relationship with Israel rallied favor in the West, Turkey made the Middle East an even more unstable and crisis-prone region, almost triggering a war with Syria in 1998. 56 The question at hand is whether the change in Turkish foreign and security policy today replicates the same dynamics, or whether it generates new and more constructive ones in the Middle East. Is Turkey simply “switching sides,” or has it undergone a qualitative jump and represents a constructive “novel force” in the region? Does Turkey continue to play into the balance-of-power logic of the region, having merely transited from one side to another of the Arab-Israeli divide, or does its policy represent a new development? True, Turkey’s relationship with Israel and Palestine has undergone a structural turn in recent years, a change which has been made all too evident by the fiery rhetoric of Turkish political leaders. This has been cause for concern in the United States and Europe, as several onlookers have interpreted Turkey’s cooling relationship with Israel and its ties with Hamas as the distressing proof of Turkey’s slide to the East.57 The concern over Turkey’s “loss” and its “reorientation” to the East appears to have occupied the minds of many academics, chancelleries and editorialists in Europe and America in recent years. A closer look at these developments, however, warrants a different interpretation. Arguably, Turkey can in fact represent a novel force in the Middle East, yet the extent to which it will do so remains to be carefully monitored in the years ahead. Turkey today has improved relations with all of its southern neighbors and enjoys a qualitatively better image in the Arab world. Turkish-Israeli relations have indeed suffered, yet such deterioration has neither been linear nor inevitable. It has rather been responsive to the ups and downs in the Middle East conflict. A degree of conditionality in Turkey’s relations with Israel—provided it is applied also to the Palestinian side and that it is not excessive—could represent a value added in western policies towards the region. Furthermore, Turkey’s approach to the Middle East has been marked by an intention, which on several occasions translated into reality, to mediate and promote reconciliation in the region, as clear from Turkey’s attempts at mediation in the Israeli-Arab quagmire.

152

Nathalie Tocci

In order for Turkey’s transformed security relations with Israel and the Palestinians to represent a constructive, novel force for peaceful change in the region, Turkey’s foreign policy must be consistent, however. Denouncing Israeli policies in Gaza while not doing likewise in cases such as Sudan, for example, opens Turkey up for criticism and accusations of double standards. Likewise, being carried away by populist rhetoric, and concomitantly (rather than sequentially) calling for an international investigation and for an apology and compensation by Israel regarding the flotilla incident denotes a lack of consistency that hinders the credibility of Turkish foreign policy. In order to disprove the interpretation of Turkish foreign policy as sliding inexorably to the East and being driven by the rise of political Islam in Turkey, it is essential for Turkey to correct and reverse contradictions such as the one mentioned above. Related to this, Turkish foreign policy must act in the name of universal norms and international law and not of particularistic ethnic/religious affinities. Particularly in the Middle East, sticking to universal norms is the only recipe to walk the tightrope of the conflict-ridden region. To the extent that the Middle East is conflict-ridden and international norms and laws are regularly flouted, Turkey will not always be able to improve relations with all actors. That said, Turkey does run the risk of going beyond this, doing little more than “switching sides” from Israel to Syria, the Palestinians or Iran, with this switch being interpreted by some as the product of an ideological (read Islamist) turn in Turkish foreign policy. In other words, while it is healthy for Turkey’s relations with Israel to be dictated by conditionality in view of Israel’s violations of international law, it is equally important for Turkey not to fall uncritically in the opposing camp. Above all it is essential for Turkey’s actions in the Middle East not to be interpreted as driven by its “Muslim” identity, but rather by international rights and law. For Turkey’s potential to be fulfilled, Ankara cannot be viewed as fuelling an identity-driven clash that it supposedly opposes and attempts to transcend.

Notes 1. Bülent Aras, “Turkey and the Palestinian Question,” SETA Policy Briefs, no. 27, January 2009, http://www.bulentaras.com/fp/files/policy_brief27.pdf, 7. 2. Turkish and Syrian border guards also exchanged fire on this occasion. 3. Mehmet Bali Aykan, “The Palestinian Question in Turkish Foreign Policy from the 1950s to the 1990s,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 25, no. 1 (January– March 1993): 91–110. 4. Turkey however, refused to vote in favor of the resolution calling states to severe diplomatic relations with Israel. See Bülent Aras and Salih Bıçakçı, “Europe, Turkey and the Middle East: Is Harmonisation Possible?” East European Quarterly 40, no. 3 (September 2006): 367–81. 5. Kemal Kirişçi, “Turkey and the Muslim Middle East,” in Turkey’s New World, ed. Alan Makovsky and Sabri Sayarı (Washington, D.C.: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2000), 13–33.

Switching Sides or Novel Force?

153

6. Hakan Yavuz, “Turkish-Israeli Relations through the Lens of the Turkish Identity Debate,” Journal of Palestine Studies 27, no. 1 (January 1997): 22–37. 7. This led to a progressive increase in the number of Israeli tourists visiting Turkey over the 1990s, reaching 300.000 tourists per year. Yavuz, “Turkish-Israeli Relations.” 8. See Haim Malka, “Turkey and the Middle East: Rebalancing Interests,” Final Report of the CSIS US-Turkey Strategic Initiative March 2009, http://csis.org/files /media/csis/pubs/090408_flanagan_turkeyreport_web.pdf. 9. Norway, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden also participated. 10. Kemal Kirişçi, “The Future of Turkish Policy in the Middle East,” in Turkey in World Politics: An Emerging Regional Power, ed. Barry Rubin and Kemal Kirişçi (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Reiner, 2001), 101. 11. Meliha Altunışık and Özlem Tür, “From Distant Neighbours to Partners? Changing Syrian-Turkish Relations,” Security Dialogue 37, no. 2 (June 2006): 229–48. 12. Ofra Bengio, “Altercating Interests and Orientations between Israel and Turkey: A View from Israel,” Insight Turkey 11, no. 2 (June 2009): 43–55. 13. Including a search and rescue exercise off the Turkish coast in August 2007. See Stephen Larrabee, Turkey as a US Security Partner (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2007); Ian Lesser and Stephen Larrabee, Turkish Foreign Policy in an Age of Uncertainty (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2001), 20. 14. Turkey allegedly benefited from Israeli intelligence prior to its ground offensive against the PKK in Northern Iraq in February 2008. Bengio, “Altercating Interests and Orientations.” 15. This includes a $141 million contract between the Israeli Aerospace Industries and Elbit Systems and the Turkish manufacturer Aselan in December 2008. See “Elbit, IAI get $141 Million Turkish Air Force Deal,” Reuters (December 2008). 16. Kemal Kirişçi, Nathalie Tocci and Joshua Walker, “A Neighborhood Rediscovered: Turkey’s Transatlantic Value in the Middle East,” Brussels Forum Paper Series 2010, http://www.gmfus.org/galleries/ct_publication_attachments/TransatlanticAcademy KirsiciTocciWalkerBFPaperTurkeyNeighborhood.pdfjsessionid=a4SdniMgQUI7AeYyE L (accessed March 30, 2010). 17. Basheer Nafi, “The Arabs and Modern Turkey: A Century of Changing Perceptions,” Insight Turkey 11, no. 1 (January 2009): 63–82. 18. Desmond Dymond, “Turkey Accuses Israel of Genocide,” BBC News, April 4, 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1911609.stm (accessed October 15, 2009). 19. “Erdoğan: Unfair War in Lebanon Will Have No Winner,” Turkish Daily News, August 4, 2006. 20. Eventually, the exercise was cancelled after the United States (and Italy) withdrew their participation. 21. Michael Greenway, “It’s Getting Chilly between Turkey and Israel,” Global Post, October 21, 2009. 22. In November 2009, for example, Israeli Trade Minister Ben Eliezer held talks with Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. 23. Kirişçi, Tocci, and Walker, “A Neighborhood Rediscovered.” 24. Conversation with Turkish academic, Istanbul, October 2009; Interview with former Israeli diplomat and negotiator, Berlin, June 2010. 25. Kirişçi, Tocci and Walker, “A Neighborhood Rediscovered.” 26. TOBB’s initiative consisted of inviting to the “Ankara Forum” Turkish, Israeli and Palestinian chambers of commerce representatives in order to develop joint commercial projects. The Forum’s pet project was the development of the Erez Industrial Zone in the aftermath of the 2005 Israeli disengagement, which was meant to create 7,000 jobs in

154

Nathalie Tocci

Gaza. Yet like many of the Oslo (and Oslo-like) initiatives, the project crumbled in the wake of the political separation between the West Bank and Gaza in 2007 and Operation Cast Lead in 2008. 27. Kirişçi, Tocci, and Walker, “A Neighborhood Rediscovered.” 28. Interview with Palestinian human rights activist, Ramallah, October 2009. 29. After much controversy surrounding the Hamas visit to Ankara, Khaled Meshal met then Foreign Minister Gül at the AKP headquarters rather than at the Foreign Ministry. 30. This account was informed by interviews with Syrian, Israeli and Turkish negotiators in the process, Damascus, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Istanbul, October 2009. 31. In the early years of the twenty-first century, Damascus faced increasing isolation from the United States through the December 2003 Syria Accountability Act, followed by broader American and European (and in particular French) accusations of Syria’s involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Refik Hariri in February 2005. 32. Kirişçi, Tocci, and Walker, “A Neighborhood Rediscovered.” 33. Ibid. 34. Richard Falk, “Understanding the Gaza Catastrophe,” Today’s Zaman, January 4, 2009. 35. “Turkish PM Speaks to Sarkozy on the Phone,” Time Turk English, January 7, 2009. 36. “Turkey: Key to Convincing Hamas on Gaza Cease-fire,” Turkey NY.com, January 20, 2009, http://www.turkishny.com/tr/ingilizce-haberler/1639-turkey-key-to-con vincing-hamas-on-gaza-cease-fire-.html (accessed October 15, 2009). 37. “Netanyahu: Turkey Can’t Be an ‘Honest Broker’ in Syria Talks,” Ha’aretz, October 18, 2009, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1121723.html (accessed October 18, 2009). 38. Interview with Israeli journalist, Tel Aviv, October 2009. 39. Kemal Kirişçi, “Between Europe and the Middle East: The Transformation of Turkish Foreign Policy,” MERIA 8, no. 1 (March 2004): 1–32. 40. Yavuz, “Turkish-Israeli Relations.” 41. Over the 1990s, Turkey’s policy towards Cyprus, Armenia, the Kurds and human rights were harshly criticized by the United States and the EU. In Cyprus, the second half of the 1990s saw an entrenchment of Ankara’s position in favor of a confederal solution on the island. In the Caucasus, Turkey closed its border with Armenia in retaliation for the Nagorno-Karabakh war. Domestically instead, the 1990s saw the peak of the quasi civil war between the Turkish armed forces and the PKK, which heightened the level of human rights violations in the country. 42. Conversation with Turkish academic, Istanbul, October 2009. 43. Heinz Kramer, “Turkey’s Accession Process to the EU: The Agenda behind the Agenda,” SWP Comments (Berlin: SWP, October 2009). 44. Particularly in Israel, Turkey’s rapprochement with the Middle East is viewed as driven by identity (e.g., Islam). Interviews with Israeli civil society representative, Jerusalem, and journalist, Tel Aviv, October 2009. 45. The Turkish-Arab conflict predates the Cold War, going back to the rise of Arab nationalism, Arab resentment against Ottoman colonialism and the Arab alliance with the British in World War 1, and Republican Turkey’s distancing from the Middle East. Ömer Taşpınar, “Turkey’s Middle East Policies: Between Neo Ottomanism and Kemalism,” Carnegie Papers 10 (September 2008).

.

Switching Sides or Novel Force?

155

46. The Turkish-Israeli alliance and the widespread accusations of it led then President Demirel to storm out of an OIC meeting in Tehran in November 1997. 47. Altunışık and Tür, “From Distant Neighbours to Partners?” 236. 48. Prior to the 1979 Iranian revolution, the Arab/non-Arab dichotomy also included the Shah’s Iran in the latter group. The idea of the non-Arab alliance was also embedded in David Ben Gurion’s concept of Israel’s four-cornered alliance, including Turkey, Iran, Uganda and Ethiopia. The Israeli logic was that of allying with non-Arab states and communities (e.g., the Druzes and Maronites in Lebanon as well as the Kurds). Interview with Israeli journalist, Tel Aviv, October 2009. 49. A trilateral working commission including Turkey, Iraq and Syria has been established to work out pending differences over water sharing. 50. Mehmet Bali Aykan, “The Turkish-Syrian Crisis of October 1998: A Turkish View,” Middle East Policy 6, no. 4 (December 1999): 174–91. 51. The Strategic Cooperation Council covers culture, economics, energy, transport, tourism, education, science, customs, defense, water, and the environment. It is presided by the two heads of state and government and includes regular ministerial meetings. 52. Conversation with Egyptian analyst, Istanbul, October 2009. 53. Aras, “Turkey and the Palestinian Question.” 54. Interviews with former Israeli negotiator, Jerusalem, and analyst, Tel Aviv, October 2009. 55. Speech by Alon Liel on Turkish-Israeli relations at the Conference “Getting to Zero: Turkey and its Neighbors,” Transatlantic Academy DGAP, Berlin, June 9, 2010. 56. Alan Makovsky, “The New Activism in Turkish Foreign Policy,” SAIS Review 19, no. 1 (January 1999): 92–113. 57. Rajan Menon and S. Enders Wimbush, Is the United States ‘Losing’ Turkey? March 25, 2007, http://www.hudson.org/files/pdf_upload/Turkey%20PDF.pdf (accessed March 22, 2010); Soner Cağaptay, “Turkey at a Crossroads: Preserving Ankara’s Western Orientation, Policy Focus 48 (Washington: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, October 2005); David Schenker, “A NATO without Turkey,” The Wall Street Journal, November 5, 2009; James Kitfield, “Who Lost Turkey,” National Journal.com, June 21, 2010, http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/ns_20100621_3616.php (accessed June 22, 2010); Michael Rubin, “Turkey, From Ally to Enemy,” Commentarymagazine.com, June 2010, http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/turkey--from-ally-toenemy-15464 (accessed June 20, 2010).

Chapter Nine

The Iraqi Conundrum: A Source of Insecurity for Turkey? Armağan Gözkaman Since the Gulf War of 1991, the Iraqi question has been at the top of the Turkish foreign policy agenda in regards to its eastern border. During the war, Turkey closed the pipeline—that was Iraq’s main source of revenue—in accordance with the United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 6611 and opened the bases of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) situated on its territory to the forces of the international coalition.2 Almost a decade later, due to Baghdad’s failure to obey the UN Special Commission’s directives related to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and Iraq’s alleged sponsorship of terrorism, international coalition forces led by the United States launched the second Iraq war in 2003. The subsequent toppling of Saddam Hussein and the ending of the Baathist regime created a new era for the whole region. An oppressive regime has been replaced by a security vacuum: After the invasion, Iraqi territory has been marked by strong sectarian violence and by attacks against foreign troops. Despite a marginal improvement in economic costs and human casualties, the current political situation in Iraq is far from stable and secure. The U.S.-led military operation in Iraq known as the Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) (2003) resulted in a significant impact not just for Iraq but also for all countries in the region. Turkey was one of the countries which was affected by the operation throughout its pre- and post-war periods. Although the leading Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP) desired to participate the war, Turkey’s participation was constitutionally subject to parliamentary debate. Because of the no-vote at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi—TBMM), the Turkish government did not grant access to the U.S. forces. This would have a significant impact on Turkey-U.S. relations as well as on Turkey’s security interests regarding Iraq. As a main actor, Turkey played an active role in the 1991 operation and a more subtle role in 2003 to resettle the regional order—not without paying a 157

158

Armağan Gözkaman

heavy price on several counts. This chapter argues that Iraq serves as a conundrum for Turkey as a source of insecurity from three main aspects: namely U.S.Turkey relations, the fight against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist organization—listed as a terrorist organization by the EU and a number of states including the United States—and the lives of the Turkmen living in the region. It aims to provide an in-depth examination into these aspects of Turkey’s security regarding the turmoil in Iraq due to the U.S.-led military operations. The first part of this study provides a historical account of the 2003 military operation launched against Iraq and its immediate implications for Turkey. The second part focuses on the post-operational period and from a multidimensional aspect analyzes Turkey’s security concerns that resulted in the aftermath of the invasion. The third part delves into the political gridlocks in which Turkey found itself in the new era. The last part will concern the implications of the Iraqi conundrum for Turkey’s policies in Northern Iraq.

A Historical Review of the U.S.-led Iraqi Invasion in 2003 and the Question of Turkey’s Participation That Iraq possessed WMD was the main argument of the operation conducted by the U.S.-led multinational force. The Bush administration believed to have ended “the threat to the region and the world” by invading Iraq.3 Nevertheless, in the western world, there were diverging views on how serious the threat was. Although several European states declared their transatlantic solidarity, 4 the European Union (EU) could not show unity in its reaction to the United States’ action on Iraq. France, Germany, and Belgium were the main dissenters of the latter. Turkey hence was risking alienating itself from France and Germany—the two countries which have influence upon whether Ankara’s bid to join the EU will be accepted—if she joined the multinational coalition forces.5 Paris and Berlin have already clashed diplomatically with Ankara, when they initially would not go along with Turkey’s request for early deployment of NATO military forces in the case of a possible conflict with Iraq. In order to appease his own population and friendly European states, former Turkish President Sezer announced that Turkey would give the green light to the deployment of U.S. troops on its territory only if the UN passed a second resolution specifically authorizing the use of force against Iraq. Turkey’s participation in the war in Iraq would cause displeasure and resentment for some groups in Iraq as well. For instance, the Iraqi Governing Council’s (IGC) zealous opposition to Turkish soldiers’ deployment in the region was accompanied by the Iraqi Kurdish people’s protests.6 Arabs were also unwilling to see Turkish troops on their territory because they had been under the Ottoman Empire’s rule for centuries. Unwelcome, Turkish troops would meet hostility and lack effectiveness, which would put Ankara in an extremely difficult situation.

The Iraqi Conundrum

159

In this context, Turkey opted in the resolution of the crisis in Iraq through peaceful measures such as diplomatic initiatives, and holding a summit to call on the Iraqi government to cooperate fully with the UN inspections regime for the banned WMD programs over its territories. Like the international community, resorting to the use of force in Iraq was the last option for Turkey. Then Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül’s Middle Eastern tour of January 2003 to resolve the Iraqi crisis in a peaceful manner and to build up a united Muslim position to Baghdad was symbolically very important. 7 However, the AKP government thought that for the sake of Turkey’s short- to long-term national interests supporting a U.S.-led war rather than opting out would be more appropriate. As Prime Minister Erdoğan exposed clearly: “If one is left out of the equation at the start of the operation, it may not be possible to be in a position to control developments at the end of the operation.”8 In early 2003, it became obvious that the second Iraqi war was inevitable. To be prepared for the probability of war, Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) deployed troops along the border with Iraq. Turkish officials stated that the move was to protect Turkey in case deterioration in Iraq would threaten Turkey, especially if Iraqi Kurds declared an independent state. The then Chief of the General Staff, Gen. Hilmi Özkök, explained the rationale of this delicate policy as to look after Turkey’s close collaboration with the United States and to guarantee that the TAF would not enter Northern Iraq for fighting or occupying land, but rather for ensuring security.9 On parliamentary ground, constitutionally, the right to declare a war and send the TAF to foreign countries and additionally to allow foreign armed forces to be stationed in Turkey is vested in the TBMM, according to Article 92.10 In February 2003, at a huis clos meeting at the TBMM, the upheaval in Iraq was debated, and it was decided that the government was to be equipped with the power to take the necessary security measures and make preparations in case of an increased aggression within Iraq. Accordingly, the TBMM allowed the American technical and military personnel to work in Turkey for three months and initiated negotiations with NATO to obtain support for its defense in case of a war within Iraq.11 However, authorization on these matters was not sufficient enough to declare a war in Iraq in support of the United States. The AKP government sought a clear parliamentary authorization of assistance for a war in Iraq. On February 25, 2003, the government submitted a motion to the TBMM which laid out two preconditions for the deployment of the TAF abroad and hosting foreign armed forces inside Turkey. The first one concerned the reinforcement of international efforts on military dissuasion by allowing foreign troops to be positioned in order to be ready for combat on Turkish soil. The second one was about the desire of granting the government the ability to pursue an efficient independent foreign policy through allowing TAF to be deployed abroad. This move would endow the government with the possibility to take necessary precautions in military terms and to act rapidly in a short amount of time. Thus, the government addressed a note to the TBMM to obtain authorization for the deployment of Turkish troops on Iraq and the temporary

160

Armağan Gözkaman

deployment of foreign troops on Turkish soil, for a maximum period of six months.12 While the war in Iraq was looming large, the TBMM first rejected the motion by a narrow margin: 264 members of the Parliament approved it (which was not sufficient to attain the necessary minimum of 276) against 250 that refused and nineteen who abstained.13 But soon afterwards on March 20, 2003, the TBMM authorized the second motion for the deployment of Turkish troops to Northern Iraq and foreign air forces’ flyovers for six months. The main reasons of this change of position were briefly reconsidering the risks of a possible division of Iraq on ethnic grounds, the intensification of PKK terrorism and the potential of a massive Iraqi refuge movement towards Turkey. However, the TBMM authorization did not mean an automatic troop deployment. This decision of the TBMM on a possible deployment of Turkish troops caused great concern for the Iraqi administration. Although Prime Minister Erdoğan affirmed and stressed that troop deployment in Iraq would not be made in the logic of “occupation force,” but rather “as a friend and brother of the Iraqi people in a bid to ensure that this transition period comes to an end as soon as possible,”14 the IGC protested against the plan, even though an additional military contribution was needed. To alleviate the IGC’s fears, the U.S. administration guaranteed that Turkish troops would be deployed in central Iraq, rather than in the largely Kurdishpopulated north. But the IGC claimed that these troops would have to pass through Northern Iraq and would most probably set up a supply base in that region. The presence of troops from Turkey, or elsewhere in the region, could provoke more violence in Iraq by reigniting old hatreds and suspicions. Thus, Turkey was caught in between the United States’ demands for its military commitment and the Iraqi resistance against such commitment. But, a political maneuver of Prime Minister Erdoğan was conducive in resolving the controversy by subjecting the deployment to the condition that the IGC would demand a deployment as such. Consequently, the IGC did not extend an invitation to Turkish deployment. Thus, on November 7, Turkey announced that it would step back from its proposal. Foreign Minister Gül stated that Turkey had not been “very eager to send troops to Iraq” since the very beginning.15

Turkey’s Security Concerns about the Post-Iraqi War Circumstances The initial “no-vote” of TBMM entailed difficulties and problems for Turkey after the fall of the Baathist regime. First, the post-war conditions in Iraq increased sectarian violence in the country that could very easily spill over the region. The war in Iraq resulted in violent clashes among groups of different backgrounds—mainly between Sunni and Shia populations. Even though Turkey would be less affected than other neighboring countries of high Shia population,

The Iraqi Conundrum

161

in terms of religious sectarian balances, Turkey might well be vulnerable to certain ethnic clashes. For Turkey, the return to normalcy in Iraq and the preservation of its territorial integrity is of crucial importance. For this reason, it is a strong supporter of the UN Security Council resolution 1483, which reaffirms the territorial integrity and national unity of Iraq and the Iraqi nation’s ownership and possession of its resources. In this vein, Ankara condemned all violence and terrorist attacks which prolonged the suffering of the Iraqi people and hampered political progress and reconstruction. Believing in the necessity of national unity as a source of stability, it encouraged all political groups to continue working together towards the formation of an inclusive government as soon as possible. Turkey’s second and more important security concern in post-war Iraq was rather related to ethnic cleavages. The region of Northern Iraq presented a particular security problem for Turkey due to the Kurdish issue. For Ankara the unity of Iraq was non-debatable, as Turkey’s primary concern was the potential rise of Kurdish nationalism. These suspicions were particularly well-founded due to the existence of an Iraqi Kurdish quasi-state set up in Northern Iraq since the end of the Gulf War. Turkey, similar to its neighbors Iran and Syria, was concerned that any move towards Kurdish independence in Iraq could be a source of inspiration and stir up unrest in these bordering countries. The rise of Kurdish nationalism was a security threat for Turkey for the refuge and support that the PKK has long found in the region. Turkey has been fighting the PKK since the early 1980s. Besides its death toll (more than 40,000 people since then), fighting against the PKK caused a massive burden to Turkey’s budget.16 The PKK has used the region as a staging ground to plan and launch attacks against Turkish targets. In response, Turkey has requested Iraq to take “effective measures” for the Iraqi-origin terrorist assaults on her soil. Because Iraqi President Talabani, of Kurdish origin himself, was asked to have appealed to the PKK either to desist fighting against Turkey and to transform itself into a civilian and political organization or to leave Iraq.17 Furthermore, the Iraqi authorities officially denounced support of the PKK. Nonetheless, no direct action taken by Baghdad against the PKK caused dismay on the Turkish side. The last but not least significant security-related concern in the post-war period was related to the almost two million Iraqi Turkmen living in Northern Iraq. The shared ethnic links (they used to be known as Iraqi Turks by Turkey) and the ambiguity about governing Turkmen-populated Kerkuk in the post-Baathist era increased the Turkmen minority’s importance for Turkish policy-makers. For Turkey, their presence in Northern Iraq was a means to “dilute the case for or territorial integrity of any ethnically based Kurdish autonomous zone,” and to make the exclusive Kurdish control over the region more problematic. It could also prevent Kurdish possession of the rich petroleum reserves. Therefore, governance of the province of Kerkuk became a matter of discord among the communities living there. Kurds claimed that the city was originally Kurdish, described as the “heart of Kurdistan.” In their view, the annexation of the region into the Kurdish autonomous zone would mean a reKurdification—a quest that is unacceptable for other communities of the region.

162

Armağan Gözkaman

On the contrary, the Turkmen argued that the province should remain part of a unified Iraq because Sadettin Ergeç—the leader of the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF)18—argued that holding a referendum would jeopardize the multiethnic and multireligious structure of society living in Kerkuk.19 Thus, the province should be governed under the control of the federal authority. Ankara shared this position on the issue.20 Kerkuk’s Arab population’s opinion is close to the Turkmen position. Leaders of Arab and Turkmen communities agreed to seek national support on amending Iraq’s 2005 constitution in a way to remove Article 140,21 which said that a referendum would be carried out after the normalization of the region.22 Originally, the deadline was set for the end of 2007; but the referendum has not yet taken place. Ankara welcomed the postponement of the referendum, as the timing would inflame multiethnic tensions among the Arab, Kurdish, Turkmen and Christian communities. Turkey’s attitude to the resolution of this question can be summarized as “consensus first, referendum next.” In 2006, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs had developed a formula as a substitute to the Iraqi constitution’s Article 140. It defended a consensus agreed upon by the Turkmen, Kurdish and Arab communities before deciding on the future governance of Kerkuk. The plan then envisaged a referendum, provided that the consensus on the latter would be reached. But, the high-level Iraqi officials (including the president, prime minister, and the minister of foreign affairs) refused the proposal because they argued that Kerkuk was Iraq’s domestic problem and should be resolved according to the constitutional provisions. In this context, Turkey had to adopt a new position by defending a “special status” for Kerkuk. It resonated with the efforts made within the UN framework in June 2008 by Staffan de Mistura, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Iraq. He presented proposals to Erbil and Baghdad with the aim of reaching a deal among the communities that press claims in Kerkuk. Ever since the Kurdish Regional Parliament rejected the proposal, there has been no progress on the issue. Thus, the ongoing dispute over the final status of Kerkuk would threaten to further destabilize Iraq.

Impasse of the Post-Iraqi War Era in Terms of Turkey-U.S. Relations The post-Iraqi war period introduced security challenges as well as cleavages to Turkey’s bilateral relations with the United States. Although the refusal to give the American troops transit right through Turkey marked a friction between the Erdoğan and Bush administrations, the two countries’ relations saw a certain rapprochement during the Obama administration. The pace of bilateral relations and the impact of the Iraqi war on these relations are examined here in two sections.

The Iraqi Conundrum

163

The Ambiguous American Approach to Turkey in the Bush Era The relationship between Turkey and the United States has been subject to tension since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. First of all, Turkey’s nonparticipation sullied the image of the country vis-à-vis the American policy on Iraq. Overall, participation with the coalition forces through military means was largely of symbolic value. It would add to the international legitimacy of the operation. Materially, it would ease the burden on the U.S. military and hence pool the responsibility as well as the costs of the operation. There were also idiosyncratic factors that increased the importance of Turkey’s would-be participation for the United States. Geography was one of them. As a bordering country, Turkey, would be a great support in operational terms.23 Additionally, Turkish troops’ professionalism and experience was an important asset. Religion was another factor that would contribute to the success of the U.S.-led operation. The Bush administration tried hard to convince a number of Muslim countries to participate in its Iraqi operation in order to prevent the latter’s depiction as a Christians-versus-Muslims type military enterprise. Hence, Turkey’s participation would grant the operation not only a multinational but also a multi-religious character. It was also thought that Turkey would encourage other predominantly pro-American Muslim countries, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, to join the coalition forces.24 Turkey’s refusal to mount a northern front at the service of coalition forces on March 1, 2003, was a considerable blow to U.S.-Turkey relations. Washington had largely expected that the motion would be adopted by the Turkish Parliament. After all, Turkey was a strategic partner of the United States. Moreover, her fragile economy needed the support of International Monetary Fund and World Bank, in which the United States had a dominant position.25 Therefore, the Bush administration believed, it was in Turkey’s interests to provide the support for the forthcoming operation to Iraq. The unexpected outcome of the parliamentary voting may be explained by the events of the recent history. Turkey’s experience of the 1991 Gulf War, and the way this experience has been read in the country, were omnipresent in the Turkish policy-makers’ interpretation of the Iraqi crisis. According to this reading, Turkey failed to bargain effectively at that time and thus paid dearly. The commitment “not to avoid the mistakes of the past” largely framed the bargaining position of the foreign and security policy elite. This attitude also found its reflection at the parliamentary level. The most important consequence of the strain in Turkish-American relations concerned the question of Northern Iraq and the PKK. For Washington, the one positive aspect of Turkey’s staying out of the operation was that it did not have to risk its Kurdish supporters. Throughout the invasion, the Bush administration feared that any Turkish attack on Northern Iraq would destabilize the Kurdishpopulated region of Iraq, which was the only stable part of the country that showed signs of development. Iraqi Kurds have been the closest allies of the United States in Iraq and the only Iraqi community to wholeheartedly support

164

Armağan Gözkaman

the occupation. Losing this valuable asset, along with the destabilization of the Kurdish-populated zone of Iraqi federation, would go against Washington’s interests. Turkish authorities’ later response to the Bush Administration’s strategy related to its Kurdish supporters was not incompatible with Turkey’s fight against the PKK. It was endorsed by a statement of a shared vision and structured dialogue to advance the strategic partnership between Turkey and the United States (2006). Yet, although this document stressed Washington’s continued commitment to eradicating the PKK, in the beginning the extent of cooperation was far from being satisfactory for Turkey. As the then Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt stated, the inadequate support to Turkey ran counter to the common view that firmer cooperation would reinforce the fight against terror.26 As a response to this critical view of the United States’ inactive policy, the U.S. authorities underscored that they understood Turkey’s policy and priorities in its fight against terrorism. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated her government’s view on the PKK as follows: [T]he United States considers the PKK a terrorist organization, and indeed that we have a common enemy, that we must find ways to take effective action so that Turkey will not suffer from terrorist attacks. . . . This is going to take persistence and it is going to take commitment. This is a very difficult problem. [R]ooting out terrorism is hard. . . . Anything that would destabilize the north of Iraq is not going to be in Turkey’s interests, it is not going to be in our interests, and it is not going to be in the Iraqis’ interests.27

American support for Turkey for its fight against PKK did not facilitate Turkey’s occasional cross-border operations in the north of Iraq in its fight against the PKK/Kongragel after the March 2003 operation and 2006 statement. Since then, the duration of the cross-border operations has been subject to Washington’s authorization. But Ankara has kept complaining about the inadequacy of intelligence provided by the United States during the Bush administration.

New Administration, New Horizons The victory of the Democrats in the 2008 U.S. election provided Turkey with a relatively advantageous position in comparison with the previous administration. First of all, President Obama preferred dialogue for resolving international disputes, which corresponded with multidimensional Turkish foreign policy principles that could be translated into practice as a result of the end of the Cold War. That President Obama has promoted a conciliatory approach for the U.S. foreign policy made the new administration move away from the Bush Administration’s policy of unilateralism. Especially, his attitude towards the Muslim countries and his shunning of the Manichean discourse of “us” versus “them” denoted a two-pillar approach.28 One of these pillars is the ideological reconciliation between western culture and Islam as a religion, worldview and

The Iraqi Conundrum

165

identity. The other concerns the search for reconciliation and strategic partnership with the Muslim powers. President Obama’s multilateralism has also been solidified through his attempts to strengthen links with European countries while ensuring a greater cooperation on important international issues. 29 These efforts were also accompanied by fundamental changes with regard to the previous administration’s policies, which had sparked anti-Americanism in Europe—such as the closure of secret prisons and detention camps, the signing of an executive order against torture, relative activism on climate change, the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and a focus on new arms control agreements.30 On this front, it is also worth pointing out the current U.S. administration’s strong willingness to cooperate with the new rising global economic powers and to build stronger relations with the developing world. Undeniably, these new strategic preferences had repercussions on the relations between Washington and Ankara. Obama has considered Turkey a critical ally and has expressed his determination to strengthen bilateral relations. In his April 2009 speech at the TBMM, he exposed his willingness to overcome the deep-seated mistrust that ruled Turkish-American relations during the Bush presidency.31 He made it clear that his administration would offer a stronger support against the PKK terror, adding his hope for an increased cooperation among Turkey, Iraq and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq. The pledge of “stronger support” does not seem to have fully met Turkish expectations. In late 2011, Turkey was asking for more engagement and more technical support from the United States in her fight against the PKK.32 Yet, these demands may prove difficult to satisfy for Washington. Although the Obama administration is warm to the idea of selling armed drones (crucial weapons in the fight against terror) to Turkey, whether this sale will receive a green light from the U.S. Congress is uncertain: In a report prepared by the latter institution, concerns were raised on future arms sales to Turkey—especially in regards to possible PKK retaliation aimed at U.S. personnel and equipment.33 So far, the most salient improvement on the cooperation has been the establishment of a trilateral mechanism between Turkey, the United States and Iraq. Set up in order to coordinate actions against the PKK, this formulation of ministerial level meetings has been convening every three months since November 2009. While a multifaceted action plan for eradicating terror could have been adopted, their full implementation remains difficult.34

Implications of the Iraqi Conundrum for Turkey’s Northern Iraq Policies There is a real difficulty for Ankara to deal effectively with the question of terrorism: Despite intermittent military operations launched against PKK targets in Northern Iraq, the organization keeps continuing its aggression in Turkey. Although successive governments have stated that the struggle against terrorism

166

Armağan Gözkaman

would be pursued with determination, there is still no victory in sight. The fight with the PKK is not only a significant concern for Turkey, but also a factor that has a deep impact on her relations with various foreign actors. Solution to the PKK issue can not be of a purely military nature. Sending more troops to the borders or launching more cross-border operations would have a limited impact on resolving the problem. In addition, the development of the KRG led Ankara to reconsider its policies, especially since 2008. The government adopted in 2009 an initiative called the “Kurdish Opening” (also known as the “Democratic Opening”) to expand the freedoms of citizens of Kurdish origin. It also encouraged investment in the southeast region in a bid to end the conflict with the PKK. Despite its weaknesses, this effort aimed at a progressive approach for the solution of the so-called “Kurdish issue” (not limiting itself to the fight against the PKK). Nevertheless, it was hampered various times by a series of attacks mounted by the PKK in its aftermath. PKK aggression particularly flared up in 2010 after the organization’s leader Abdullah Öcalan stated that he had given up hopes of dialogue with the Turkish government. It is hard to refute that keeping the democratic opening functional did not veritably coincide with the PKK’s interests. The escalation of the PKK’s aggression not only led to a tougher response by Turkey but also exposes a very unfortunate situation for the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi—BDP). The party claims opening up negotiations with the Turkish government, constitutional amendments for ethnic rights, a general amnesty and ultimately a redefinition of citizenship—where Kurdish citizens would no longer be called “Turks.” Yet, Bila also shares the view, that the BDP has no or limited power over the PKK. 35 If the BDP was able to do better than being the political wing of the terrorist organization, the resolution of the ethnic-based terrorism would be more possible. Turkey has repeatedly requested cooperation from the KRG to curb the PKK’s activities and urged it to expel PKK militants based in KRG territory. In 2010, Ankara’s demand from the three regional actors—Iraq, the United States and the KRG—of handing over around 250 PKK members to Turkey was refused by Kurdish authorities on the grounds that these people were not living in Northern Iraq.36 A set of options for neutralizing the PKK had also been conveyed to the president of the KRG, Massoud Barzani, during his visit to Ankara the same year.37 The Turkish government’s stance is clear: It is not possible to tolerate this situation any further. This view is also plain to see in the then Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ’s words. By stressing that Northern Iraq is a safe haven for the PKK, he affirmed, soon before his retirement: “We are where the words end.”38 However, such scenarios are doomed to fail. As Bila has argued, the current stalemate may lead to a military-power-backed diplomacy, as was the case during the confrontation between Ankara and Damascus in 1998. 39 This action resulted in the expulsion of PKK leader Öcalan and his eventual capture by Turkey with the help of American authorities. As of today, neither the KRG nor the government of Baghdad can be forced to do this because of a change in parame-

The Iraqi Conundrum

167

ters: The northern part of Iraq is the most stable and secure region of the country and it is in the United States’ best interest that it remains so. Therefore, any threat of instability that would emanate from Turkey’s confrontation with Iraq’s regional or governmental forces would cause a serious crisis between Ankara and Washington. Non-military options are thus more likely to succeed. The Turkish perception of Northern Iraq has changed in time in a way that Turkey could be engaged with the KRG in order to create synergy for eradicating the PKK. This cooperation was also justified by the reciprocal official visits between the two sides. For a long time, Ankara limited its contacts to the PKK’s and KDP’s branch offices in Turkish soil. The Turkish government recognized the KRG immediately after it was given existence by the Iraqi constitution, but did not develop formal relations with it. Before 2006, especially in governmental documents, the name “Kurdish Regional Administration” was preferred to “Kurdish Regional Government.” In 2008, the Turkish special representative for Iraq made an official visit to the KRG—a move that was followed by a more significant one. For the first time, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu paid a visit to KRG as part of Ankara’s efforts to end its conflict with the PKK and establish closer cooperation. The decisions made after the negotiations reflect a wide-range cooperation scheme marked by significant economic, strategic and social programs. Working on the possibilities of an “economic integration” is accompanied by a range of issue-areas, ranging from convergence on trade, energy and transport policies, the opening of Turkish banks in Northern Iraq, scheduled flights to Erbil to the exchange of students. The opening of a Turkish consulate in the region, in 2010, marked the highest point of the rapprochement between Ankara and Erbil. Although Turkey rejects recognizing “Iraqi Kurdistan” officially, Turkey’s moderate policy has been highly welcomed by the KRG. Whether the cooperation between Turkey and the KRG would bring about tangible results may be a matter of discussion, but the gradual increase in Turkey’s existence in the region would certainly have a positive effect both for Turkey and Iraq. Turkish authorities are conscious that KRG is a reality in the north of Iraq, and the improvement of economic and social relations in the region are their political choice. In the absence of a terrorist threat, both sides may benefit from the ongoing rapprochement.

Conclusion This chapter examined the web of complex situations faced by Turkey’s foreign and security policy in regards to the Iraqi predicament. In such a difficult context, Turkey has continued to play an important role in the region. Its positive attitude towards Northern Iraq was generally praised by foreign actors. As Condoleezza Rice argued, Turkey has built a bridge with Iraqi Kurds despite the undeniable problems that persist.40 This constructive approach was also welcomed by the EU. The European Commission’s consecutive progress reports

168

Armağan Gözkaman

asserted that Turkey supported efforts towards achieving national reconciliation, security and peace in Iraq. Turkey has been carrying out further important tasks, such as training Iraqi security forces; organizing seminars for Iraqi political parties, diplomats, media representatives and health personnel; hosting an enlarged meeting of Iraq’s neighboring countries to support national reconciliation and stabilization in the country, in the post-Iraqi war era. On this account, the Memorandum of Understanding for Technical, Training and Scientific Cooperation, signed between Ankara and Baghdad in June 2009, was a significant effort. Based on the idea of enhancing mutual cooperation in the field of security, the memorandum will complement Turkey’s current contribution to Iraq’s development and stability.41 Nevertheless, despite all international efforts, the situation in Iraq does not leave much room for optimism. For instance, the high and violent death toll and ethno-religious clashes contribute to the growing insecurity in the country. The political deadlock that followed the 2010 elections in Iraq failed to produce a working government. On the other hand, that the United States decided to reduce the number of combat troops in Iraq by the end of August and eventually withdraw them all connotes the possibility of subsequent clashes in the Kurdishpopulated north. In such a case, Turkey’s position will be crucial. Turkey’s relations with the regional forces and authorities will be linked with the attitude of the KRG. An efficient cooperation on the PKK issue is Turkey’s foremost demand. But the Kurdish side’s determination to fulfill this demand is doubtful, because the KRG does not consider the PKK a terrorist organization. An initial denouncement by Barzani of the PKK attacks and giving support to the Kurdish opening of the AKP government may have been conducive to overcoming tension. However, it seems unlikely that the KRG will take decisive measures against the PKK, as demanded by Ankara. On the other hand, the inclusion of Kerkuk into the KRG’s jurisdiction presents a potential source of friction between Turkey and the Kurdish Administration. The strategic move to prevent tension between Ankara and Erbil consists of granting the province a status that will be agreed upon by all the interested parties. But the KRG’s agenda is different. In sum, the problematic depth of the Iraqi conundrum before and during the war in Iraq has been overcome. But the pace of friendly relations between Iraq and Turkey will depend on Turkey, Iraq as well as the United States.

Notes 1. The Resolution stipulated that all states should prevent the import into their territories of all commodities and products originating in Iraq or Kuwait. Resolution 661 (1990), Adopted by the Security Council at its 2933rd Meeting on August 6, 1990. 2. Çağrı Erhan and Ömer Kürkçüoğlu, “Orta Doğu’yla İlişkiler,” in Türk Dış Politikası. Kurtuluş Savaşından Bugüne Olgular, Belgeler, Yorumlar, ed. Baskın Oran (Istanbul: Iletişim Yayınları, 2005), 552.

The Iraqi Conundrum

169

3. “DoD News Briefing—ASD PA Clarke and Maj. Gen. McChrystal,” Global Security, March 22, 2003, http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2003/iraq030322-dod01.htm (accessed July 10, 2010). 4. As a support to the operation, José María Aznar (Spain), José Manuel Durão Barroso (Portugal), Silvio Berlusconi (Italy), Tony Blair (United Kingdom), Václav Havel (Czech Republic), Peter Medgyessy (Hungary), Leszek Miller (Poland), and Anders Fogh Rasmussen (Denmark) signed what is known as the “letter of eight.” The ten countries of the Vilnius Group—Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia—also declared their solidarity with the United States. José María Aznar et al., “Europe and America Must Stand United,” The Times, January 30, 2003, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article858456.ece; Jeffrey Donovan, “Eastern Europe: Vilnius Group Supports U.S. on Iraq,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, February 6, 2003, http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1102148.html (accessed July 10, 2010). 5. In both countries, the current heads of the government have declared unequivocally their unwillingness to see Turkey join the EU. 6. “Thousands of Kurds Protest Turkey’s Plans for Iraq,” CBC News, March 3, 2003. http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2003/03/03/kurds_protest030303.html (accessed July 10, 2010). 7. Gül visited Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. He also met the Secretary General of the Arab League in Cairo. See “Turkey and Egypt’s Peace Pact,” BBC, January 5, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2628851.stm (accessed June 4, 2010). 8. Erich Marquardt, “Turkey Back on Side with the US,” Asia Times, February 4, 2004, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FB04Ak02.html (accessed May 27, 2010). 9. Özkök lashed out at “friendly and allied countries and institutions” for what he described “suspicious, unjust and sometimes hurtful” criticism of Turkey’s planned intervention in the region. “I have difficulty in understanding how those who see dangers from overseas do not find Turkey convincing when it says that the same danger is just across its border,” he said. “Chief of Staff Özkök Says No Immediate Intention to Send Turkish Troops into Northern Iraq,” Turkey News, March 25–31, 2003. 10. Article 92 of the Constitution stipulates that the power to authorize the declaration of a state of war in cases deemed legitimate by international law and except where required by international treaties to which Turkey is a party or by the rules of international courtesy to send TAF to foreign countries and to allow foreign armed forces to be stationed in Turkey, is vested in the TBMM. 11. The NATO Defense Planning Committee agreed to deploy early warning planes, Patriot air-defense missiles and anti-chemical and biological warfare units. This decision caused, however, a distressing situation in the Alliance, whose members have been divided over Washington’s request of sending NATO planes and missiles to protect Turkey from a possible strike from Iraq. France, Belgium and Germany were against the idea on the grounds that NATO’s activation could have harmed efforts of disarming Iraq peacefully. See Marco Overhaus, “In Search of a Post-Hegemonic Order: Germany, NATO and the European Security and Defense Policy,” German Politics 13, no. 4 (2004): 558. 12. This paragraph also contains arrangements concerning the immediate transfer of the combatant land troops to outside Turkey from their temporary deployment spots; the positioning of air, sea and special forces in a way to provide their participation to a probable operation; the authorization for foreign air force components to use the Turkish air zone; preparations for the arrival of foreign armed forces to Turkey; the determination of

170

Armağan Gözkaman

the status on which they will depend when they will be in Turkey; the cooperation between foreign troops and the TAF. 13. Archives of the TBMM, www.tbmm.org.tr. 14. Jean-Christophe Peuch, “Turkey: U.S. Hails Ankara’s Decision to Send Troops to Iraq, But Admits Deployment May Take Time,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, October 8, 2003, http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1104594.html (accessed June 5, 2010). 15. Andrew F. Tully, “Turkey: Withholding of Troops Complicates US Mission in Iraq,” Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, November 10, 2003, http://www.rferl.org/ content/Article/1104950.html (accessed June 5, 2010). 16. The PKK had a moment of cease after its leader Abdullah Öcalan was captured in Kenya in 1999 and, subsequently, put on trial in Turkey. The terrorist organization’s position has weakened among the Kurds of Turkey since then. Nevertheless, although it had stopped the violent conflict with the Turkish government for some while, it called off the ceasefire in 2004 and resumed terrorist attacks. 17. Tim Butcher and Richard Holt, “Turkey Threatens Iraq Invasion to Hit PKK,” Daily Telegraph, October 24, 2007. 18. Founded in 1995, the ITF is a political movement that seeks to represent the Turkmen population of Iraq. It is made of the coalition of the following parties: Iraqi National Turkmen Party, Turkmeneli Party, Provincial Turkmen Party, Movement of the Independent Turkmen, Iraqi Turkmen Rights Party, and Turkmen Islamic Movement of Iraq. 19. Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution specified that a referendum would be carried out after the normalization of the region. 20. Sumedha Senanayake, “Turkey Keeps Nervous Eye on Kerkuk,” Asia Times, January 24, 2007, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IA24Ak02.html (accessed June 8, 2010). 21. “Turkmen Join Arabs to Stop Vote on Iraq Oil Province,” AFP, August 19, 2009. 22. The disagreement between Arabs and Kurds manifested itself also on the revision of election law over parliamentary seats in Kerkuk: the former—together with the Turkmen—wanted the 2004 population records to be used for the elections, while the latter opted for the records of 2009, which reflect an improvement of their ethnic demographics. Besides, one should not miss the point that the central Iraqi (Arab) government firmly opposes the removal of Kerkuk from its control. 23. This is illustrated by a tactic used by the United States: Even after Ankara had refused to authorize U.S. military forces to enter to Iraq by its soil, Washington declared that its troops would use Turkish territory for operation, which made Baghdad station forces in the northern front. See Richard M. Bennett, “The Defense of Baghdad—Special Military Report,” AFI Research Intelligence Briefing, April 3, 2003, http://www. globalresearch.ca/articles/BEN304A.html (accessed June 8, 2010). 24. Jim Lobe, “It’s Snowing on Rumsfeld’s Parade,” Asia Times, October 25, 2003, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EJ25Ak01.html (accessed July 21, 2010). 25. A negative consequence of confrontation with Iraq could have been a challenge for the Turkish economy, which had already been weakened by the 2001 financial crisis. This time Ankara wanted to be assured that its prospective economic losses were going to be reasonably compensated by other means such as direct aid, the lifting or relaxation of import quotas and the establishment of an economic security zone. Nevertheless, even an offer of six billion dollars in grants and a loan of eight and half billion dollars—which were considered to offset fears that war could devastate Turkey’s economy—did not suffice to convince Ankara, which had appeared to be holding out for a package of financial

The Iraqi Conundrum

171

compensation before accepting U.S. demands. Ziya Öniş and Şuhnaz Yılmaz, “The Turkey-EU-US Triangle in Perspective: Transformation or Continuity?” Middle East Journal 59, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 275. 26. “Büyükanıt: Terör Mücadelemize Destek Yok,” Sabah, July 3, 2007, http://arsiv. sabah.com.tr/2007/07/03/haber,BF0B8E71CD01445284F73E850BD3D5B8.html (accessed May 5, 2010). 27. “Rice Pledges U.S. Support for Turkey against Kurdish Rebels,” CBC, November 2, 2007, http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/11/02/us-turkey.html (accessed July 2, 2010); “US Promises Action on PKK,” Daily Times, November 3, 2007, http://www.daily times.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007%5C11%5C03%5Cstory_3-11-2007_pg4_2 (accessed June 21, 2010). 28. Sami Aoun, “Un Renouveau des Relations avec le Monde Musulman? Limites de la Séduction et Turbulences de la Décision,” La Revue Internationale et Stratégique 76 (Hiver 2009/2010): 169. 29. Ibid.; Jeff Lightfoot, “Les Relations Transatlantiques à la Croisée des Chemins,” La Revue Internationale et Stratégique 76 (Hiver 2009/2010): 181. 30. Daniel Hamilton and Nikolas Foster, “The Obama Administration and Europe,” in The Obama Moment: European and American Perspectives, ed. Alvaro de Vasconcelos and Marcin Zaborowski (Paris: European Union Institute for Security Studies, 2009), 39. 31. Remarks of President Barak Obama—As Prepared For Delivery Address to TBMM, Ankara, Turkey, April 6, 2009. 32. “Turkey Eyes US Drones in PKK Fight,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, March 14, 2012. http://www.rferl.org/content/turkey_eyes_us_drones_pkk_fight/2438 3897.html (accessed March 14, 2012). 33. Jim Zanotti, Turkey-U.S. Defense Cooperation: Prospects and Challenges, Congressional Research Service, Washington, April 8, 2011, 31, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/ mideast/R41761.pdf (accessed March 10, 2012). 34. “Üçlü Mekanizma Ekim Ayında Toplanıyor,” CNN Turk, September 28, 2010, http://www.cnnturk.com/2010/turkiye/09/28/uclu.mekanizma.ekim.ayinda.toplaniyor/591 221.0/index.html (accessed October 1, 2010). 35. Fikret Bila, “Hem Terör, Hem Tehdit, Hem Açılım Nasıl Olacak?” Milliyet, June 4, 2010, http://www.milliyet.com.tr/hem-teror-hem-tehdit-hem-acilim-nasil-olacak-/fikret bila/siyaset/yazardetayarsiv/25.07.2010/1246886/default.htm (accessed July 4, 2010). 36. “Turkey Asks Iraq, US to Hand over Kurdish Rebels: Report,” France24, July 10, 2010, http://www.france24.com/en/20100710-turkey-asks-iraq-us-hand-over-kurdishrebels-report (accessed September 4, 2010). 37. Fikret Bila, “45 Günlük Bilanço,” Milliyet, July 7, 2010, http://www. milliyet.com.tr/45-gunluk-bilanco/fikretbila/siyaset/yazardetayarsiv/25.07.2010/1260188/ default.htm (accessed July 7, 2010). 38. “Sözün Bittiği Yerdeyiz,” Milliyet, July 6, 2010, http://www.milliyet.com. tr/sozun-bittigi-yerdeyiz-/siyaset/haberdetay/06.07.2010/1259717/default.htm (accessed July 7, 2010). 39. Bila, “45 Günlük Bilanço.” 40. “Türkiye’nin Irak Politikasına Övgü,” Hürriyet, December 25, 2006. 41. Gen. Metin Gürak, the head of the General Staff Communication Department, said the pact would contribute to peace in the Middle East: “The memorandum of understanding signed by two neighboring countries with historical, cultural and traditional ties will contribute to peace in the Middle East, which is still facing negative developments.”

172

Armağan Gözkaman

See Newspot, no. 95, June 2009, http://www.byegm.gov.tr/db/dosyalar/sureliyayingrup kayitlar16.pdf, 22.

Chapter Ten

Turkish-Russian Rapprochement and the Security Dialogue in the Black Sea-South Caucasus Region Burcu Gültekin-Punsmann The South Caucasus was the contact zone between the Ottoman and the Russian Empires. This contact was all the more violent because the two empires had fought more than traded over decades. This chapter examines the confrontations and rapprochement in Turkey-Russian relations, in particular during the postCold War period. It highlights the eventuality of a cooperation and concerted action between Turkey and Russia in the South Caucasus. In history, the Caucasus was a region over which the two empires’ interests and claims clashed. However, in the 1990s, Moscow and Ankara were extremely cautious so as to prevent a spillover of their tension in the Caucasus to the rest of their bilateral relations, as tensions did not involve Russia and Turkey themselves so much as the countries situated between them. The post-Cold War era witnessed rapprochement as a result of increasing interdependence and political interactions, which eliminated the knot of suspicion, resentment, mutual fear and a legacy of haunting minds. The Turkish-Russian reconciliation process involved not only politicians but also non-governmental actors, such as business communities and interest groups. The August 2008 war between Georgia and Russia put under strain the bilateral relation. The integration processes verging towards interdependence indeed increased the cost of a conflict that would oppose Turkey to Russia. The Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform (CSCP)—announced by Turkey in the context of the August 2008 war that was characterized by increasing polarization and harsh rhetoric between Russia and most of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries—allowed the channels of communication and dialogue with Russia to remain open. The decision reflected Ankara’s awareness that Russia would remain the main party to the resolution of the frozen conflicts 173

174

Burcu Gültekin-Punsmann

in the region and the belief that antagonizing Moscow would destabilize the region. The issue whether the Turkish-Russian rapprochement would foster a sense of regional accountability and ownership and develop into a problemsolving approach in the South Caucasus remains a main question.

Turkish-Russian Relations in Historical Perspective The bilateral diplomatic relations between Turkey and Russia dates back to 1492, when Czar Ivan the Third made a formal request to send a diplomatic delegation to the Ottoman Empire. After five years of official dialogue, Turkey recognized the newly founded Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1920, and the USSR happened to be among the first states that recognized the Ankara government during the Turkish War of National Liberation. The Transcaucasus had been a contact zone since the Ottoman and Russian Empires, in which the two empires fought more than they traded over decades. The Transcaucasus had been the area of confrontation, acting as a buffer zone. 1 Ottomans and Russians fought eight wars between the seventeenth and the early twentieth century to dominate the region. Although for most of the eighteenth century, the Ottoman Empire’s main adversary had been Austria, Russia’s expansionist ambitions towards the Black Sea and south altered this pattern of enmity. Russia replaced Austria as the most immediate threat for the Ottomans. Nearly seventy years of relative stability in bilateral relations were built with the Moscow Treaty (1921).2 The Turkish-Soviet alliance set in the war against Allied Powers in the Turkish War of National Liberation (1920-1922) had its impacts especially on economic fields. Turkey signed one of her first reciprocal economic agreements with the USSR in 1927. This bilateral economic agreement granted a preferential treatment to an economic bilateral representation in each other’s countries, facilitated transit trade and the use of the port of Batumi by Turkish traders. Furthermore, the USSR helped Turkey for its industrialization effort by giving credits for the establishment of the basis of the textile industry in Turkey.3 However, at the end of World War II, the Soviet’s Georgian border with Turkey became a source of threat for Turkey. The USSR denounced the Treaty of Friendship and Neutrality that had been signed twenty years earlier (1925). Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Molotov urged the amendment of conditions of the Treaty, such as retrocession of the provinces of Kars, Ardahan and Artvin to the USSR, and the establishment of Russian bases on the Turkish Straits. A few months later, it was claimed that Eastern Anatolia was historically and physically part of Georgia, and was therefore to be given to Georgia. 4 Furthermore, the Armenian Church demanded publicly the modification of the TurkishArmenian border as well. The issue of Turkey’s alliance with the Euro-Atlantic area and, ultimately, its membership to NATO in 1952 further deepened the enmity between Turkey and the USSR.

Turkish-Russian Rapprochement and the Security Dialogue

175

The Bilateral Political Détente Destalinization in the Soviet Union in the second half of the 1950s led to the period of a political détente on a bilateral basis. On May 30, 1953, Ankara was informed that the governments of Georgia and Armenia intended to end their territorial claims on Turkey “on behalf of good neighborhood relations and the consolidation of peace.”5 The Kremlin also announced that it was ready to review its position on the regime of the Turkish Straits. In the 1960s, official visits between the USSR and Turkey were carried out on a regular basis.6 These contacts led to the release of joint statements and the signing of declarations. The most important ones were those of 1972 and 1978 on the “principles of good-neighborly relations.” The two neighbors were already linked to each other by a range of conventions and protocols aiming at regulating trans-border relations: the use of trans-frontier rivers (January 8, 1927), procedures for the settlement of trans-border disputes (July 15, 1937), the railway traffic (April 27, 1961), and radio and telecommunications (April 9, 1962). In 1975, the Final Act of the Helsinki declaration explicitly recognized the principles of the inviolability of borders, and ended the century-old Turkish– Russian dispute on the regime of the Straits. The political détente between Moscow and Ankara boosted their economic, scientific and technical cooperation set by the agreements of 1967, 1977 and 1984 “on the supplies of equipment, materials and services by the Soviet Union to Turkey for the construction of industrial factories.” The beginning of a new era in Turkish-Russian commerce relations that dates back to the Natural Gas Agreement was signed in 1984. The agreement included an “off-set” clause that allowed Turkey to pay partially for the imported gas with goods and services to be exported to Russia. This led to a remarkable increase in the trade of goods between the two countries and enabled the Turkish contracting companies to enter the Russian market during the Perestroika period.

Fall of the Iron Curtain and Reemergence of Confrontational Rhetoric The early 1990s brought instability to Turkey’s border with the newly independent Southern Caucasus Republics. The post-Cold War contacts between Turkey and Russia took place in the context of the escalation of the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh (1988-1994). However, in the 1990s, Moscow and Ankara were extremely cautious so as to prevent a spillover of their tension in the Caucasus to the rest of their bilateral relations—as tensions did not involve Russia and Turkey themselves so much—as the countries situated between them. The efforts and gestures of goodwill of Turkish and Russian governments, aiming at overcoming mutual mistrust and suspicion, supported by increasing business interactions, harbinger a new area of cooperation.

176

Burcu Gültekin-Punsmann

Soon after the collapse of the USSR, there was a flurry of visits between the Russian Federation and Turkey. These included the visits of Foreign Minister Hikmet Çetin to Moscow in 1992 and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev to Ankara. Later in 1992, the then Turkish Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel paid an official visit to Moscow and signed the Treaty on the Principles of Relations between Turkey and the Russian Federation. The treaty established the legal basis of the relations between the two countries and confirmed the mutual willingness to improve the relationship. The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan did not affect the TurkishRussian bilateral cooperation, despite the support given by Russia to Armenia and the mobilization of the Turkish people and political class for the Azerbaijani cause. The official contacts were intensified. The Independent headlined on September 10, 1993: “Turkey and Russia United on Armenia.”7 The escalation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict coincided with the establishment of the first bilateral Turkish-Russian official contacts. A week after direct rhetorical confrontation between Azerbaijan and Armenia, triggered by the move of Armenian troops close to the Nakhichevani border, Turkey and Russia agreed on a protocol to boost the bilateral trade from $2 billion to $10 billion before the end of the twentieth century. Russia promised to increase natural gas supplies to Turkey. The Independent in its issue of May 25, 1992, headlined: “Turkey seeks trade rather than war with Russia.” Diplomacy between Turkey and Russia had been decisive for stopping the Armenian advance southward and the preservation of the territorial integrality of the Azerbaijani Autonomous Republic of Nakhichevan on the border with Turkey. Immediately, after his return from Moscow, Mr. Demirel traveled on May 28, 1992, to Nakhichevan for the opening of the border post on the Aras River linking Turkey to the Azerbaijani enclave, which was kept hermetically closed during the Cold War period to prevent any contacts between Turks and Azerbaijanis. In an effort to increased cooperation, in June 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin attended the first summit meeting of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) that took place in Istanbul. In return, the then Prime Minister Tansu Çiller paid a visit to Moscow in September 1993, which established the Joint Transportation Committee and a Working Group in the fields of telecommunications, industry and transfer of high technology. Later on in 1994, Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets’s visit to Ankara produced a further cooperation through two Protocols on bilateral economic relations and debt rescheduling related to the Turkish Eximbank loans. These visits were extremely productive considering, the business communities in both countries, for they contributed to the awareness of mutual interdependence, woven by trade. Despite the willingness of the Turkish and Russian governments to open a new page in bilateral relations and eliminate the traces of century-old enmities, the confrontational mentality continued to prevail in the Turkish-Caucasian borderland in the 1990s. In the early 1990s, the post-Cold War regional context had provided the ground for arguments about the inborn hostility allegedly existing between the peoples.

Turkish-Russian Rapprochement and the Security Dialogue

177

The main elements of Russia’s southern Caucasus policy were determined to reinforce the southern Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) border adjoining Turkey. The Russian military doctrine, adopted on November 2, 1993, implicitly assumed that the borders of the Russian security zone corresponded with those of the CIS. At the CIS summit of May 1995 held in Minsk, Russia proposed an agreement on the protection of external CIS borders, yet faced a refusal. As a result, Russia managed to develop cooperation in the border protection only with states that were willing to accept Russian borderguards. And in the South Caucasus, only Armenia accepted the Russian border control proposal. Georgia (with Russian pressure), also agreed on Russian deployment of troops along its borders with Turkey. In January 1993, Russia deployed the Group of Russian Troops in Transcaucasia in Georgian and Armenian bases along the border. On June 1, 1995, the chief of the Russian Ground Forces, Colonel General Vladimir Semenov, announced that in order to maintain stability and tranquility in the region, the Fiftyeight Army had been formed, with its headquarters in Vladikavkaz.8 As a matter of fact, in the early 1990s, Turkey emerged as the new front line state within NATO. A new Cold War with Moscow would likely take the form of friction on Russia’s southern periphery rather than a more direct confrontation in Europe. Ankara was concerned to be left to face such flank risks alone. Turkey’s initial lack of enthusiasm for NATO enlargement was due to Ankara’s fear that such an enlargement might provoke Moscow to try to expand its military presence in the Caucasus. The security challenges were perceived as being harder, more direct and more likely to involve the use of force in the Eastern Mediterranean, especially on Turkey’s borders.

From Interdependence to Strategic Partnership The historical reconciliation process between Turkey and Russia should generate the same degree of enthusiasm as did the French-German reconciliation process. The advanced multifaceted partnership that was promoted by the Russian and Turkish governments was based on the good understanding that progressively helped overcome a long history of continuous conflict between the two countries, full of negative images that amalgamated into a knot of suspicion, resentment, fear of each other, and a legacy of haunting minds. The Turkish-Russian reconciliation process has become all the more exciting, as it has involved civilian actors, business communities, and stakeholders in the tourism sector. Turkey’s trade volume with Russia represented 70 percent of its exchanges with the CIS countries in 2010.9 The Russian market has been a valuable outlet for the Anatolian small and medium enterprises which were not competitive enough to enter the European Union (EU) market. By 2008, Russia was Turkey’s largest trading partner, with a total trade volume of about $38 billion. The total value of projects undertaken by Turkish construction companies in Russia

178

Burcu Gültekin-Punsmann

so far has topped $30 billion, corresponding to about one-fourth of all projects carried out by Turkish contractors around the world. Efforts underway have constantly aimed at strengthening transportation, not only of products but also of services and people between the two countries. The two countries have agreed on a visa-free regime in 2010. Turks would be among the first non-CIS citizens to have visa-free access to the Russian Federation. As far as trade is concerned, Turkey and Russia have been planning to build a logistics center in Krasnodar—located 1,500 kilometers south of Moscow and close to the Black Sea ports of Novorossiysk, Temruk, Taman, Kavkaz, Gelendzhik and Tuapse. This enabled Turkey to export to Russia and other countries in the Black Sea and Caucasus region more efficiently. Some 98 percent of cargo from Russia to Turkey is carried to Black Sea ports via railways. 10 To increase the trading volume, a non-stop ferry service has been planned between the ports of Kavkaz and Samsun that would carry railcars across the sea from Russia to Turkey and eventually by rail to the Mediterranean port of Mersin, in Turkey. The cooperation in the energy field has been another significant field of cooperation that has been developing into a comprehensive regional strategy.11 Russia is Turkey’s most reliable supplier. In natural gas, Turkey—after the EU—was Gazprom’s second largest market. As of 2009 it provided around 68 percent of its natural gas supply and 50 percent of crude oil imports. 12 Taking into account the annual 14 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Russian gas supply across the Balkans and the 16 bcm planned through the Blue Stream, Russia has been Turkey’s single largest supplier of natural gas.13 This direct link beneath the Black Sea to Russia has indeed increased Turkey’s energy security. Russia has played a critical role in Turkey’s energy supply security. Turkey has not been affected by transit disputes, and the direct flow of gas has never been disrupted—Russia even increased the volume when the gas flow from Iran was suspended. Russian Prime Minister Putin’s trip to Turkey on August 6, 2009, resulted in the signing of a number of energy-related agreements. Permission was given for Russia to conduct seismic and environmental research in Turkey’s exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea within the framework of South Stream. Furthering the energy cooperation based on mutual support to nationally promoted projects was made possible with several other agreements. For instance, the socalled Blue Stream 2 project would involve the expansion and extension of the pipeline network in the Black Sea connecting Russia with Turkey to enable natural gas to be transported to Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Northern Cyprus. Russia expressed interest in providing a throughput guarantee for the planned Samsun-Ceyhan oil pipeline by allowing Russian and Kazakh crude (transiting Russia) to fill the pipeline. Other deals raised the prospects of Gazprom’s involvement in building gas storage depots and power plants in Turkey, and a plant to liquefy natural gas in Ceyhan. On the other hand, Gazprom is interested in participating in the tenders for the privatization of part of the gas distribution grids in Ankara and Istanbul. Together with the intensification of economic, trade and energy cooperation, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP)

Turkish-Russian Rapprochement and the Security Dialogue

179

government has focused on the diplomatic traffic between Ankara and Moscow. As stated earlier, Putin’s visit in December 2004 marked a monumental event in itself, as he was the first Russian head of state that visited Turkey in the last thirty-two years. During this visit a Joint Declaration on the Deepening of Friendship and Multidimensional Partnership was agreed on, which referred to a wide range of common interests and specifically accentuated the increasing confidence and trust. The Partnership noted that both countries were the Eurasian powers with shared interest in and definition of security and stability. This traffic topped in 2005 when President Putin and Prime Minister Erdoğan met four times, including a seven-hour private meeting in the Russian city of Sochi. No longer suspicious of Turkey’s purported Pan-Turkic ambitions, in February 2009 Moscow allowed Turkish President Abdullah Gül to make an official visit to the Russian Republic of Tatarstan. The increasing dialogue also extended to the military/defense sector. A regular military/defense working group was established to exchange views on military and defense issues. The Joint Declaration on the Deepening of Friendship and Multidimensional Partnership, signed in 2003, stipulated the special significance attached to the need to cooperate more via the Intergovernmental Commission on Military, Technical and Defense Industry Cooperation. The deepening of Turkish-Russian relations reflected upon the two countries’ multilateral dealings on a variety of other platforms. Two of them are reflected with Turkey’s support for Russia’s quest to join the World Trade Organization and for Moscow’s desire to obtain observer status at the Organization of the Islamic Conference. On the other hand, however, Russian support for Turkish initiatives in international platforms has been less forthcoming. The most notable of that has been Moscow’s reluctance to lift its veto in the United Nations (UN) Security Council over the Cyprus report submitted by Kofi Annan in 2004, advocating for the ending of the economic isolation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. What is more, in April 2005 the Russian State Duma’s approval of a resolution declaring that the Ottomans had committed genocide against their Armenian subjects in 1915 strained bilateral diplomatic relations.

The Impact of the Georgian–Russian War of August 2008 on Turkish-Russian Relations The five-day August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia highlighted the disruptive potential of a renewed conflict in the South Caucasus. The full-blown war caused hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries within a matter of days. Several days of hostility showed that even a local war in the region could well lead to catastrophic consequences, not just for the country concerned but also for its neighbors and the international order. The Georgian-Russian war made it clear that Russia was willing to use force to deepen and promote its interests in the region. It was also clear that Russia, this strategic partner for both Armenia and Azerbaijan, was capable of conduct-

180

Burcu Gültekin-Punsmann

ing destructive military operations against a purported U.S. ally in the Caucasus. Although Russia emerged from the war as a military winner, its image has been tarnished. The most remarkable cost was that the war undermined the Russian image as an unbiased mediator in conflict management. It thus contributed to exacerbating the East European countries’ fear of the Russian military threat. The war also demonstrated the risks associated with the functioning of the East-West transit and transportation corridor via Georgia. Geographically, Georgia links Turkey with Azerbaijan and Central Asia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan with the eastern world. Georgia’s transit function and transport infrastructure has become vital both for Armenia and Azerbaijan, following the breakdown of the Armenian-Azerbaijani and Armenian-Turkish relations. For a lasting stability in the region, solid guarantees of a safe operation of energy corridors is thus essential. This is becoming particularly relevant, considering the prospects for the Nabucco gas transport project. The Russian incursion into Georgia disrupted the only energy export routes that were not controlled by Moscow. At one point during the crisis, as the Economist aptly noted, “The only pipeline from Azerbaijan that was fully operational was the one running through Russian soil carrying Caspian oil to the port of Novorossiysk.”14Although by the end of August the main energy flows had resumed through the twin arteries—the Baku-TbilisiCeyhan (BTC) oil pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (BTE) gas pipeline— the big question concerned their future security. The August war further complicated prospects for Nabucco operation. The crisis has aggravated the investment climate in Georgia. More importantly, by punishing Georgia for its independent pro-western policies, Russia intimidated Azerbaijan and the Central Asian gas suppliers as well. 15 A memorandum of understanding was signed on March 27, 2009, between Russia, the Azerbaijan’s State Oil Company and Gazprom. Faced with a gas shortfall in the years ahead, Gazprom could use Azerbaijani gas either for consumption in southern regions of Russia or to re-export to Europe as “Russian” gas through the Gazpromplanned South Stream pipeline. With the agreement signed on June 29, 2009, Gazprom became the first—and the only—company listed as a potential purchaser of natural gas from Stage 2 of Azerbaijan’s sprawling Shah Deniz field.16 Two years after the war, Russia announced that it deployed S-300 airdefense missiles in Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia. Russian General Aleksandr Zelin said that the missiles would provide antiaircraft defense for the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. “The task of this air-defense system is not only to cover the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia,” Zelin said, “but also to avert violations of their state borders in the air and destroy any vehicle illegally penetrating their air space, whatever the goal of its mission.”17 The announcement was met with alarm in Tbilisi.

Turkish-Russian Rapprochement and the Security Dialogue

181

Russia the Main Partner in Stabilizing the Caucasus for Ankara The August 2008 war between Georgia and Russia put under strain the bilateral relations and shed light on the cost of the return of the Cold War. The war immediately turned into a Russian-American rivalry in the region. Turkey was concerned with a potential escalation between the former Cold War rivals. Turkey was highly uncomfortable about the idea that it might have to choose between the United States and Russia in the war. Immediately after the conflict in South Ossetia, Moscow pressured Ankara not to allow the passage of the U.S. navy, which was supposedly delivering humanitarian aid to Georgia, via the Bosporus. The Russians were concerned that these ships, which included a guided-missile destroyer, could be transferring military equipment. The Russians persistently contacted Turkey through multiple diplomatic channels to make sure that Turkey—the controlling country—upholds the Montreux Convention.18 The establishment of the Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform (CSCP) by Turkish leadership reinforced the channels of communication and dialogue with Russia in war’s aftermath. Remarkably the Turkish leadership chose Moscow as the venue where the CSCP’s blueprint was first unveiled. The decision reflected Ankara’s awareness that Russia would remain the main partner in the challenging task of stabilizing the Caucasus. The reset strategy in Russia-U.S. relations initiated by the incoming Obama administration opened a period of appeasement in Russia-western relations succeeding the period of extreme polarization of August 2008. In parallel, Russia was badly affected by the international financial crisis. It felt the need for international cooperation very acutely. Therefore, it curtailed its assertiveness by adopting a more multilateral stance. The Munich Security Conference held in February 2009 launched the Obama administration’s stance on Russia and security. On March 5, 2009, the meeting of NATO foreign ministers decided to resume the Alliance’s full official relations with Russia. On April 2, 2009, representatives of NATO member countries declared that they were inclined to think that NATO’s steady expansion to the east since the end of the Cold War would be halted for a period of time, while the bloc turned its attention to improving relations with Russia. Russia needed to exonerate itself in the eyes of the international community and restore the damaged trust by publicizing its constructive role in settlement efforts of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The Russian leadership has been deploying special efforts for bridging the differences between Armenia and Azerbaijan. After the signing of the trilateral declaration on the non-use of force and the need for the peaceful resolution of the Karabakh conflict by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia in the aftermath of the August war, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serge Sarkisyan met six times in Russia in 2009, in Sochi on January 25, 2010, and in St. Petersburg in June 17, 2010. However, little progress was achieved. After the declaration, Armenia and Azerbaijan could only reach an agreement on the wording of the preamble of the updated version of the 2007 Madrid Principles.

182

Burcu Gültekin-Punsmann

Conclusion The Action Plan for Cooperation in Eurasia, signed on November 16, 2001, by the foreign ministers of Russia and Turkey—Igor Ivanov and Ismail Cem, respectively—in New York during the UN General Assembly, created new room for cooperation. In the post-September 11 context, both countries expressed thereby their determination to carry their relations to a level of enhanced constructive partnership, extending to Eurasia and based on “the shared belief that dialogue and cooperation in Eurasia will positively contribute to bring about peaceful, just and lasting political solutions to disputes in the region.”19 In accordance with the Eurasia Action Plan, a Russian-Turkish High-Level Joint Working Group and a Caucasus Task Force were established. These efforts brought together the high-level officials of the Russian and Turkish ministries of foreign affairs. However, the attempt to integrate the Caucasus into the bilateral Turkish-Russian agenda has not yet developed into a substantive joint action. In the aftermath of the August war, despite the fact that Russia disliked encroachments into its spheres of influence, it recognized the commonality of interests with Turkey, and welcomed Turkish political activism in the Caucasus. A rapprochement between Moscow and Ankara has given a chance to turn the Transcaucasus into a zone of stability and cooperation while neutralizing the efforts of the “third parties aimed at maintaining geopolitical instability in the region.”20 The sense that stability was tantamount to the preservation of the status quo further developed. This perception of a common understanding between the two countries on the need to shut down the South Caucasus to extraregional intervention gave rise to speculation by third parties whether there would be an eventual establishment of a Turkish-Russian condominium therein. Fears that the Bush administration’s activism in the Black Sea-South Caucasus region could be a major factor of instability were felt both in Turkey and Russia. Turkish opposition to extra-regional penetration of the region was especially explained by two factors. First, there was no need for NATO intervention in the region because regional structures and capacities were adequate to manage regional conflicts, and this was already in concert with NATO operations. Second, a regional initiative must definitely include Russia. Ankara believed that antagonizing Moscow would destabilize the region because Russia has been a key party to the resolution of the frozen conflicts in the region. Though the CSCP did not intend to transform itself into an alternative institution, mechanism or international organization, it developed a functional method of problem-solving based on confidence-building measures in the region.21 These efforts were made further official with the Joint Declaration signed by the presidents of Turkey and Russia in February 13, 2009, which declared: The Parties [Turkey and Russia], with the understanding that security and stability in the Eurasian geography is directly related with the stability in the South Caucasus region, agree on the necessity to take effective measures for resolving frozen conflicts that constitute potential destabilizing elements in the South Caucasus. In this regard, the Parties consider the Caucasus Stability and Coop-

Turkish-Russian Rapprochement and the Security Dialogue

183

eration Platform, that was proposed by the Republic of Turkey as a constructive initiative that would be complementary to existing international mechanisms and that would help overcome lack of confidence that they observe that exists among the countries that are parties to the frozen conflicts. 22

This chapter pointed to the fact that both Turkey and Russia have high stakes in stability in the region. However, the preservation of the status quo, characterized by conflict, a divided and obstructed communication network and trade embargoes, could hamper stability. The link between regional stability and conflict resolution is indispensable. The CSCP has further brought about the understanding for the first time that good Turkish-Russian relations contribute constructively to the solution of regional conflicts in the mutual neighborhood. Furthermore, it also serves as a reminder that regional responsibility and sense of ownership from insiders have been crucially missing in the past. Stability and development can only be achieved by integrating internally the region and opening it up to the world outside. Economic pluralism which will open the markets of the Southern Caucasus countries to international competition will be the key for political stability. During the AKP government (2002-2011), the diplomatic traffic as well as the economic dialogue between Ankara and Moscow has intensified. The advanced multifaceted partnership that was promoted by the Russian and Turkish governments over the last decade has been based on the good understanding that progressively helped overcome a long history of continuous conflicts between the two countries. Today, there are several non-governmental stakeholders involved in and enjoying the Turkish-Russian reconciliation process. Their interests lie in the continuation of dialogue and economic cooperation that has been developing into a comprehensive regional strategy over the last decade. The momentum in the process of the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations in 2008-2009—supported explicitly by the Russian government—has been the major source of legitimacy for the CSCP. However, today, as the Turkish-Armenian normalization process seems to be in a vacuum as a result of the interference of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with the bilateral agenda, there is a more urgent need to re-boost the concept of the CSCP as a framework for cooperation and coordinated action between Turkey and Russia on issues related to the South Caucasus. Two years after the announcement of the CSCP, the principles, decision-making mechanisms and structure of the CSCP still remain to be worked out. Innovative and pragmatic confidence-building mechanisms should help to address the disputes between Russia and Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Turkey and Armenia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia may press to be included. Last but not least, a Turkish-Russian rapprochement in the Black Sea-South Caucasus region orientated towards solving problems is likely to contribute to the overcoming of the impasse on the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. The Treaty was signed in Paris on November 19, 1990, and has still been the unique legal instrument to control conventional weapons. However, Russia suspended its implementation of the Treaty in December 2007 in protest against the

184

Burcu Gültekin-Punsmann

delay in the ratification of the adapted Treaty. All in all, its ratification could well contribute to the restoration of the confidence-building measures envisioned by the Treaty, which were greatly damaged by the August 2008 war.

Notes 1. Philips Price, “Where Russia and Turkey Meet; Eastern Anatolia, Kars and Ardahan,” The Manchester Guardian, October 14, 1947. 2. The new Soviet-Turkish frontier was confirmed by the Treaty of Moscow (March 16, 1921) and the Treaty of Kars (October 13, 1921). The Russians accepted the return of Kars, Ardahan and Artvin to Turkey, Batumi would become an autonomous province and a free port; and the creation of the Georgian Soviet Republic, the Autonomous Soviet Republic of Adjaria. 3. According to the 1932 commercial agreement, the USSR granted Turkey a credit of $8 million to be paid for the imports of manufactured goods and industrial equipments. 4. “The Borders of Georgia” letter published on December 20, 1945, by the Pravda. In its issue of December 14, 1945, the Georgian newspaper of Tbilisi, Communisti, published a letter of the academics, Djanachia and Berdzenichvili, entitled, “About our legitimate territorial claims on Turkey.” French translation in Articles et Documents, January 29, 1946, n. 449, Ministère de l’Information, direction de la Documentation. 5. Pravda, July 19, 1953, in Youri Roubinski, “Moscou et Ankara, Murailles ou passerelles entre l’Europe et l’Asie?” Cahiers et Conférences (Paris: IFRI, 2002). 6. The Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs had visited the Soviet Union for the first time in twenty-five years between October 30 and November 6, 1964. There would be ten visits between 1965 and 1982. 7. Helen Womack, “Turkey and Russia United on Armenia,” The Independent, September 10, 1993; “Mme Ciller veut éviter une confrontation avec la Russie dans le Caucase,” Le Monde, September 11, 1993. 8. Roy Allison, “Military Forces in Soviet Successor States,” ADELPHI Paper, no. 280, (London: IISS, 1993). 9. See Trade Statistics, Undersecretariat for Foreign Trade of Turkey, www.dtm. gov.tr/ead/ulkegos/ulkegos.htm; and Country Reports of Turkish Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEIK), Istanbul, www.deik.org. 10. “Turkey looking to become logistics leader in Black Sea basin,” Hürriyet Daily News, January 12, 2010, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=turkey-willing-tobe-logistics-leader-in-black-sea-basin-2010-01-12 (accessed August 3, 2012). 11. Mehmet Öğütçü and Damla Bocharev, “Rivals Become Partners,” September 21, 2009, http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2009/09/rivals-become-partners/65924.aspx (accessed January 12, 2011). 12. Data provided by the Ministry of Energy and National Resources. See also International Energy Agency, Turkey 2009 Review, http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/ free/2009/turkey2009.pdf (accessed August 3, 2012). 13. Turkey has signed gas agreements with Iran (10 bcm), Algeria (4 bcm) and Nigeria (1.2 bcm). Among six agreements in total, three of them have been signed by the Russian Federation. The Blue Stream is expected to contribute to the development of the Ceyhan energy terminal. 14. “The Dangers of the Safe Route,” Economist, August 14, 2008.

Turkish-Russian Rapprochement and the Security Dialogue

185

15. Tabib Huseynov, “The EU and Azerbaijan: Destination Unclear,” The European Union and the South Caucasus: Three Perspectives on the Future of the European Projects from the Caucasus Europe in Dialogue 2009-01 (Bertelsmann Foundation, 2009). 16. Shahin Abbasov, “Russia Scores Double Match Point with Azerbaijani Gas Deal,” Eurasia Insight, June 30, 2009. 17. “Russian General Says Kremlin Deploys Air-Defense Missiles in Abkhazia,” RFE-RL, August 11, 2010. 18. According to the Montreux Convention, no more than nine warships of nonBlack Sea states, with a total tonnage of 45,000 tons, could be present at any one time in the Black Sea, and these ships must leave within twenty-one days. One of the least discussed but rather significant factors in the Black Sea/Caucasus debate is the significance attributed to the Convention by Turkey. In effect since 1936, the Convention governs the passage of ships from the Turkish Straits. Besides the Lausanne Treaty, the Montreux Convention is one of the founding agreements that established the Turkish Republic. It constitutes a challenge because renegotiating the Convention could open a Pandora’s Box, as all littoral states have a myriad of interests that they wish to be addressed. 19. See The Action Plan for Cooperation in Eurasia, http://www.mfa.gov.tr/ turkey_s-political-relations-with-russian-federation.en.mfa, (accessed August 3, 2012). 20. The political expert, Aleksandr Krylov argues in an interview with Rossiiskaia gazeta “In my opinion, the Turks have very timely understood the uniqueness of the moment . . . which allows them to raise their profile in the region. They are the immediate neighbors of the Caucasus and at the same time [Turkey is] the actor that has good relations with almost all the countries of the Caucasus region. The Turkish idea that it is above all the regional countries that have to collectively think about [setting up] some platform for stability and cooperation in the Caucasus reflects the maturity of the Turkish diplomacy.” See Rossiiskaia gazeta, October 7, 2008. 21. More specifically, in 2008 the platform motivated Russia to open up an Azerbaijan-Armenia-Turkey corridor that bypasses Georgia. Indeed, the momentum in the process of the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations has been a venue for legitimacy for the CSCP over the last two years. 22. See Joint Declaration between the Republic of Turkey and the Russian Federation on Progress towards a New Stage in Relations and Further Deepening of Friendship and Multidimensional Partnership, Moscow, February 13, 2009, http://www.mfa.gov.tr/ joint-declaration-between-the-republic-of-turkey-and-the-russian-federation-on-progresstowards-a-new-stage-in-relations-and-furtherdeepening-of-friendship-and-multidimentional-partnership_-moscow_-13-february-2009.en.mfa (accessed January 12, 2009).

Chapter Eleven

Energy Security and Turkey in Europe’s Neighborhood Özgür Ünal Eriş Since the Cold War ended, the European Union (EU) has been facing new soft security threats with the potential to disrupt the security community structure that it first established after World War II (WWII) and has strengthened through each enlargement process. The EU’s dependence on energy imports and threats to its energy security are considered to be among the most important soft security threats to the EU. This explains why energy security is a key item of the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP)—a policy designed recently as an alternative to enlargement for protecting the EU as a secure community. The ENP has implications mainly for non-member neighboring states, one of the largest of which is Turkey. Accordingly, this chapter discusses the intentions of, and difficulties faced by, the ENP as far as energy security is concerned, and Turkey’s contribution to the EU’s energy security policy. In an interdependent world, regionalization is an important instrument of security and stability. In dealing with non-military security issues, regional organizations build a sense of common interest and—to a certain extent—a shared identity. Their existence induces their members to develop non-coercive attitudes, which “reduces the tendency to resort to non-peaceful means in pursuit of national interests.”1 This approach is closely linked to Karl Deutsch’s seminal study on security communities after WWII.2 In this study, Deutsch explored the potential of a regional political community to perform security functions through the development of “mutual sympathy and loyalties, trust and mutual consideration, partial identification in terms of self-images and interests and mutually successful predictions of behavior.”3 The most applicable theory among various theories of European integration running parallel to Deutsch’s concept of security community is constructivism. The constructivist approach is in line with Deutsch’s concept of security community for two reasons. First, the concept of security communities used by 187

188

Özgür Ünal Eriş

Deutsch recognizes the social character of global politics and the fact that states might establish a stable set of norms and institutions to further their shared interests—a concept recognized by constructivism as well. Second, constructivism also shares with Deutsch the recognition that social communication, identity and loose integration between peoples and states helps us to understand how states co-bind not only their military capabilities but also their identities and their destiny. In this way, the possibility that integration might be established through the institutionalization of mutual identification, transnational values, inter-subjective understandings, and shared identities established by social communication fits well within a constructivist approach.4 The EU can be seen as a prime example of a regional grouping or security community designed to promote security and stability. Since its foundation, the strategic purpose of the Union has been to increase security and stability among its members by promoting economic and social relations beyond military and strategic interdependence. It has evolved into a “security community” defined by common values, empathy, trust, and expectations of peace, showing the same characteristics defined by Deutsch.5 The EU has achieved its security aims by enlarging its security community through successive rounds of enlargement with neighboring states. It is a reality that it cannot feel secure and continue to prosper if the rest of the continent is heading towards increased insecurity and poverty. At the same time, the continuing process of enlargement has become widely seen as unsustainable, as each successive enlargement created new borderlines beyond which the EU’s normative order has to be imposed on new neighbors if the Union is to maintain its own security. The choice for the EU, therefore, is whether to export security and stability to its new neighbors, or risk importing instability from them. Presently, the EU’s foreign policy efforts in its immediate neighborhood are aimed at resolving regional conflicts, but without going through the process of enlargement. Instead of enlargement, the Union has developed a network of partnerships with its new neighbors based on privileged relationships. This overall strategy is named the ENP.6 The ENP provides a system of economic and political cooperation, including the progressive integration of the countries concerned into the EU’s internal market and regulatory structures, including those pertaining to sustainable development—health, consumer, and environmental protection—and the four freedoms—free movement of goods, services, capital, and persons. In addition, the European Commission has identified several issues as “threats to mutual security” that it wishes to fight against with the help of neighboring countries. These include the trans-border dimension of environmental and nuclear hazards, energy security, communicable diseases, illegal immigration, trafficking, organized crime, border management, and terrorist networks.7 It is beyond the scope of this chapter to consider all these dimensions of the ENP. Instead, since energy threats are one of the most important focuses of the framework, and provide an interesting example of how Turkey can play a role within this region in helping the EU solve its energy security problem, this chapter focuses on this aspect.

Energy Security and Turkey in Europe’s Neighborhood

189

This chapter first explains the growing importance of energy security for the EU and how and why the EU Commission designed the ENP in March 2003. It then combines these two issues by analyzing how the concept of energy security was included in the ENP, specifically through the Action Plans signed between the EU and major energy-rich and transit countries, such as Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Based on this analysis, this chapter evaluates the success of the ENP in having an impact or not on partner countries. It then explores Turkey’s potential contribution to the success of the ENP policy in light of Turkey’s pivotal role in the EU’s energy dependence. This leads to an evaluation of the contribution of this role to the new understanding of security by the current Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP) government, which aims to make Turkey a strong regional power having good relations with its neighboring countries.

The EU’s Energy Security and the Caspian Region as a Supply Source The main premise of constructivist theory is that states establish a stable set of norms and institutions to further their shared interests, which fits very well with the EU’s aim of constructing the ENP to further its energy security interests. Energy security has taken on an increasing importance in the EU’s agenda since the beginning of the 1970s, which can be seen from a number of statistics. For instance, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the EU relies heavily on imports of both oil and natural gas, with 76.6 percent of its oil supplies coming from outside the EU.8 According to the projections of the IEA, this dependence on external supplies could rise to 86 percent by 2020, with imports derived substantially from politically volatile or hostile areas, notably in the Middle East and Russia.9 As for natural gas, according to 2009 figures, the EU depended on imports for about 43 percent of its gas consumption, a figure that is expected to increase to 70 percent by 2020.10 There were two important developments in 2011 which further showed the importance the EU gives to ENP countries in the sphere of energy security. One was the substantial inclusion of energy security in the Eastern Partnership Initiative (EPI). As the most recent Communication of the European Commission, published on May 25, 2011, with the title A New Response to a Changing Neighbourhood shows, the most important tools for improving the ENP and partners’ reform processes were seen as differentiation and more regional orientation. This regional concentration and differentiation process had already taken shape in May 2008 when Poland and Sweden proposed the establishment of an EPI that was formally launched on May 7, 2009. The main idea behind the EPI was to improve the ENP through promoting further integration with the Union’s six immediate Eastern neighbors—Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. The importance of energy security could also be seen as

190

Özgür Ünal Eriş

“Environment and Energy Security” was named as one of the flag initiatives and several energy interdependence provisions were listed in the initiative. Secondly, it was seen that when the EU tries to reconcile the priority of democratization with the business-oriented options, conditionality always gets watered down by competing interests in the sphere of security, energy, and trade. Relations with Azerbaijan and Ukraine are good examples of this problem. Despite the decline of democracy and a significant slowdown in the country’s EU relations, the more advanced forms of co-operation such as association agreements are always offered in the first instance to Ukraine, the biggest and strategically most important partner in the region, and relations with Azerbaijan, a country rich in raw materials, were much better than with Belarus, which has a similarly authoritarian regime. Given these facts, one inescapable fact is likely to shape Europe’s energy policy. That is, EU member states lack sufficient indigenous energy deposits to meet their growing demand and maintain their high standard of living. Thus, Europe will probably continue to be heavily dependent on foreign supplies to meet its energy needs. Given this geological reality, the EU has sought to establish and consolidate energy partnerships with major energy-producing and transit countries and regions, such as the Caspian region,11 the Middle East, Russia and Turkey.12 Regarding the volatility of the Middle Eastern region, the overwhelming U.S. presence there, and the tendency of Russia to use its energy resources as a political weapon, the EU has tried to decrease its reliance on these regions by turning to the Caspian region as a way to diversify its export of energy resources.

The Caspian Region: A Solution to the EU’s Energy Demands One important EU strategy to meet the challenge of energy dependence has been to diversify its supply sources. According to 2006 estimates of the amount and significance of Caspian hydrocarbon sources from both the Energy Information Administration (EIA)—the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Energy—and British Petroleum, the Caspian region holds between 16.9 billion and 32.2 billion barrels of oil.13 With the development of Kazakhstan’s Tengiz and Kashagan fields, and Azerbaijan’s Azeri, Chirag, and Gunashli fields, the Caspian region could produce almost 4 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2011. Moreover, the region holds proven natural gas reserves of 243 to 248 trillion cubic feet (tcf) and, possibly, another 328 tcf in potential gas reserves. Overall, the Caspian region is estimated to contain about 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves and 4 percent of the world’s gas reserves.14 At 4 percent, the Caspian’s share of global oil and gas reserves is not very considerable. However, in light of the uncertainty over the reliability of Persian Gulf supplies, as well as the possibility that Russia may use energy delivery as a power tool, the transport of Caspian and, even more, Central Asian (Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) energy supplies to the West via the Caucasus has gained vital importance. In addition, in terms of the costs for the development of oil fields and the possible transportation of this oil to outside markets, the Azerbaijani and

Energy Security and Turkey in Europe’s Neighborhood

191

Kazakh oil has become more competitive than Russian oil. According to EIA estimates, the cost of extraction of non-Russian Caspian oil amounts to $2 to $4 per barrel, whereas oil extracted from new fields in western Siberia would cost $5–10 per barrel.15 Given the richness of energy resources in the Caspian region, and their lower costs for the EU, European countries have been paying increasing attention to the Caspian region. Especially after the Russia-Ukraine gas disputes in 2006 and 2009, the EU increased its interest not only in the region’s energy resources, but also in the question of how to maintain secure transportation links, as revealed in official EU documents and reflected in closer cooperation between European governments and oil companies in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan.16

Caspian Region Energy Resources and Their Relevance for the ENP The EU’s need to diversify its energy supplies has shaped its policy-making with particular countries within the framework of the ENP. The EU’s objectives and priorities regarding energy security can be analyzed through the Action Plans (APs) signed with the partner countries. The APs are key political documents of the ENP.17 They include major energy-related articles as priorities for action, concentrating on energy dialogue and cooperation, convergence of energy policies and legal/regulatory frameworks—including, for example, internal electricity and gas markets—possibilities to participate in EU programs and events, cooperation on energy networks, energy efficiency and new/renewable energy sources, and building on existing (regional) initiatives such as the TACIS program for Caspian oil and gas pipelines. Closer analysis of the energy initiatives in the APs show that the EU is specifically concentrating on Azerbaijan in the Caspian region, and Georgia and Ukraine as key existing transit countries; two of these are particularly relevant to this study as Turkey’s neighbors.18 Ukraine In order to illustrate how the APs work in practice, it is worth examining in detail the EU’s partnerships with Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Though it is not located in the Caspian region, Ukraine has several characteristics that make it an important partner in terms of the EU’s energy security concerns. First, it is situated on the main transport routes linking Europe with Russia, and the Black Sea and Caspian regions. At a total length of 4,524 km, Ukraine’s oil pipelines form the longest network of any country, with a capacity of 114.5 million tones per year at input and 70 million tones at output. Its gas pipeline system has a total length of 3,750 km, with a total capacity of 53,800 megawatt thermal (mwt) units.19 Russia has been promoting alternative routes, such as the proposed 55 billion cubic meters per year (bcm/y) Nord Stream gas pipeline that crosses the Baltic Sea to Germany and on to Greece, Italy, and Hungary, which was scheduled to become operational in 2012. However, from the EU’s perspective, this is far from providing an adequate substitute for the Ukrainian network.

192

Özgür Ünal Eriş

Ukraine’s importance for EU energy security has been repeatedly acknowledged in several APs. For example, the EU–Ukraine AP adopted in February 2005 included several articles concerning energy, such as the adoption of an overall energy policy converging towards EU energy policy objectives that specifically reinforced EU–Ukraine energy policy cooperation, progress in the transit of natural gas, and progress on energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources. Besides these, there were several other developments in energy cooperation between the EU and Ukraine. A Gas Metrology Centre was established in Boyorka in order to ensure transparency and reliability of gas supplies. Within the framework of the EU–Ukraine New Enhanced Agreement (NEA), the Black Sea Synergy Initiative was introduced in April 2007, adding a regional dimension to the program by inviting cooperation within the Black Sea region itself and between it and the EU on areas such as energy and environment. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on cooperation in the field of energy between the EU and Ukraine was signed on December 1, 2005. It set out how the two sides planned to organize their work to bring their energy markets closer together. The Commission also published a Communication on Cooperation with the Black Sea region on April 11, 2007, to serve as the foundation for a future gas pipeline running from Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan to the EU.20 Azerbaijan The second country, Azerbaijan, is both a producer and a transporter country. Its Shah Deniz region has 1.37 trillion cubic meters (tcm) proven natural gas reserves, accounting for 90 percent of the Caspian region’s natural gas reserves and 10 percent of the world’s total reserves. Its oil reserves are estimated to be around 40 to 60 billion barrels—the twentieth largest oil reserve in the world, with 5 percent of the world’s total. Azerbaijan is also planning to become a transit country for the export of gas from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Azerbaijan already exports oil and gas via the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline to Georgia, the Baku-Novorossiysk oil pipeline to Russia, and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (BTE) gas pipelines via Georgia to Turkey. Since July 2007, it has been exporting gas to Europe via the Turkish-Greek pipeline, with a planned extension to Italy by 2012.21 Through these various existing or planned transit routes, Azerbaijan aims to deliver natural gas throughout Europe. From an EU perspective, these pipelines (especially the BTC and BTE pipelines) underscore Azerbaijan’s geopolitical importance for the European market.22 The EU in March 2005 recommended intensifying its relations with Azerbaijan through the development of an individual AP under the ENP and adopted it in November 2006. One of the plan’s priorities (Priority 8), under the title “Strengthening EU-Azerbaijan Energy Bilateral Cooperation and Energy and Transport Regional Cooperation,” included specific actions.23 First, a Strategic Partnership between the EU and the Republic of Azerbaijan in the field of energy was to be established by a MoU,24 and implemented and monitored by the EU and Azerbaijan. Second, the State Programme on Fuel-Energy Complex Devel-

Energy Security and Turkey in Europe’s Neighborhood

193

opment 2005-2015 was to be implemented to ensure increasing convergence with EU energy policy objectives. Third, cooperation on Caspian and Black Sea regional energy issues was to continue, following from the Interstate Oil and Gas Transport to Europe Programme (INOGATE) and the EU-Black SeaCaspian Basin Ministerial Transport Conference held in Baku in November 2004. Besides these specific actions, the AP also included several articles regarding energy cooperation, such as progress regarding energy networks, progress on energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources and technical cooperation and exchange of expertise. These all show the importance the EU attaches to its energy partnership with Azerbaijan. Georgia The third country that has a direct importance for the EU’s energy security is Georgia; it is directly on the route from the Caspian’s energy resources to Europe. When the BTE pipeline began to transport natural gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz field through Georgia in 2007, Georgia obtained the possibility to reduce its own, and Europe’s, energy dependence on Russia. Through the BTE and the BTC pipeline, which is the first main crude oil pipeline in the region, Europe would be able to bypass Russia. To this end, Georgia’s AP was agreed in 2006. Its significance for cooperation on energy can be understood through the AP’s stated aims of “enhancing cooperation in the fields of energy, transport and environment and contributing to energy security and supply diversification needs for the EU,” listed under the title “New Partnership Perspectives.”25 The section Priority 8 in the AP, under the title “Energy,” stressed the following aims. Cooperation on Caspian and Black Sea regional energy issues should continue in the context of the follow-up to the EU-Black Sea-Caspian Basin Ministerial Transport Conference of November 2004, as well as INOGATE. With a view to regional integration and progressive integration with the EU energy market and Georgia’s role as an energy-transit country, the development of a diversified infrastructure connected to development of Caspian energy resources should be encouraged. In addition, there should be further cooperation on achieving energy policy convergence towards EU energy policy objectives, establishing energy networks and achieving energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources. As can be seen from this outline of the APs made between the EU and three countries—Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Georgia—in the Caspian region, energy has been an important sector for the EU within the ENP framework, motivating the EU to cooperate with states like Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Georgia that have a key role to play concerning the EU’s energy security. However, the ENP faces certain challenges that make it very difficult for the countries concerned to implement its objectives.

Challenges to the ENP and Caspian Energy Security

194

Özgür Ünal Eriş

Studies of the ENP, particularly by Schimmelfenning, Sedelmeier, and Lavenex, overwhelmingly show that it is both inconsistent, with regard to its expansion of acquis rules and its use of conditionality, and also ineffective in promoting reform.26 This can be seen from the ENP progress reports (2010) regarding the implementation of the ENP in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Problems and challenges experienced by the APs are clearly revealed in their conclusions, which are worth quoting at length. To start with, the challenges expressed in the progress report for Ukraine, published in 2010, noted continuing political instability in 2009 as: Overall in the course of 2009 the implementation of key political and economic reforms was hampered by the continuing constitutional crisis resulting from unclear separation of powers between the President, Prime Minister and Parliament and by the beginning of electioneering in the second half of the year. No progress was made on the issue of constitutional reform, and only limited progress was made with respect to judicial reform and anti-corruption measures. Economically also Ukraine’s situation continued to deteriorate in 2009 in the wake of the economic and financial global downturn. The business climate continued to be negatively affected by unequal treatment of companies and bureaucratic obstacles to business and investment which promotes and consolidates corruption.27

The 2010 published progress report for Azerbaijan reached the conclusion about developments in 2009 as: Overall, Azerbaijan made some progress in the implementation of the ENP Action Plan, notably in areas related to economic and social governance. The country fared comparatively well during the year despite the global financial crisis; however energy remains the main revenue basis for Azerbaijan. For this purpose good progress was made on energy co-operation with the EU on the basis of the Memorandum of Understanding on a strategic partnership in the field of energy and progress was also made through Azerbaijan’s support for development of the Southern gas corridor including Nabucco. However to meet AP commitments fully further efforts are needed in the field of political dialogue and reforms. Further reforms in the justice sector and proper implementation of adopted legislation in all areas are necessary. This would also help fighting corruption which is still a serious issue in the country.28

In a slightly more optimistic fashion, the progress report for Georgia acknowledged that “Georgia made progress in the implementation of the ENP AP priorities especially in the areas of rule of law, reform of the justice system, fight against petty corruption, trade facilitation and improvement of business climate.” However, it continued by stating that the country “[w]ill need to continue its democratic reform efforts and consolidation of democratic institutions, especially political pluralism and media freedom. It also needs to face other future challenges which include poverty reduction, employment and social policies, agricultural development and civil service reform.”29

Energy Security and Turkey in Europe’s Neighborhood

195

These failures indicate deficiencies in the ENP’s capacity to effectively stimulate reforms in these partner countries for reasons related to the lack of a promise of eventual EU membership, shared values, and the costs of “aligning legislation with the acquis communataire.” First, that the EU membership is not on offer for these states, even though they consider themselves very close to the EU, has posed a challenge for the success of the ENP. For those countries involved in the EU’s 2004 and 2007 eastern enlargement, the incentive for reform created by the prospect of membership had proved to be strong. However, in the case of the countries involved in the ENP, the absence of this incentive hampered the ENP’s aim of fostering reform and providing security for the whole European continent.30 The second reason for the lack of success of the ENP is that by projecting its own values and standards as “shared values,” the EU has not been very successful in influencing the ENP partners’ democratization or other reforms.31 Because these standards are determined by the EU, this process inevitably creates a system of hierarchical relationships. 32 The EU offers or withholds economic benefits according to its normative agenda, being willing to give its neighbors influence only over when they want to implement the Union’s demands and not how that is to be done.33 The second challenge inherent in the APs’ “approximating” the EU’s values and standards is their expected contribution to prosperity and security in the neighborhood. However, whether the acquis of the EU is an appropriate framework for countries struggling with basic economic reforms is very questionable. The Commission—albeit with input from member governments represented in the particular associated state—also provides regular reports on progress in meeting criteria spelled out by the EU. Thus, the dominance of the EU rules and the dependence of associates on the EU concessions are built into the structure of ENP bilateral negotiations.34 The third challenge for the success of the ENP is that the EU has so far not dealt adequately with the costs of “aligning legislation with the acquis,” as the Commission calls this process. In general, the tasks and obligations to harmonize and implement the acquis are very costly, yet the EU seems unwilling or unable to commit and distribute the significant financial resources required to the partner countries. For example, the grand total of €12 billion devoted to the EU’s neighborhood for the budgetary period of 2007–2013 is not in proportion even to the scale of the challenges faced by the three Caspian region countries discussed here. Overall, these challenges make it very unlikely that the ENP will be considered as an effective and important policy by these partner countries. If they become unwilling to engage in partnership with the EU, this will also decrease the significance of the energy-related articles in APs and put the attempts of the EU to diversify its energy supply at risk. Below, Turkey’s potential contribution to this challenge will be analyzed in detail.

196

Özgür Ünal Eriş

Turkey as a Contributor to and Stakeholder in the ENP and the EU’s Energy Security Turkey presents an interesting case, being a long-delayed negotiating EU candidate country, and strategically placed between Europe and its neighborhood. Both these factors give it a huge potential to help with the ENP. Turkey’s contribution to meeting the general challenges for the EU’s energy security within the framework of the implementation of the ENP can be explored in two respects. Firstly, for a number of reasons, Turkey can help remedy some of the problems inherent in the ENP summarized in the preceding section. Secondly, Turkey can also specifically promote the energy security of the EU, a policy whose importance is emphasized in APs, as outlined earlier.

Turkish Contribution to the ENP and Its Importance The European Commission has been one of the actors within the EU that started to stress the impact Turkey could make on improving the ENP, given that the country is located in an important geopolitical region between Europe, the Middle East, and the Caucasus region, which includes countries that are also targets of the ENP. The Commission has been aware of the general problems in the ENP, and the ENP’s failure as an effective policy towards the EU’s neighbors, such as Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Ukraine, and thus, though indirectly, to enhance EU security. For this reason, the Commission has argued that Turkey’s involvement in the ENP is important for two main reasons. The first is that if Turkey joins the EU, the EU’s borders will extend to Turkey’s neighbors, namely to the Caspian states of Armenia and Georgia, which are already included in the ENP. Thus, if these countries become immediate neighbors of the EU, the Union’s foreign policy concerns in these regions, specifically over energy security, will inevitably become more pronounced. The EU lacks the independent means to tackle the problems originating from this region, and has been unable to develop a significant role thus far in terms of improving the EU’s energy security. Consequently, it is necessary to improve the ENP so that it actually becomes a stronger framework, aiming at solving energy security problem of the EU through the priorities included in the APs. As a country that knows the region and already has a significant role therein, Turkey could contribute to such an enhancement of the ENP. Secondly, and related to the first argument, Turkey’s accession could have an impact on the Caspian region, specifically on Azerbaijan and the Muslim part of Georgia. As the only secular Muslim democracy anchored clearly to the West, Turkey has the capacity to act as a bridge between the western and Islamic world. For instance, Turkey could be presented as a “model” specifically for Azerbaijan, to show that it is possible to have a functioning democracy, liberal markets, a western outlook, an open civil society, and tolerance for diversity in a country that has a predominantly Muslim population. This would also have a positive effect on the ENP. If Turkey’s example can help those countries in its

Energy Security and Turkey in Europe’s Neighborhood

197

neighborhood that are currently authoritarian regimes to transform themselves into democracies, it will be easier and more productive to deal with them within the ENP and form partnerships on energy resources. 35 How this contribution links to the specific energy security problem of the EU will be considered below.

Turkey and the EU’s Energy Security Turkey’s contribution to the ENP involves the issue of the EU’s energy security problem. According to “Turkey’s Energy Strategy,” prepared by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs Deputy Directorate General for Energy, Water and Environment and published on the official EU website in 2008, Turkey is located close to 71.8 percent of the world’s proven gas reserves and 72.7 percent of its oil reserves in the Middle East and the Caspian basin. This strategic location makes Turkey a natural energy bridge between the major oil and gas suppliers from the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea on the one side, and the consumer markets in Europe on the other. By acting as a new bridge, Turkey could add to the EU’s energy security through diversification of its supply routes and sources.36 A key aspect of Turkey’s becoming an important hub for European energy relates to its pipeline network for carrying gas and oil from the Caspian region to Europe. As mentioned earlier, this already holds an important place within the ENP, with several key elements in place. First, there is the Blue Stream Pipeline—a 1,213 km natural gas pipeline, running from Izobilnoye to Dzhugba on Russia’s Black Sea coast before it passes under the Black Sea to the Turkish port of Samsun to end at Ankara in Central Anatolia. Second, Turkey’s profile as an energy hub rose considerably with the opening of the BTC oil pipeline in May 2006, officially called the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP). The 1,760 km pipeline, the second longest of its kind in the world, extends from the Azeri Chirag-Deepwater Gunashli field in Baku through Azerbaijan and Tbilisi, Georgia, to a terminal at Ceyhan on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. In June 2006, Kazakhstan officially joined the BTC oil pipeline project. Under the agreement, Kazakh crude oil will be shipped to Baku across the Caspian Sea, and then pumped through the BTC pipeline to Ceyhan. Alongside BTC runs the BTE gas pipeline, through which Turkey has imported gas from Azerbaijan since February 2003 from the Shah Deniz field in the Caspian Sea, which holds an estimated 400 bcm of gas with an eventual annual capacity of 6.6 billion cubic feet. Third, in February 2003, Turkish and Greek energy officials agreed to build a 280 km pipeline to Europe carrying natural gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz gas field to the Turkish town of Karacabey and from there to the northern Greek town of Komotini. Preliminary work on the Turkey-Greece natural gas pipeline was initiated in Brussels in July 2000 as part of INOGATE. 37 This project will, for the first time, allow the delivery of Caspian gas to Europe without crossing Russian territory, thereby establishing a Southern European Gas Ring. The project will eventually be extended west to Italy under the Adriatic Sea with the

198

Özgür Ünal Eriş

construction of a Greece-Italy natural gas pipeline, officially known as the Interconnector Greece-Italy (IGI), planned to be completed in 2012. Fourth, the project that could make the biggest difference to Europe’s energy security, and to Turkey’s role as an energy hub, is Nabucco. Nabucco Gas Pipeline International is a joint venture constituted by OMV (Austria), Botaş (Turkey), Bulgargaz (Bulgaria), Transgaz (Romania), and Mol (Hungary), aiming to bring gas to Europe from the Caspian region. This 3,300 km gas pipeline, set to be completed in 2012, will carry up to 30 bcm of natural gas per year from Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan through Erzurum, Turkey, and on to Baumgarten an der March in Austria via Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary. Although it is expected to cost around €4.4 billion, the project partners believe this will be competitive in comparison with other new projects.

Turkey as a Stakeholder in EU’s Energy Security and the ENP In addition to the fact that Turkey contributes to the energy needs of the EU in the wider European neighborhood, the ENP, and the initiatives that the EU takes in order to maintain its energy security, also contribute to Turkey’s own energy security and the larger perspective of security challenges defined under the AKP government. The AKP government accepts that Turkey is located in a neighborhood where the world’s major unstable countries are located. These surrounding regions—the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Caspian basin, and the Middle East—are the sites of many current security challenges, such as financial crisis, energy insecurity, illegal migration, epidemic diseases, climate change, organized crime, cross-cultural and religious intolerance, extremism, and terrorism. According to the AKP government, Turkey can play a major positive role in resolving these security threats, and thereby contribute to peace, stability, and prosperity in the world, by pursuing a proactive diplomacy with the aim of strengthening stability and security in its neighborhood. The fact that Turkey enjoys multiple regional identities, together with its geographic location and history, gives it the capability and the responsibility to follow an integrated and multidimensional foreign policy. In this way, this role, defined by the AKP government within Turkey’s wider foreign policy, is directly relevant to helping the EU solve its energy security problems within the ENP. In summary, Turkey can be an asset for the EU to realize both its hard and soft security interests, in particular because Turkey could help to reform the ENP so that it becomes a more effective instrument for providing stability in the EU’s neighborhood. Turkey also serves as a security provider, which is essential for the EU’s security interests in the region as included in the ENP framework. As discussed here, this is relevant specifically for energy security and is evidenced by the various pipelines constructed between the Caspian region and the EU that pass through Turkey, i.e., the BTC oil pipeline, the BTE gas pipeline, the interconnector to Greece, and the planned Nabucco Gas Pipeline International.

Energy Security and Turkey in Europe’s Neighborhood

199

Conclusion The EU’s eastern enlargement has mixed implications for the sustainability of the “security community” configuration of the EU. On the one hand, enlargement has granted new momentum to integration and has led to security revisions for the EU as prospective members incorporate international peace and conflict resolution strategies and democratic principles. On the other hand, as EU integration progresses, new sources of security challenges emerge which may require substantial institutional restructuring in the security policies of the EU. The challenge for the EU has been to design a set of institutions, and policies that can reasonably be presented to other parties as a balanced partnership package, rather than representing a patron-client relationship.38 This is how the ENP first arose, as a way to safeguard the Union’s two main foreign policy priorities in terms of its neighborhood: how to stay clear of further enlargements and how to manage the new external borders. Having outlined how the ENP attempts to secure the EU’s neighborhood, this chapter specifically explored the significance of energy security as reflected in the ENP, a policy of increasing significance, especially after the RussiaUkraine energy disputes in 2006 and 2009. The chapter analyzed relations with countries who are either energy producers or transporters through examining the energy-related content of their APs. Lastly, Turkey’s roles as a contributor and as a stakeholder in these two settings—the ENP and energy security—were examined. These are also significant in terms of Turkey’s foreign policy priorities under the current government. Though it may be too early to predict the final outcome of the ENP, difficulties it has been facing in influencing neighboring countries’ democratization and other reforms show us that, as long as the EU does not extend certain vital aspects of accession conditionality to non-candidate countries, its strategy seems doomed to fail. This weakness is paralleled in other problems, such as the onesided dependence on EU values and standards in an inherently unbalanced relationship, and the fact that the instruments of the ENP and the incentives it offers are ill-defined and inadequate for achieving both explicit and implicit policy objectives. As a result of this general inadequacy in the ENP, it becomes much more difficult to implement the specific energy security–based articles in the APs as well. This is where Turkey can play an important role, by helping the EU improve its ENP for various reasons, of which Turkey’s strategic location between Europe and its neighborhood is the most important. Turkey can improve the EU’s energy security in particular because it is a bridge between Europe and the Caspian region, which, as we have seen, is becoming a significant alternative to other energy sources and supply routes through its significant infrastructure of pipelines carrying gas and oil to Europe. To conclude, Turkey can be a key asset assisting the EU to fulfill two of its main strategic aims: first, to maintain its character as a security community through an improved and better functioning ENP; second, to enable the ENP to provide a more effective solution to the EU’s energy-security problem. This contribution is not only important for European

200

Özgür Ünal Eriş

interests but also in line with the foreign policy priorities of Turkey, which aims to be an influential regional power through the constructive relationships it builds with all of its neighbors.

Notes 1. Mustafa Aydın, “Europe’s New Region: The Black Sea in the Wider Europe Neighborhood,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 5, no. 2 (May 2005): 257. 2. Karl Deutsch, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957). 3. Ibid., 5–6. 4. Frank Schimmelfenning and Ulrich Sedelmeier, “Theorising EU Enlargement: Research Focus, Hypotheses, and the State of Research,” Journal of European Public Policy, 9, no. 4 (August 2002): 510–11. 5. Deutsch, Political Community, 7. 6. Boyka Stefanova, “The European Union as a Security Actor: Security Provision through Enlargement,” World Affairs 168, no. 2 (Fall 2005): 56–57. 7. European Commission European Security Strategy, A Secure Europe in a Better World, December 12, 2003, www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cmsupload/78367: 6 (accessed June 25, 2010). 8. For more details, see International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2010, http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/: 11–12 (accessed July 3, 2010). 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., 13. 11. Energy analysts consider the Caspian Basin either in terms of greater “Central Asia” (which includes Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and the Xingjian Uygur autonomous region of China) or as the Caspian Sea, composed of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Russia, and Iran as its littorals. Mert Bilgin, “New Prospects in the Political Economy of Inner-Caspian Hydrocarbons and Western Energy Corridor through Turkey,” Energy Policy 35, no. 12 (2007): 12. 12. Gawdat Bahgat, “Central Asia and Energy Security,” Asian Affairs 37, no. 1 (March 2006): 1. 13. For more details see Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook and International Energy Outlook 2005–2006, (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 2006). 14. For more details, see International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2010, http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/: 14 (accessed July 4, 2010). 15. For more details, see Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook and International Energy Outlook 2004–2005 (Washington D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 2005), 3, 232–34. 16. For more details, see the Green Paper entitled A European Strategy for Sustainable, Compatible and Secure Energy published by the European Commission on March 8, 2006, the EU Strategic Energy Review intended to underpin a European Energy Policy published by the European Commission on January 7, 2007, and the Action Plans signed with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, http://europa.eu.int/comm/energy/ index_en.html (accessed July 7, 2010).

Energy Security and Turkey in Europe’s Neighborhood

201

17. Karen Smith, “The Outsiders: The European Neighborhood Policy,” International Affairs 81, no. 4 (2005): 757–73. 18. At a bilateral level, the EU also has energy agreements with Azerbaijan and Ukraine through Memoranda of Understanding. 19. Gareth Winrow, “Geopolitics and Energy Security in the Wider Black Sea Region,” Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 7, no. 2 (June 2007): 233– 34. 20. For details, see www.euractiv.com/en/energy/geopolitics-eu-energy-supply/ article-142665 (accessed July 7, 2010). 21. Elkhan Nuriyev, “Azerbaijan and the European Union: New Landmarks of Strategic Partnership in the South Caucasus-Caspian Basin,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 8, no. 2 (June 2008): 158–59. 22. The BTC pipeline is already capable of exporting up to 50 million tons of oil per year to the European market, and Azerbaijan’s natural gas production from the Shah Deniz field will rise sharply in the next few years, making the country not only selfsupporting in natural gas, but also positioning it as a major gas exporter from the Caspian basin. By recent estimates, the field’s gas reserves top 1.2 trillion cubic meters. 23. For details see http://ec.europa.eu/world/enp/pdf/action_plans/azerbaijan_enp_ ap_final_en.pdf (accessed July 8, 2010). 24. The MoU on Energy Partnership, signed by President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso and President of the Azerbaijan Republic İlham Aliyev, expands the AP and strengthens it in favor of EU objectives, such as harmonization of Azerbaijani legislation with the Community legislation in the energy field, enhancing the safety and security of energy supplies and transit systems from Azerbaijan and Caspian basin to the EU, and development of a comprehensive energy demand management policy. 25. For details see http://ec.europa.eu/world/enp/pdf/action_plans/georgia_enp_ap_ final_en.pdf (accessed July 8, 2010). 26. The main examples of their work are as follows: Schimmelfenning and Sedelmeier, “Theorising EU Enlargement”; Frank Schimmelfenning and Ulrich Sedelmeier, “Governance by Conditionality: EU Rule Transfer to the Candidate Countries of Central and Eastern Europe,” Journal of European Public Policy, 11, no. 4 (August 2004): 669–87; Frank Schimmelfenning, “Europeanisation beyond Europe,” Living Reviews in European Governance 4, no. 3 (2009); Frank Schimmelfenning, Sandra Lavenex, Tina Freyburg, Tatiana Skripka, and Anne Wutzel, “EU Promotion of Democratic Governance in the Neighborhood,” Journal of European Public Policy 16, no. 6 (September 2009): 916–34. 27. For details, see Commission Staff Working Document Accompanying the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council, Implementation of the European Neighborhood Policy in 2009, Progress Report Ukraine SEC (2010) 524, Brussels, May 12, 2010, 2. 28. For details, see Commission Staff Working Document Accompanying the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council, Implementation of the European Neighborhood Policy in 2009, Progress Report Azerbaijan SEC (2010) 519, Brussels, May 12, 2010, 2. 29. For details, see Commission Staff Working Document accompanying the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council, Implementation of the European Neighborhood Policy in 2009, Progress Report Georgia SEC (2010) 518, Brussels, May 12, 2010, 2.

202

Özgür Ünal Eriş

30. Schimmelfenning and Sedelmeier, “Governance by Conditionality,” 673–75. 31. Jason W. Scott, “The EU and ‘Wider Europe’: Toward an Alternative Geopolitics of Regional Co-operation?” Geopolitics 10, no. 3 (2005): 429–54. 32. Schimmelfenning and Sedelmeier, “Governance by Conditionality,” 669–87. 33. The actual implementation of injecting “shared values” to the partners creates another problem. This is because the EU programs are expressed in terms of “alignment with Community legislation,” and though each neighboring state will negotiate separately with the Commission on the details of its AP, the implementation of the program agreed through the ENP is a process of one-sided adaptation to EU rules. See Federica Bicchi, “Our Size Fits All: Normative Power Europe and the Mediterranean,” Journal of European Public Policy 13, no. 2 (2006): 295. 34. William Wallace, “Looking after the Neighborhood: Responsibilities for the EU25,” Groupement D’etudes Et de Recherches Policy Papers, no. 4 (2003): 15–22. 35. Meltem Müftüler Bac, “Turkey’s Accession to the European Union: Institutional and Security Challenges,” Perceptions 9, no. 3 (2004): 41–42. 36. See ec.europa.eu/enlargement/pdf/publication/enl-understand_en.pdf (accessed July 8, 2010). 37. Winrow, “Geopolitics and Energy Security,” 233–34. 38. Wallace, “Looking after the Neighborhood,” 19.

PART IV THE EURO-ATLANTIC PARTNERSHIP IN THE TWENTYFIRST CENTURY

Chapter Twelve

Security Challenges of Turkish-American Relations in the Post-Bush Era Emre İşeri In many ways, the Obama administration inherited the wreckage of the aggressive unilateralist foreign policies of the Bush era.1 Along with the political (e.g., the war on terror) and financial (e.g., the global financial crisis), President Obama had to confront a global power shift towards the East or, to use Zakaria’s terminology, a “post-American world” that has been evolving around the globe with “the rise of the rest.”2 According to Goldman Sachs’ report (2003) about what is referred to as BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries, the economies of these four rising powers might surpass those of the previous vanguard of industrialized countries before 2050, due to a rate of real growth which outstrips that of the United States and the European Union (EU).3 The National Intelligence Council’s report (2008) entitled Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World stated that a global multipolar system that marks a major shift in relative wealth and economic power from West to East is emerging.4 Thus, Turkey as an emerging regional power becomes a critical partner for the United States in the Middle East region, particularly at a time of Arab “spring.” At this critical juncture of the post-Cold War era, the United States needs to align its grand strategy by merging with the dictates of this new era to ensure its prolonged hegemony. Contrary to what Mearsheimer argued that the United States served as an “off-shore balancer” or “global broker” following its victory in World War II (WWII), this chapter agrees with Layne, who argued that the United States has been implementing a foreign policy based on “extra-regional hegemony” since the 1940s.5 Since then American policymakers established “a hub and spoke system” in which the United States served as the dominant power (or “the hub of the system”), with those in its sphere of influence linked as spokes to this hub.6 Clearly, this American protectorate system implemented via external hegemony does not fit the needs of the emerging new world order, in

205

206

Emre İşeri

which the relations and linkages between different spokes have begun to acquire much more importance.7 In this regard, the Obama administration should acknowledge that the heyday of American hegemony or role as a global broker has been resigned to a distant past, and the United States should engage selectively in world affairs. At a time when the cost of waging a war on terror is on the rise, and financial crisis calls for increasing belt-tightening, the United States needs to shift the orientation of its foreign policy from that of an “extra-regional hegemon” to that of an “offshore balancer” or “global broker.” In contrast to the traditional system of superpowers, which relies on coercion or hard power to impose the hegemonic powers’ will on others, this new role requires the United States to go beyond its narrowly defined interests. This involves consultation, cooperation, and even compromise. Hence, the United States needs to dedicate a significant amount of effort to re-orientating its foreign policy towards American “soft power,” which is simply “the ability to set the political agenda in a way that shapes preferences of others.”8 Arguably, the Greater Middle East (GME) needs an American global brokering role more than any other region in the world. Despite the vast military capabilities of the United States, it is not capable of ensuring stability in these critical regions; therefore, it needs its allies to facilitate peace negotiations. As a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member, EU candidate, and the only secular and democratic country in the Muslim world, Turkey stands out as a viable partner for the United States for its strategic needs in the GME. But on the other hand, Turkey—an emerging regional power—is eager to pursue multidimensional foreign policies that may run contrary to American interests, which are based on a Cold War strategy and entangled with the issues of post-Saddam Iraq, Iran, and Syria. In light of these arguments, this chapter will elaborate on security developments and challenges of Turkish-American relations in the post-Bush era. In the first section, it will examine Turkey’s emerging power in the GME. In the second section, the changing Turkish-American relations from the Cold War to the post-Cold War period will be elaborated with a special emphasis on the vague “strategic partnership” concept of the 1990s. In the third section, principal security developments and challenges—Iraq, Iran, and Israel—on Turkish-American relations in the post-Bush era will be discussed as Turkey emerges as an autonomous power in the GME. It will conclude with the assertion that the post-Bush administrators should make a profound “change” in the American foreign policy’s unilateralist orientation and its unconditional support for Israel; otherwise Turkish-American relations will further deteriorate in the new era.

Security Challenges of Turkish-American Relations

207

Turkey an Emerging Power in the Greater Middle East Turkey has made a policy shift regarding its local environs, particularly in the GME, and begun to demonstrate greater political confidence. In contrast to the 1990s, Turkey began to play a much more pro-active role in the region in the 2000s. In order to promote peace and develop ties with all players in the region, Turkey has endeavored to act as a mediator between Israel and Syria, Israel and Hamas, and the West and Iran, not to mention within the Arab world, which was unthinkable for Turkey in previous decades.9 A confluence of certain international, regional, and domestic factors prompted Turkey to emerge as an autonomous regional power, thereby enabling it to pursue a new form of foreign policy activism in its immediate neighborhood. Firstly, Turkey has emerged both economically and politically at the critical conjuncture of the early twenty-first century. Economically speaking, Turkey’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita has increased from $2,000 in the 1980s to $11,200 in 2009, while its GDP has increased from $200 billion in the 1980s to $958.3 billion in 2010.10 This growing economic power paved the way for Turkey to become the fifteenth largest economy in the world and the seventh largest in Europe. Turkey became a member of the G-20. In addition it has become an active player (to a certain extent autonomous from American dictates) in the resolution of regional conflicts that might potentially jeopardize its growing economy. Secondly, the Bush administration’s failures in Iraq created a power vacuum in the region which was filled by Turkey and Shiite Iran while having undermined the influence of the United States and its erstwhile Sunni allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia.11 Thirdly, Turkey’s domestic transformation and EU-related democratization reforms instituted under the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP) government have played a sizable role in changing Turkey’s discourses on security,12 resulting in a shift in gears in terms of its foreign policy, from “a confrontational line to a win-win discourse.”13 These factors have enabled Turkey to emerge as a regional power, thereby enlarge its maneuvering space and become more autonomous in implementing foreign policy. It therefore is no surprise that “Turkey is now unprecedentedly self-confident in mapping an independent course in Caucasia and the Middle East.”14 Consequently, in contrast to the Cold War years, Turkey has begun to pursue new forms of foreign policy activism on the basis of “zero problems” with neighboring countries and a “Strategic Depth” doctrine that aims to reposition Turkey from the periphery to the center of world politics by playing a larger role in former Ottoman territories, in particular in the GME.15

208

Emre İşeri

From Cold War Ally to Post-Cold War Strategic Partner? During the Cold War period, Turkey was an important country for the western alliance in general and for the United States in particular. It served as a key partner in the southeast flank of NATO and acted as a barrier against the expansion of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the spread of its communist ideology to other countries. Although it was contended by some that Turkey had lost its strategic importance for the United States with the demise of the USSR at the end of the 1980s, it became indisputably clear with the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1991 that Turkey maintained its strategic value and importance for the United States during the post-Cold War era. In the 1990s, Washington viewed Turkey through the lens of its own role as a global power in world politics: “The US approach to Turkey is often characterized as strategic, in contrast to Europe’s more political—and often more critical—approach to relations with Ankara.”16 From a predominantly American perspective, Turkey is clearly a “pivotal state” in the region and a nation which has the capacity to affect regional and international developments. 17 Furthermore, Turkey’s NATO membership and its aspirations for eventual membership in the EU have placed Turkey in a unique position in comparison to another pivotal state, Egypt, in the GME. Turkish-American relations, which in the 1980s were conceived of as a defense partnership in nature and bound to economic cooperation, were upgraded to a “strategic partnership” in the mid-1990s. In coining this specific term, it was implied that Turkey had become a country of economic and political significance and a strategic buffer zone for the United States. In strategic terms, both states had common interests in NATO’s enlargement, preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, the East-West energy corridor bypassing Russian and Iranian options, and ensuring peace and stability in the Balkans.18 However, Turkish-American relations soured due to certain reasons in the post-Cold War era. As Aydın argues, “While Turkey’s regional interests mostly accommodated US global considerations during the Cold War, a different situation has emerged since the end of the bi-polar system. . . . Turkey’s understanding of the nature of the post-Cold War era moving towards multi-polarity (hence its attempt to balance its various relationships) contrasted with the U.S. attempt to create a unipolar world. Such diversions affected the relationship.”19 In the post-September 11 period, this issue has become crystal clear especially following the U.S.-led Iraq war at Turkey’s immediate proximity. After the launch of offenses in Afghanistan, Iraq became the second target of the U.S.-led war on terror as a potential shelter and safe haven for radical Islamist terrorists as well as the alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Turkey would conceivably be an ideal location for transferring American troops to instigate military operations in Northern Iraq. Washington tried to persuade Ankara on transit rights. But Ankara was concerned that toppling Saddam’s re-

Security Challenges of Turkish-American Relations

209

gime would pave the way for the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in Northern Iraq.20 Hence, on March 1, 2003, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi—TBMM) voted against granting transit rights for American troops, which would have allowed them to deploy in Turkish territory. This annoyed the Bush administration and showed that the former ally Turkey would not always fulfill Washington’s strategic expectations.21 Furthermore, the humiliating arrest of Turkish Special Forces troops in Sulaymaniyah on July 4, 2003, highlighted the fragile bilateral relations and raised the lack of confidence: “As a result of these developments, Turkish-American relations reached their lowest ebb in years, giving way to a mutual questioning of the meaning and viability of the concept of Turkish-American strategic partnership.”22 Former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Mark Parris described Turkish-American relations in the aftermath of these developments as deteriorating: “Since 2003, relations have often seemed more allergic than strategic.”23 Despite Ankara and Washington’s similar long-term interests about the future of Iraq, its unity, stability, and democracy, when it came to the means to achieve these interests a divergence of understanding occurred. The United States prioritized order and stability in Iraq, and therefore preferred to cooperate with local groups such as Kurds. As long as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) did not jeopardize the territorial integrity of Iraq, the removal of this organization was not an urgent matter for the American government. Clearly, this engendered Turkish concerns about its territorial integrity. Therefore, Turkey requested a stricter American policy towards the Iraqi Kurds to remove PKK forces from the region. Moreover, Turkey was concerned about the uncertain status of oil-rich Kerkuk, which had the potential to finance an irredentist Kurdish state.24 These clashes of interests contributed to the spread of anti-American sentiments among Turkish society.25 Consequently, Ankara (particularly following the escalation of PKK terrorist activities inside Turkey after 2005) demanded a revision in American policy in the region. The American perspective toward Turkey and the PKK changed in the second term of the Bush administration and the appointment of Robert Gates as Secretary of State.26 This paved the way for President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan’s summit in Washington on November 5, 2007, that gave initial signs of improvement in Turkish-American relations. In this meeting, Washington stated that it would prioritize Ankara’s concerns over those of Kurdish groups, including the PKK in Northern Iraq.27 Thereafter, the United States began to provide Turkey with intelligence concerning its operations against the PKK and approved of Turkish Air Force strikes against PKK targets in Northern Iraq. All in all, the meeting had significant implications for the relations as the United States agreed to contribute to taking Turkey’s regional security concerns into consideration.

210

Emre İşeri

Turkish-American Security Relations in the Obama Era After Barack Obama was elected president, the stage was set for real rapprochement between Turkey and the United States President Obama’s visit to Turkey as his first overseas bilateral trip was an important indicator of the change. As Aliriza argued: by choosing Turkey as his second destination for a bilateral visit . . . Obama has sent a very important signal to his Turkish hosts, as well as the wider Islamic world. . . . While helping to bolster bilateral U.S.-Turkish relations, Obama’s trip was primarily designed to take advantage of Turkey’s unique role as a member of the Western community of nations as well as of the Muslim world. 28

During his speech in the TBMM on April 6, 2010, President Obama delivered several messages intended especially for Turkey. As far as bilateral security relations were concerned, President Obama stated that Turkey and the United States had to “stand and work together to overcome the challenges of our time” and said that they can build a “model partnership.”29 Furthermore, Obama called for Turkish assistance to ensure stability as American troops began to withdraw from Iraq. Obama encouraged closer Turkish cooperation with Iraqi Kurds by pledging American support for a mechanism of cooperation. Especially important for Turkey is the common fight against common threats, including a “terrorist organization,” the PKK. By the same token, further Turkish assistance in the campaign to defeat Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan—the so-called AFPAK problem—was seen as essential. However, certain disagreements would overshadow the “model partnership.” President Obama praised Turkish links with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority and he asked for Turkey’s assistance in achieving “the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security.” However, President Obama’s deliberate omission of Hamas while talking about the Middle East Peace Process revealed a critical disagreement between Ankara and Washington.30 Ankara backed Hamas especially during and after the Gaza Flotilla Crisis. Prime Minister Erdoğan delivered a harsh denunciation of the Israeli attack that had resulted in the shooting of nine Turkish citizens on May 31, 2010. These incidents bring about the questions about Turkey’s future role in the Middle East peace process and the moderate mood of model partnership design. The message of President Obama’s visit to Turkey was clear: a brand new chapter in Turkish-American relations was about to begin. However, while President Obama declared his intention to open a new page in Turkish-American relations, there are three challenges to be resolved if this is to happen: 1) The future of Iraq; 2) Iran; and, 3) Israel.

Security Challenges of Turkish-American Relations

211

Iraq Among other issues, the dispute over Iraq will likely be the easiest to overcome. As discussed above, Turkish-American approaches to the management of Northern Iraq were brought into harmony during the Bush-Erdoğan summit in November 2007, in which the United States agreed to provide intelligence to Turkey in its offensive acts against the PKK. Moreover, rapprochement between Ankara and Iraqi Kurds has begun to occur, following Iraqi President Talabani’s visit to Turkey in March 2008, which culminated in the Kurdistan Regional Government’s agreeing to provide assistance in the struggle against the PKK and to provide guarantees that the demographic balance in Kerkuk will not be upset, in return for Turkish official engagement. This process paved the way for an agreement to form a “Higher Council of Strategic Cooperation” in which Turkey’s oil company, TPAO, would become eligible for exploration rights in the region and talks would continue to increase the capacity of the war-ravaged Kerkuk-Ceyhan oil pipeline. As Özel and Yılmaz assert, “all these developments point to a significant redirection of Turkey’s policy that will safeguard the autonomy of the Kurdish region, so long as the Kurds continue to cooperate with Ankara and do not attempt a fait accompli in Kerkuk.”31 Another development that changed the strategic landscape was the SOFA agreement and the Obama administration’s declaration that all American troops would be withdrawn finally from Iraq in late 2011. As Koç suggests, as American troops pull out of Iraq, Iraqi Kurds will rely on Turkey to alleviate their security concerns. In this way, the PKK will become incrementally marginalized and be put in a bind by all parties.32 Indeed, both countries adjusted their policies in Iraq, as they soon realized that they have major stakes in the stabilization of this country at a time of the Arab “spring.”33 Clearly, the most significant development in this parallel was the American decision to station Predator drones in Incirlik and sell three Super Cobra helicopters to Turkey. It can be proposed that Turkey’s traditional policy concerning trans-border Kurds is in a process of transformation. Nevertheless, the pace of this change will be primarily determined by the intensity of American assistance in the Turkish fight against the PKK and Turkey’s success in implementing EU-related democratic reforms concerning its citizens of Kurdish origins.

Iran Despite Iran’s growing regional influence since the U.S.-led war in Iraq, Turkey does not want to undermine good relations with Tehran. Their common concern is about the growth of Kurdish nationalism, and this concern prompted both Iran and Turkey to intensify cooperation regarding security. In an agreement reached in July 2004, the PKK was jointly declared a terrorist organization. Following this agreement, both countries have taken common steps to secure their borders against PKK attacks and attacks made by its affiliates, such as the

212

Emre İşeri

Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK). As Çağaptay puts it, “Iran’s fight against PJAK can be seen as a major challenge for the US policy of preserving Turkey’s Western orientation—as well as Turkey’s distance from Iran.”34 Energy has been another driving force behind Turkish-Iranian rapprochement in recent years. Iran is the second largest natural gas provider to Turkey, and a natural gas deal worth twenty-three billion dollars was reached in July 1996, ensuring the export of Iranian natural gas to Turkey for the next twentyfive years. At that time, the deal stressed Turkish-American relations, given the fact that it undermined American efforts to isolate Iran and prevent third-country investments from taking place there. 35 Since then, Turkey’s energy transactions with Iran have intensified, with the two countries signing a memorandum of understanding to transport thirty billion m3 of Iranian and Turkmen natural gas from Iran to Turkey through two separate pipeline projects. More recently, in November 2008, Ankara and Tehran concluded an accord strengthening agreements on developing Iran’s gas fields and transporting Iranian gas to Europe.36 Needless to say, this enhanced energy co-operation between Turkey and Iran drew criticism from Washington, and a trans-Caspian pipeline was suggested as a means to transport Turkmen gas that would bypass Iran. 37 As Larrabee notes, “Turkey’s growing cooperation with Iran in recent years, especially in the energy sector, highlights the degree to which US and Turkish strategic perspectives in the Middle East have begun to diverge in some areas.”38 However, this does not necessarily mean that Turkey approves of supposed Iranian attempts to acquire nuclear weapons, given the fact that this kind of development would likely destabilize the entire Middle East. Although Turkey officially recognizes the right of Iran, a member of the Treaty on the NonProliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes under full-scope inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has maintained a low profile when it comes to the matter of Iran’s nuclear program. However, the Turkish political and security elite reached a consensus that Turkey cannot stay indifferent to Iran’s nuclearization program.39 Moreover, Turkish policy-makers calculated that if nuclear talks with Iran fail and the United States moves to seek stronger sanctions against Iran, Turkey will find itself in a difficult position as a temporary member of the United Nations (UN) Security Council.40 In this context, with a growing sense of confidence about asserting itself as a regional power, Turkey initiated a joint deal with Brazil on May 17, 2010, regarding the Iranian nuclear issue. Building on the groundwork laid by their respective foreign ministers, Turkish and Brazilian leaders persuaded their Iranian counterpart to agree to a proposal which had been drafted earlier by the international community. According to the agreement, Tehran would swap its low-enriched uranium with enriched rods for a medical research reactor through an exchange that would take place in Turkey. 41 While this agreement was portrayed as a historical achievement in Turkey, the repercussions were far from positive in the West, since the deal was reached amidst news that the United States had succeeded in persuading other permanent members of the UN Security Council to agree upon new sanctions against Iran. Naturally, this

Security Challenges of Turkish-American Relations

213

development caused tension between Ankara and Washington that aggravated further with Turkey’s no vote on Iran’s sanctions to keep open the diplomatic channels. Despite Turkey’s approval of anti-missile radar system deployment in its territory at the expense of Iranian concerns at November the 20, 2010 NATO Lisbon summit, Ankara has not shifted its position over Iranian nuclear impasse, as vividly displayed in its rejection to abide the West’s more recent anti-Iran energy sanctions.42

Israel Unlike the 1990s, several developments occurred in the 2000s that damaged Israeli-Turkish relations: first, the simultaneous rise of ultranationalists in Israel and Islamist trends in Turkey; second, an erosion of the Turkish military elite’s power in the political system; third, the 2003 U.S. war in Iraq, which harmed not only Turkey’s relations with the United States, but also with Israel, mainly due to Turkish concerns over the future of Iraqi Kurdistan; fourth, the development of close relations between Turkey and Syria; fifth, for the pro-Islamist AKP, Iran appeared less threatening than it was earlier; sixth, the AKP’s supportive approach to Hamas, which had been designated as a terrorist group by the EU; and, seventh, the second Intifada (“al-Aqsa Intifada”) in the autumn of 2000, and the more recent Israeli blockade of the Gaza strip that began in 2007 and the Israeli military campaign that was conducted in Gaza in 2008–2009.43 All of these have relentlessly undermined both Israel and Turkey’s confidence in their security cooperation. It should be noted that Israel initiated aggression at the same time that Turkish-brokered peace negotiations were underway between Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and Syrian President Assad; Israel did not even inform Ankara of its intention to launch attacks. Hence, this incident not only diminished Turkey’s role as a mediator in the Middle East peace process, but set a precedent whereby Israel dictated the limits of Turkey’s field of activity. As Çandar puts it, this was by no means acceptable for a regional power like Turkey. 44 In return, Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan criticized the Israel embargo in Gaza severely at the 2009 World Economic Forum conference in Davos.45 Israeli-Turkish relations soured even further when Ankara excluded Israel from the joint Anatolian Eagle military exercise which was to be held in Turkey.46 In early 2010, diplomatic tensions heightened again with the armchair crisis. And undoubtedly, the bloody raid conducted by Israeli forces on the allegedly proIslamist AKP-supported Mavi Marmara carrying civilian aid to Gaza in international waters, which took the lives of nine Turkish civilians, has overshadowed all previous diplomatic tensions between Turkey and Israel. On September 2, 2011, the Sir Geoffrey Palmer-chaired UN inquiry panel’s conclusion that Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza “was imposed as a legitimate security measure” and “its implementation complied with the requirements of international law” has escalated Turkish-Israel tension sharply.47 As Özel and Tuğtan put it, “Now, the United States has found itself in the undesirable position to choose between Israel, whose security is a long-standing priority of U.S. administrations, and

214

Emre İşeri

Turkey, who demands to be recognized by the United States as the leading actor in regional matters—even if at the expense of Israel.”48 Regardless of the objective of Israeli aggression, however, it is clear that Turkey’s relations with Israel—the United States’ real strategic partner—has hit a historical low. Hence, after six decades of strategic cooperation, the United States and Turkey are becoming transformed into competitors, particularly over Israel and Iran, mainly due to significant changes in the international balance of power and transition in Turkish foreign and domestic politics.

Conclusion This chapter stressed security challenges of Turkey’s relations with the United States in the post-Bush era. In the first section, it examined Turkey’s emerging autonomous power in the GME. In the second section, the changing TurkishAmerican relations from the Cold War to the post-Cold War period were elaborated, with a special emphasis on the vague strategic partnership concept. In the third section, principal security developments and challenges—post-Saddam Iraq, Iran, and Israel—on Turkish-American relations under the Obama presidency were discussed. Actually, these security challenges at hand have not much to do with the character of Turkish-American bilateral relations; rather, they have to do with the unwillingness of the United States to adapt its Cold War-oriented American foreign policy to the realities of the twenty-first century. Clearly, the Obama administration has been endeavoring to make a change in American foreign policy by improving relations with the wider Muslim world. From the perspective of the Obama administration, the United States needs to reconstitute its alliances and regain lost prestige; otherwise, American vital interests in the region (including political control of energy resources and Israel’s security) will be in jeopardy. Hence it comes as no surprise that Turkey has once again become an ally that the United States needs. American troops have been withdrawing from Iraq, and Washington is in urgent need of further Turkish assistance in combating the “the AFPAK problem” and anti-American regimes in the Middle East, all at a time of continuing global financial crisis and Arab “spring.” In this way, the Obama administration has calculated that Turkish-American rapprochement is not only important in terms of ensuring peace and stability in the GME, but also compulsory for rebuilding the image of America in the Muslim world. At this critical juncture, the path of American relations with post-Saddam Iraq, Iran, Israel, and Syria, along with Afghanistan, will reveal not only the extent of change in American foreign policy under the Obama presidency, but also determine the nature of Turkish-American relations in the forthcoming days. To sum up, without a profound “change” in the orientation of American foreign policy, especially over Israel, Turkish-American security relation will not regain its strategic partnership characteristics in the post-Bush era.

Security Challenges of Turkish-American Relations

215

Notes 1. Unless otherwise stated, “Bush administration” will refer to the presidency of George W. Bush (2001–2008). 2. Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World (London: Allan Lane, 2008). 3. The growth of the macroeconomic foundations in those countries may surpass the old vanguard as well. Dominic Wilson and Roopa Purushothaman, “Dreaming with the BRICs: The Path to 2050,” Global Economic Paper, no. 99 (2003): 11–20. 4. “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World,” The National Intelligence Council, http://www.dni.gov/nic/PDF_2025/2025_Global_Trends_Final_Report.pdf (accessed October 11, 2008). 5. Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (New York: Cornell University Press, 2006), 15–21. According to John Mearsheimer, the concept of the “stopping power of water” led the United States, as a maritime power, to acquire hegemony only within its own geographical region (the western hemisphere), and in other parts of the world it merely acts as an “offshore balancer.” See John Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Ltd., 2002), 236–37. 6. “Hub-and-spoke system” is originally a term in air transportation to describe how an airline organizes its flights to make connections by having a few hub airports, where most of their flights will originate, with spokes out to non-hub airports. For application of this model to explain the American protectorate system that was established during the early days of the Cold War, see Peter Gowan, “The New American Century?” in The Spokesman: The New American Century, ed. Ken Coates (Nottingham: Spokesman Publisher, 2002), 231–46. 7. For a close analysis on how emerging powers are changing the rules of the game, see Parag Khanna, The Second World: How Emerging Powers are Redefining Global Competition in the Twenty-first Century (London: Penguin Books, 2008). 8. Joseph S. Nye, “Hard Power, Soft Power and the War on Terrorism,” in American Power in the Twenty-first Century, ed. David Held and Mathias Koenig-Archibugi (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), 124–25. 9. Kemal Kirişçi, Nathalie Tocci, and Joshua Walker, “A Neighborhood Rediscovered: Turkey’s Transatlantic Value in the Middle East,” Brussels Forum Paper Series 2010, http://www.gmfus.org/galleries/ct_publication_attachments/TransatlanticAcademy KirsiciTocciWalkerBFPaperTurkeyNeighborhood.pdfjsessionid=a4SdniMgQUI7AeYyE (accessed May 29, 2010). 10. See https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tu.html (accessed February 29, 2012). 11. Cengiz Çandar, “Turkey’s Soft Power Strategy: A New Vision for a Multi-Polar World,” SETA Policy Brief, no. 38 (December 2009). 12. Pınar Bilgin, “Turkey’s Changing Security Discourses: The Challenge of Globalization,” European Journal of Political Science 44, no. 1 (January 2005): 175–201. 13. Mustafa Aydın and Sinem A. Açıkmeşe, “Europeanization through EU Conditionality: Understanding the New Era in Turkish Foreign Policy,” Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 9, no. 3, (December 2007): 263–74. See also Mesut Özcan, Harmonizing Foreign Policy: Turkey, EU and the Middle East (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2008), 147–64; and E. Fuat Keyman and Ziya Öniş, Turkish Politics in a Changing World: Global Dynamics and Domestic Transformations (İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi University, 2007), 81–100.

216

Emre İşeri

14. Graham E. Fuller, The New Turkish Republic: Turkey as a Pivotal State in the Muslim World (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2008), 73. 15. Ahmet Davutoğlu, Stratejik Derinlik: Türkiye’nin Uluslararası Konumu, (Istanbul: Küre Yayınları, 2001), and Ahmet Davutoğlu, “Türkiye Merkez Ülke Olmalı,” Radikal, February 26, 2004. See also in this context, Alexander Murinson, “The Strategic Depth Doctrine of Turkish Foreign Policy,” Middle Eastern Studies 42, no. 6 (2006): 945–64. 16. Ian O. Lesser, “Turkey and the United States: Anatomy of a Strategic Relationship,” in The Future of Turkish Foreign Policy, ed. Lenore G. Martin and Dimitris Keridis (London: The MIT Press, 2004), 84. 17. Chase, Hill, and Kennedy argue, “What really defines a pivotal state is its capacity to affect regional and international stability. A pivotal state is so important regionally that its collapse would spell trans-boundary mayhem: migration, communal violence, pollution, disease, and so on. A pivotal state’s steady economic progress and stability, on the other hand, would bolster its region’s economic vitality and political soundness and benefit American trade and investment.” Robert S. Chase, Emily B. Hill, and Paul Kennedy, “Pivotal States and US Strategy,” Foreign Affairs 75, no. 1 (January/February 1996), 37. 18. Kemal Kirişçi, “ABD-Türkiye İlişkileri: Yenilenen Ortaklıklar Yeni Belirsizlikler,” in Günümüzde Türkiye’nin Dış Politikası, ed. Barry Rubin and Kemal Kirişçi (İstanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınevi, 2002), 206. 19. Mustafa Aydın, “Reconstructing Turkish-American Relations: Divergences versus Convergences,” New Perspectives on Turkey, 40 (Spring 2009): 135. 20. The Americans expected Turkey to repay their support for Turkey’s accession to the EU, as expressed on the eve of the Copenhagen Summit of 2002, with full cooperation, in the short run at least, in the war against Saddam’s regime. Undoubtedly, this strong show of support for Turkey by the United States, which took the form of diplomatic pressure on Brussels and the EU, was directly related to Washington’s expectations of Turkey in the war against Saddam’s regime in Iraq. Along with American support for Turkey’s accession to the EU, Washington offered Turkey six billion dollars worth of aid and up to twenty-two million dollars worth of loans. See Ziya Öniş and Şuhnaz Yılmaz, “The Turkey-EU-US Triangle in Perspective: Transformation or Continuity?” Middle East Journal 59, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 273. 21. For a detailed journalistic study of the before and after of this decision, see Murat Yetkin, Tezkere (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 2004). 22. Öniş and Yılmaz, “The Turkey-EU-US Triangle,” 277. 23. Mark Parris, “Allergic Partners: Can the Relations be Saved?” Turkish Policy Quarterly 4, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 55. 24. Aydın, “Reconstructing Turkish-American Relations,” 136–38. 25. Ioannis N. Grigoriadis, “Friends No More? The Rise of Anti-American Nationalism in Turkey,” Middle East Journal 64, no. 1 (Winter 2010): 51–62. 26. Soli Özel and Şuhnaz Yılmaz, Rebuilding a Partnership: Turkish-American Relations for a New Era, (İstanbul: TÜSİAD, April 2009), 12. 27. Up until that time, even though the United States had designated the PKK a terrorist organization, its relations with the organization continued and Turkey obtained several documents pertaining to this and made them public. 28. Bülent Alirıza, “President Obama’s Trip to Turkey: Building a Model Partnership,” http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/090408_turkey_update.pdf, (accessed May 29, 2010).

Security Challenges of Turkish-American Relations

217

29. “President Obama: United States and Turkey Can Build a Model Partnership,” April 8, 2009, http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/71214/president-obama-united-statesand-turkey-can-build-a-model-partnership.html, (accessed May 30, 2010). Emphasis added. 30. Alirıza, “President Obama’s Trip.” 31. Özel and Yılmaz, Rebuilding a Partnership, 54. 32. Şanlı Bahadır Koç, “Obama’s Turkey Visit and Turkish-American Relations,” (unpublished manuscript), March 19, 2009, 3–4, cited in Özel and Yılmaz, Rebuilding a Partnership, 54. 33. Şaban Kardaş, “A Reality Check on U.S.–Turkish Relations,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 8, no. 223 (December 8, 2011), www.jamestown.org (accessed February 29, 2012). 34. Soner Çağaptay and Zeynep Eroğlu, “The PKK, PJAK, and Iran: Implications for U.S-Turkish Relations,” June 13, 2007, http://www.cagaptay.com/692/the-pkk-pjakand-iran (accessed September 3, 2010). 35. Steven Erlanger, “Turkey-Iran Gas Deal—A Test of US Law on Terror?” New York Times, August 13, 1996, http://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/13/world/turkey-irangas-deal-a-test-of-us-law-on-terror.html?pagewanted=all (accessed May 3, 2010). 36. Emrullah Uslu, “Turkey and Iran Sign Accord on Natural Gas Cooperation,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 5, no. 224, November 21, 2008, http://www.jamestown.org/single/ ?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=34159 (accessed May 11, 2010). 37. “US Critical of Turkey’s Partnership with Iran,” Turkish Daily News, April 7, 2007. 38. F. Stephen Larrabee, Turkey as a US Security Partner (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2008), 12. 39. Mustafa Kibaroğlu and Barış Çağlar, “Implications of a Nuclear Iran for Turkey,” Middle East Policy 15, no. 4, (Winter 2008): 59–80. 40. Aliriza, “President Obama’s Trip.” 41. Şaban Kardaş, “Turkey Prioritizes Independent Regional Policies in the Middle East and the South Caucasus,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 7, no. 107 (June 1, 2010), www.jamestown.org (accessed June 7, 2010). 42. “Turkey Rejects West’s Anti-Iran Energy Sanctions,” Tehran Times, February 17, 2012. 43. Şaban Kardaş, “Turkey Prioritizes Independent.” 44. Cengiz Çandar, “İsrail ile Savaşsız Savaş,” Radikal, June 8, 2010. 45. “Stormy Debate in Davos over Gaza,” January 30, 2009, http://english. aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/01/20091291976879610.html (accessed July 10, 2010). 46. “Anatolian Eagle Exercise Begins,” July 10, 2010, http://www.todayszaman. com/tz-web/news-212466-100-anatolian-eagle-exercise-begins-israeli-military-excluded. html (accessed July 10, 2010). 47. Report of the Secretary General’s Panel of Inquiry on the 31 May 2010 Flotilla Incident, September 2011, www.un.org (accessed February 29, 2012), 45. 48. Soli Özel and Mehmet Ali Tuğtan, “How Will the United States Avoid Paralysis with Turkey?” GMF Analysis on Turkey, October 12, 2011, 3.

Chapter Thirteen

Turkey as a Stakeholder and Contributor to Regional Security in the Western Balkans Adam Balcer Between 1991 and 2001, the Western Balkans (made up of states that emerged from the communist Yugoslavia: Bosnia and Herzegovina,1 Croatia, Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Kosovo, together with Albania) saw the most bloody armed conflicts in Europe since World War II. The security situation in the region improved significantly at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Since the end of the war in Kosovo (1999) and Macedonia (2001), the security challenges in the Western Balkans have shifted from hard security issues to soft security ones. Even though the risk of large-scale military conflicts was practically reduced to zero, the region continues to pose a potential threat to the soft security of Europe. The soft security challenges are not of an endemic nature, but rather artifacts of the post-communist transition process and ethnic conflicts that arose with the breakup of Yugoslavia. The most important threats to the Western Balkans recently have been organized crime and religious and nationalist extremists prone to violence. A transition from totalitarian rule to democracy in the postcommunist countries has generally been associated with the growth of crime and some forms of ethnic and religious extremism. They have flourished in an environment of disoriented law enforcement institutions, as well as rapid changes of social and economic norms and political uncertainty. 2 The ensuing Yugoslav wars of the 1990s rendered the Western Balkans especially vulnerable to several soft security challenges related to organized crime and different forms of radicalism. Currently, weak state institutions in the Western Balkan countries hamper the fight against these challenges. What is promising is that in contrast to wartime turmoil during the wars after the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Western Balkans have gradually become a 219

220

Adam Balcer

safer haven for several reasons. First of all, crime has reduced to levels pertaining in the European Union (EU).3 Although the international media often gives in to the stereotype that the Balkans is a gangsters’ paradise,4 the image of Western Balkan inhabitants armed to the teeth is an exaggerated perception. As statistics suggest, firearms ownership per capita remains significantly lower in Southeast Europe than in some West European countries. 5 Secondly, there has been an increasing aspiration to international or regional cooperation. Most of the Balkan countries have either applied for EU or North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership, and have already been granted candidate status (Table 13.1). Efforts for closer integration with the EU and NATO have resulted in more open borders and, hence, the reduced lure of illicit trans-frontier trade. Furthermore, security sector reform and improved criminal justice as a result of closer regional cooperation has made organized crime riskier, less profitable and thus less frequent. In this respect, NATO and the EU have played a constructive role in the stabilization of the region. Table 13.1. The Western Balkan Countries’ Candidacy Status at the EU and NATO Country Albania Bosnia Croatia Kosovo Macedonia Montenegro Serbia

EU Applied for candidate status (2009) Association Agreement (2008) Accession date (2013) Potential candidate Candidate (2005) Candidate (2010) Probable start of negotiations (2012) Candidate (2012)

NATO Accession (2009) Candidate (2010) Accession (2009) Potential candidate Candidate (2004) Candidate (2010) Potential candidate

Source: For the EU data, see http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/index_en.htm. For NATO data, see http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49212.htm?selected Locale=en.

There are several contributors to stabilization and security in the Western Balkans. By and large, the key role in the regional stabilization process has been played and is likely to continue to be played in the next decade by the EU and NATO. The EU and NATO have developed a dual-track stabilization strategy: conflict prevention and rule of law missions (in Bosnia, Kosovo, and until recently in Macedonia) and an enlargement process based on the conditionality principle. The strengthening of law enforcement agencies and state institutions, and the establishing of an accountable and effective police force, border police and judiciary system contributes considerably to the process of regional stability, and the fight against organized crime and political radicalism. In return, stability in the region serves these external actors’ security interests and needs. Particularly, the EU is an important stakeholder, as the region plays a central role in the EU’s external engagement and for the development of its Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP). The region has become the most im-

Turkey and Regional Security in the Western Balkans

221

portant area of the EU’s external engagement (missions, enlargement, financial support, protectorates, and special envoys).6 The stabilization process in the region will probably last for ten to fifteen more years. During this time, the EU’s role will increase while NATO’s role will decrease.7 The stabilization of the Western Balkans has an enormous significance for the EU, as the development of the CSDP strongly depends on it. It should be recalled that building of the CSDP will be a very difficult task if the EU and NATO are unable to cooperate. The other external actor which has a significant role to play in the realization of a secure and stabile region is Turkey. Ankara is one of the most important stakeholders in the region. In no other part of Europe does Turkey enjoy such a strong position as in the Balkans. Turkey has been actively engaged in the process of stabilization: firstly, due to its position in the region; and secondly, due to the fact that Turkey shares similar security concerns (organized crime and religious extremism) and interests with NATO, the EU and the Western Balkan states. Given this backdrop, this chapter examines the main security challenges in the Western Balkans, with particular reference to organized crime and religious extremism. Then it focuses on the role of Turkey as a stakeholder in the Balkans and on its contribution to the region’s stabilization. Finally, the chapter concludes with prospects for amelioration of cooperation between the EU and Turkey and the Western Balkan states, with reference to Turkey-EU relations.

Security Challenges in the Western Balkans: Organized Crime and Religious Radicalism The Western Balkans does not generally represent a very favorable environment for crime and political radicalism. The region is relatively well-developed in comparison with many parts of the world. For instance, only a small minority of Southeast Europeans face life-threatening poverty. The level of education in the region is generally high.8 The Western Balkan societies are more egalitarian than many EU countries. The standard indicators of inequality (GINI index) are not pronounced in this region. That is, “the majority of Western Balkan countries except Macedonia share a level of inequality comparable to the one, for instance, of Austria.”9 Even though demographic pressure does not have a decisive leverage on levels of crime and political extremism in the region—indeed, the natural growth rates among the inhabitants of the Western Balkans are shrinking—there are social, political and economic peculiarities existing in the region fostering organized crime and radicalism.

Organized Crime as a Soft Security Challenge in the Twentyfirst Century Progressive post-war economic conditions and indicators have failed completely to overcome the two most frequent soft security challenges in the West-

222

Adam Balcer

ern Balkan region, namely organized crime and religious and ethnic cleavages. To start with, organized crime is used to distinguish more systematic and sophisticated forms of illicit enterprise from conventional criminal activity. 10 It encompasses a wide range of profit-motivated unlawful activities, such as transnational drug and human trafficking, illicit arms trade, illegal immigration, smuggling of goods and money laundering. Among the activities of organized criminal groups in the Western Balkans, the main field is drug trafficking, heroin smuggling being the biggest criminal challenge. The Western Balkans perform much better than is often assumed with regard to ordinary crimes. But regional performance in regards to fighting organized crime remains very poor. For this reason, organized crime can be viewed as the most important soft security challenge to Western Balkan security and to its neighborhood in the twenty-first century. Reduction of organized crime in the Western Balkans is a difficult task due to six major factors. The first is an inequality in a continental dimension (the EU prosperity vs. Western Balkan poverty), which can be examined according to the level of income and the unemployment rates. Compared to the EU average ($31.5 thousand), the average level of income in the Western Balkans ($10.5 thousand) remains very low (Table 13.2). On the other hand, official unemployment rates are very high throughout the region. The regional average official unemployment rate is 27.2 percent (Table 13.2). In terms of the given development indicators, Croatia is a unique case with its high national income and unemployment rate below the region’s average, contrary to Kosovo, with its lowest GDP PPP per capita and one of the highest levels of unemployment rates (Table 13.2). However, economic development figures need to be treated with caution because the informal economy and the gastarbeiter diaspora living and working in the EU are both very large. In effect, the region receives significant remittances from workers abroad. Table 13.2. Comparative National Income and Official Unemployment Statistics in 2011 Country

a

Albania Bosnia Croatia Kosovo Macedonia Montenegro Serbia Average Western Balkans Average EU

National Income (GDP PPP per capita -USD thousands) a 7.8 8.2 18.3 6.6 c 10.4 11.2 10.7 10.5 31.5

Unemployment rates (%) b 13 43 20 41 31 19 24 27.2 10

Source: IMF, World Economic Outlook September 2011 Source: Statistical offices c Own estimate based on the Kosovo Central Bank’s data from 2011 b

Turkey and Regional Security in the Western Balkans

223

The second factor that makes combating organized crime a hard task is the close cooperation between regional mafia structures—regardless of and even contrary to ethnic divides. Discussing trafficking in the Balkans, the 2010 U.S. International Narcotics Control Strategy Report showed that “elements from each ethnic group and all major crime ‘families’ are involved in the narcotics trade, often collaborating across ethnic lines.”11 The third factor that eases organized criminality is the geographical characteristics of the region. The shortest heroin route from Afghanistan to Europe traverses the Balkans and fuels the great majority of Europe’s heroin market. Croatia, and—to a lesser extent—Montenegro, due to their long sea borders, are also transit points through which cocaine is smuggled from South America towards Europe’s heartlands. Past estimates suggested that ethnic Albanian traffickers controlled 70 percent or more of the heroin entering a number of key destination markets.12 In 2005, the Council of Europe described this traffic as a “threat to the EU.”13 In fact, ethnic Albanian heroin trafficking is arguably the single most prominent Western Balkan criminal problem in Europe. However, according to the United Nations (UN) report titled “Crime and Its Impact on the Balkans and Affected Countries,” 10 percent to 20 percent of the heroin supply to Western Europe was delivered by the Albanian mafia in 2008.14 Both the number of Albanian criminals arrested and the amount of heroin confiscated has declined substantially in the last few years.15 High levels of international mobility and large diaspora populations are the fourth factor which contributes to the development of organized crime in the Western Balkans. It also complicates the combat against organized crime. Around 2.5 million immigrants—almost half of whom are Albanians—from the Western Balkans live in the EU and Switzerland. This diaspora constitutes more than 10 percent of the whole Western Balkan population.16 In consequence, the existence of the Western Balkan diaspora in the EU has contributed to the establishment of the smuggling networks between Western Europe and the Balkans, which are exploited by the Western Balkan mafias. The fifth factor is a specific social structure existing in the region. In some rural parts of the Western Balkans, especially among Albanians, a typical social feature is strong and closed family networks (extended families) based on the elements of customary law (a principle of family loyalty, honor killings). According to Europol, Albanian organized crime groups active in Europe “are often built along strong family ties or clan structures and in carrying out their criminal activities they maintain strong links with their states of origin: Albania, Kosovo and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.”17 On the other hand, the modernization process is diminishing the leverage of these “traditional” social structures on Albanian society. For instance, clan structures have completely ceased to exist among the Albanians. The sixth, and final, factor which contributes most to the development of organized crime is the weak structure of the state as a legacy of communism and war. Social pathology, as a part of the legacy of the communist system and the post-communist transition, was heavily influenced by the conflicts taking place during the collapse of Yugoslavia. High levels of corruption emerged as the key

224

Adam Balcer

symptom of state structures’ weakness. Corruption is pervasive and underpins all criminal activities across the region, especially smuggling and human trafficking. According to the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) prepared by Transparency International (2011), there is a seriously high level of corruption in the Western Balkan countries (Table 13.3).18 Table 13.3. Level of Corruption in the Western Balkans (2011) Country Albania Bosnia Croatia Kosovo Macedonia Montenegro Serbia

Level of Corruption 3.1 3.2 4.0 2.9 3.9 4.0 3.3

Source: Transparency International, Corruption Perception Index 2011

Among the Western Balkan countries, Bosnia and Kosovo experience the most serious problems in terms of weak state institutions. They are coping with the most contested political status, the sharpest ethnic divisions, the highest levels of poverty, the highest rates of unemployment and the bleakest prospects for Euro-Atlantic integration.19 Kosovo is the most serious challenge in terms of the fight against organized crime. Strong ties between politicians and mafia and a very high level of corruption have resulted in Kosovo’s belated stabilization, which due to political reasons (a new statehood) took place later than in other Western Balkan countries.20 Moreover, Kosovo still has to deal with the obstructive policy of Serbia, as Pristina lacks control over the northern part of the country, inhabited by Serbs who get support from Belgrade. Moreover, due to the political dispute concerning the final status of Kosovo, cooperation between Belgrade and Pristina in fighting organized crime remains rather limited. These facts make Kosovo a particularly safe haven for smugglers. Bosnia takes the second position in the region after Kosovo with regard to the challenge posed by organized crime. The weaknesses of Bosnia are more structural in character than in Kosovo. The Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a loose and complex federal state composed of Serb Republic (Republika Srpska) and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina—consisting of ten cantons. This complexity exacerbates the malfunctioning of the state, bad governance, its poor interagency communication and competing security structures. Serb Republic undermines state-level institutions and the Federation becomes a bureaucratic Leviathan ruled by political elite torn by fierce struggles.21 Inevitably, this situation hampers the efforts to improve operational capabilities to combat organized crime.

Turkey and Regional Security in the Western Balkans

225

Religious Extremism as a Regional and Global Challenge Radical nationalist-fundamentalist dynamics and ethnic divides are also sources of soft security challenges in the Western Balkans. These have the potential to trigger societal violence and intolerance, although they pose a significantly smaller threat than challenges related to organized crime in the region. The level of challenge they create depends largely on how the political and economic situation in the region deteriorates or improves. Moreover, the increasingly frustrated and intolerant minority is more receptive to radical slogans, although it is still not ready to use violence.22 Religious or nationalist radicalism in the Western Balkans, like organized crime, as discussed above, is largely a legacy of war. Moreover, combat against extremism is hampered for the same reasons, as in the case of organized crime, such as weak state structures, international networks, relative poverty, and political disputes. Religious radicalism draws special attention, as Islamic fundamentalism has become the fastest growing challenge among other regional extremist groups over the past few years, especially since the war in Bosnia (1992–1995). The war in Bosnia created particularly favorable conditions that encouraged religious radicalism because this conflict was the bloodiest while having the strongest religious background among the wars taking place in former Yugoslavia. In consequence, Islamists became relatively numerous among the Bosniaks in Bosnia, the Sandžak and Kosovo, and, to a much smaller extent, among the Albanians in Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia.23 Before the war, the Bosnian Muslims, who observed the more liberal Ottoman Hanafi religious tradition, were considered to be among the most secularized Muslims not only in the region, but also in the world. They practiced a moderate version of Islam, which made them tolerant of other religions in the country.24 Yet, with the arrival of foreign fighters and of radical Muslim missionaries during and after the war in Bosnia (1992–1995), the situation partly changed.25 Their arrival brought to Bosnia not only narrow, puritanical and confrontational interpretations of Islam, which are known as Salafism and Wahhabism, but also mujahideen trained for committing terrorist attacks. Indeed, many fighters who came to support the Bosnian Muslims were linked to Al Qaeda and other terrorist Islamist groups.26 In the aftermath of the war, while most of these fighters left Bosnia, some were granted citizenship and stayed in the region as, since their arrival, they have enjoyed protection from certain officials in the Bosniak political and intelligence establishments.27 They found some supporters among the local population, who were radicalized by their horrid war experiences and by difficult postwar economic conditions. From the beginning, these local radicals have been supported financially by Middle Eastern fundamentalists. 28 Some radical communities in Bosnia and Sandžak were also supported by part of the Bosniak diaspora, especially in Vienna, where fundamentalist tendencies are relatively more widespread than in Bosnia itself. 29 In consequence, the number of the radical local Muslim community in Bosnia has increased from several hundred to as many as five thousand today. A few hundred of them are ready to use violence. 30

226

Adam Balcer

After the war, radicals established a community in the central Bosnian village of Donja Bocinja, which was closed down in 2001 by local authorities under U.S. pressure. The Wahhabi followers were forced to relocate, and they found shelter in Gornja Maoca, where non-Wahhabis were not welcome. Radical local Muslims also established paramilitary training camps in Bosnia and Sandžak, which were the center of police attention. For instance, in 2007, during the Serbian police encounter with one of those camps, one person was killed and several wounded. In February 2010, in the largest police raid in the history of modern Bosnia, hundreds of police officers from eleven Bosnian law enforcement agencies entered the village and arrested seven people, including the leader of this community. Arms and ammunition were seized, as well. However, the real threat posed by Islamist radicals is difficult to assess. This issue is strongly politicized. The Serbian media has often overrated the scale of the threat. During the war and its aftermath, sensational articles gave wide coverage on the threat of fundamentalism. On the other hand, while some Bosniaks have discounted Islamists as a serious threat, Islamist propaganda has faced strong resistance from the majority of Bosniak society.31 Radicals have never succeeded in carrying out a large-scale terrorist attack.32 They were, however, responsible for sporadic military incidents, murders, assaults and riots. In October 2011 a Bosniak Islamist attacked the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo. On the other hand, following the war, several dozen local and incoming radicals were arrested in Bosnia on charges of attempts to carry out terrorist attacks in the country. The main targets were western embassies and bases. Moreover, the threat the radical Islamists are posing extends beyond the region because of their links with Islamist circles in other parts of the world and the presence of the Balkan Muslim diaspora in Western Europe and the United States. This has been confirmed by several terrorist attempts in the West involving Western Balkan emigrants who kept in touch with their homelands over the past few years.

Turkey as a Stakeholder and Security Provider Turkey is an important stakeholder and a contributor to regional stability in the Western Balkans, especially concerning the soft security challenges discussed in this chapter. The first and foremost reason is the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, namely a heritage of around 450 years of Turkish Ottoman rule over almost the entire Western Balkans. The most striking consequence of this legacy is the strong links between Western Balkan Muslims, who currently constitute around one-third of the inhabitants of the region (mostly Albanians and Bosniaks).33 Reciprocally, Turkey hosts around ten million people who at least partly have roots in the Western Balkans. The special bond between Turkey and the Muslims of the Western Balkans is reinforced by a relatively large body of Muslim students from the Western Balkans who study in Turkey (around 2000), and, in return, Turkish universities and secondary schools for non-Turkish Western Bal-

Turkey and Regional Security in the Western Balkans

227

kan students operating especially in Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia. 34 Inevitably, these links contribute to a very strong identification of Western Balkan Muslims with Turkey. According to the Gallup Balkan Poll (2008), around 75 percent of them have declared that they feel similar to Turks in terms of mentality and culture.35 Turkey’s economic and political leverage on the Western Balkans has substantially increased in the recent years with certain foreign policy initiatives of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP) government. These initiatives follow from the implementation of the “strategic depth” doctrine which currently guides Turkish foreign policy.36 According to this doctrine, Turkey is uniquely endowed in geopolitical (a pivotal state), economic (emerging power) and historic terms (the Ottoman legacy) and thus should be a pro-active key player (stability provider) in the regions surrounding it, including the Western Balkans. Apparently, this is a soft power-oriented doctrine, which focuses on the peaceful coexistence of different ethnic and religious groups, and the establishment of strong economic and social interdependencies between states and societies. In implementing the doctrine, Turkey aims to play a mediating role in the international and regional arena. Within the framework of the doctrine, the Western Balkans occupies one of the most important places, though the region does not possess such a crucial significance for Turkey as the Middle East, for instance. All in all, the Western Balkans is the region where this concept has been relatively successfully implemented. Taking economic recovery in the Western Balkans as a sine qua non for successfully combating organized crime and religious radicalism, Turkey’s economic engagement in the region should be treated as a form of the contribution to its stability. Turkey is a relatively important trading partner with certain Western Balkan states. For instance, its share in Kosovo’s trade turnover is around 8 percent, of that of Albania around 6 percent and of that of Macedonia almost 4 percent.37 Inevitably, the volume of the trade depends largely on international political economic dynamics. For example, the world economic crisis caused a significant drop in bilateral trade between Turkey and Bosnia from 4 percent to 2 percent.38 But Turkey still has a strong position in terms of its export capacity to the region. A remarkable example of this is that Turkey’s export to Bosnia increased by 250 percent in 2007. Turkey has held an important share in foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into several Western Balkan states in recent years (Albania, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia) and especially in the construction sectors of Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia. For instance, its investments in Albania make up around 15 percent of the country’s foreign direct investment stocks and in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina almost 5 percent (particularly in the Bosniak cantons).39 Turkish investments and construction projects are often located in key areas, such as the construction of airports and strategic highways. Until 2011, the value of contracts undertaken by Turkish firms in Macedonia’s building sector exceeded $630 million in Kosovo it exceeded $500 million and in Albania it reached to $580 million.40 Turkey is also an important donor in the region, especially in Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Mac-

228

Adam Balcer

edonia. That Turkey donated around $330 million to the Western Balkan states (2005–2009) is a clear indicator of Turkey’s interests in the economic and social development of the region.41 In 2009–2010 Turkey’s development aid formed of the entire aid received by Bosnia, Macedonia and Montenegro, respectively 6.5 percent, 9 percent and 8 percent.42 Turkey’s position in the Western Balkans derives from its capacity to establish good or even excellent political bilateral relations with almost all the Western Balkan countries/federal entities. For instance, in the case of Bosnia (Federation), Kosovo and Macedonia, Turkey even plays the role of their main protector in the international arena (e.g., lobbying for their international recognition). The Serb Republic in Bosnia is the only regional actor which has bad relations with Turkey. Its negative approach to Turkey results from its perception of Ankara as an uncritical supporter of the Bosniaks and their national interests. Turkey’s ability to build good relations with almost all the political actors in the region earns it favorable opinions, and an image of a neutral or friendly country among the nations of the Western Balkans.43 For instance, according to the Gallup Balkan poll held in September 2010, only a relative majority of the Bosnian Serbs (almost 45 percent) perceives Turkey as a hostile country. Ankara’s constructive bilateral relations with the Western Balkan countries also have an undeniable impact on regional stability; in particular, the remarkable improvement in Turkish-Serbian relations in 2009, which also paved the way for Turkey’s contribution to a rapprochement between Bosnia and Serbia. 44 In 2009, Ankara established a mechanism for trilateral consultations between the ministers of foreign affairs of Bosnia, Serbia and Turkey. On Turkey’s initiative, another consultation platform was established between Bosnia, Croatia and Turkey. In December 2009, the Plan of Action for Bosnia was accepted during a meeting in Sarajevo. The aim of the Plan was to further develop cooperation between the three countries and lobby for Bosnia’s accession to NATO and the EU. In 2010, regular consultations between the presidents of Bosnia (the representative of state presidency), Turkey and Serbia were launched. As a result of these efforts, and after a very long period of absence, Bosnia and Herzegovina appointed an ambassador to Serbia, and the Serbian parliament apologized, in a special declaration, for the Srebrenica massacre committed by the Bosnian Serbs against Bosniaks in 1995.45 Turkey’s contribution to regional stability also has international and military dimensions. Since the outbreak of the war in Bosnia in 1992, and then the conflict in Kosovo in 1999, Turkey lobbied for decisive and effective military and diplomatic intervention from the international community. Its efforts were largely accepted by NATO. Turkey successfully blocked proposals from radical Muslim countries, such as Iran, for unilateral actions in Bosnia, such as sending military missions from Islamic countries without a UN mandate. Such an intervention would have done nothing but escalate confrontation in the region. 46 In effect, since the early 1990s, Turkish armed forces and police have been present in almost all the EU, NATO and UN military and civilian missions in the Balkans. And this continues today, through such military and rule of law missions as EU Force Althea (EUFOR/ALTHEA) and the EU Police Mission

Turkey and Regional Security in the Western Balkans

229

(EUPM) in Bosnia, as well as the EULEX mission and NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) mission in Kosovo.47 All in all, Turkey has played a decisively positive role in the peace-building process in the Western Balkans and especially in Bosnia. Another aspect of Turkey’s contribution to the stability of the region has been its efforts in training the armed and police forces of the countries of the Western Balkans. After the war in Bosnia, all the Croatian and Bosniak soldiers of the Army of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a huge part of the officers of the Albanian and Macedonian forces, were trained in Turkey. In this respect, Turkish armed forces have become one of the most significant “caretakers” of Kosovo’s security forces. Furthermore, Turkey has contributed to Western Balkan countries’ transatlantic aspirations. In 2009, on the initiative of Turkey, the Friends of Bosnia Group was established within the framework of NATO. In 2010, Turkish lobbying helped Bosnia in its being awarded the status of a NATO candidate country. On a number of occasions, Turkey has acted as a supporter of Western Balkans countries in their relations with the EU. For instance, Turkey took a very critical approach to the EU over the EU tolerance of Greece’s blocking of Macedonia’s accession process, for not liberalizing the visa regime for Albania and Bosnia together with Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia in 2009, and for not launching a dialogue on this issue with Kosovo until 2012. In the case of Albania and Bosnia, the EU lifted the visa regime at the end of 2010. Moreover, in December 2009, the Alliance of Civilization initiative, established by Ankara and Madrid under the umbrella of the UN, organized a conference on Balkan countries in which some EU representatives also took part. The conference resulted in the acceptance of a Regional Strategy prepared by Turkey. The Strategy entailed an intensification of efforts towards the integration and future accession of the Western Balkans to the EU, as well as the further development of projects in such areas as education, media, culture and the non-governmental sector, in order to improve ethnic relations in the region. Turkey’s interest in regional stability also involves the two regional challenges discussed above, organized crime and religious extremism. At the regional level, Turkey actively participates in the fight against organized crime in the region by providing training to police forces of some Western Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia). As a member of the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative (SECI), which operates to provide stability and security in the region, and the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC), which was launched to stimulate regional cooperation and assists in the process of EU integration, Turkey acts actively to combat cross-border crime. In November 2009, the SECI Center and the RCC signed a “memorandum of understanding” to develop cooperation in preventing and combating cross border organized crime and promoting the principles of the rule of law and strengthening regional cooperation. Turkey plays a very effective role in the fight against heroin smuggling, constituting 16 percent of global heroin interceptions.48 The Turkish mafia, often of Kurdish origin, plays a crucial role in the heroin trafficking between Turkey and Western Europe, together with the Balkan-organized crime groups, especially Albanians, and Western European criminals. Turkey’s dual combat, in the

230

Adam Balcer

first place with the mafia at home, and then in Western Balkans, strikes a blow against organized crime in the Western Balkans and Western Europe. According to the World Drug Report 2010: Once heroin leaves Turkish territory, interception efficiency drops significantly. In the Balkans, relatively little heroin is seized, suggesting that the route is exceedingly well organized and lubricated with corruption. In 2008, the countries and territories that comprised South East Europe (a total of eleven countries, including Greece and Cyprus) seized 2.8 metric tons (mt) of heroin. This is in sharp contrast to what is seized upstream in Turkey (15.5 mt in 2008). . . . In other words, for every kg seized in the South East Europe, nearly 6 are seized in Turkey.49

Finally, as far as religious extremism in the region is concerned, Turkey contributes in restraining extremist the Islamist influence of the Middle East on Balkan Muslims. The Directorate General of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı) of Turkey acts as a patron for mainstream Muslim religious structures in the Balkans through financial aid and training. It also serves as a bastion of moderate Islamic ideas and tolerance among Muslim groups in the region, which can be regarded as a counter balance to the religious extremism discussed earlier. In 1995, the Diyanet established the Eurasian Islamic Council, which gathered Muslim communities from the Western Balkans, other parts of Europe and the former Soviet Union. Besides the factors already discussed, the rapprochement between Turkey and Serbia has also exerted some effect on Belgrade’s desire to neutralize the influence of radical Islamic circles in Sandžak through the strengthening of Turkish influence in this region.50 In conclusion, although the challenge of religious extremism is still prevalent in the region, Turkish engagement in combating it is very promising.

Conclusion Since the wars of the 1990s, security challenges in the Western Balkans have shifted from the military-oriented hard security domain to the domain of soft security. As this chapter has highlighted, the most serious challenges to regional security are organized crime and, to a lesser extent, religious and nationalist extremists who are prone to violence. The weak states of the region hamper the ability to fight these challenges. Yet, this chapter has examined these challenges, not only with reference to the countries in the region, but also as they constitute challenges for Turkey’s security needs in the twenty-first century. As a country with historical, social, economic, cultural and security stakes in the region, Turkey’s contribution to regional stability has been timely and instrumental in serving its own interests in the region. At the same time, Turkey has acted in cooperation with international actors, such as the EU and the United States, using bilateral and multilateral diplomatic instruments to stabilize the region. This chapter has pointed to the fact that, although Turkey’s influence in the region

Turkey and Regional Security in the Western Balkans

231

has increased substantially in the last decade, there is still a huge room for improvement, especially economically. Certainly, establishing proper relations with all the actors in the region would also serve Turkey’s position in the Western Balkans. Although challenges persist, the outlook for the Western Balkans is more promising than it has been over the past two decades. With increasing stabilization and development, the influence of organized crime and political radicalism in the region will most probably decrease. Nevertheless, the stabilization process is likely to be long and hard. The Western Balkans stabilization process would proceed much more smoothly if, given Turkey’s potential, the EU and countries in this region significantly improved cooperation with Ankara on security issues. Mutual aid in the field of security between Turkey and the EU has to be seen in broader terms, as it also affects the future of the EU’s CSDP. From the Turkish perspective, further effective engagement in stabilizing the Western Balkans is conducive to Turkey’s process of accession to the EU. Close cooperation in the Western Balkans could become the paradigm for the cooperation between Turkey and the EU, especially with respect to the CSDP. The future of the cooperation between Turkey and the EU, both in general and in the Western Balkan region, seems to depend, to a large extent, on Turkey’s EU accession process. Thus, a permanent crisis in Turkey’s accession to the EU will definitely have a serious negative effect on cooperation between Brussels and Ankara in the Western Balkans. On the other hand, strong bonds and common interests between the West and Turkey should prevent a “cold war” scenario between Ankara and Brussels in the region. Additionally, Turkey does not have sufficient potential to torpedo the EU’s agenda in the Western Balkan region. Its leverage in the region is decisively smaller than the EU’s. However, Turkey may significantly hamper the EU interests in the region, particularly in case of substantial slowdown of the enlargement process in certain Western Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia), resulting in an increase of Euroskepticism among the Balkan Muslims. Therefore, the prospect of EU membership is a vital issue, which links Turkey and the Western Balkan countries, although EU membership of the latter, unlike Turkey’s, is not contested in the EU. In conclusion, from the perspective of Turkey’s interests in the region, an ideal scenario would be to link the EU accession processes of Turkey and the countries of the Western Balkans to the issue of stabilization of the latter. An establishment of a special mechanism, such as regular summits gathering the EU, candidate countries from the Western Balkans, and Turkey, could be a part of the solution. As can be guessed, the main subject of this summit should be cooperation between all the actors in coping with the security challenges of the Western Balkans.

232

Adam Balcer

Notes 1. For reasons of practicality, Bosnia and Herzegovina will be referred to as Bosnia in the remainder of the chapter, unless otherwise stated. 2. UNODC, Crime and Its Impact on the Balkans and Affected Countries (Vienna: United Nations Publications, 2008), 11, http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-andanalysis/Balkan_study.pdf (accessed May 1, 2011). 3. Ibid., 35–43. 4. Ibid., 35–43. 5. Aaron Karp, “Completing the Count: Civilian Firearms,” Annex 4, in Small Arms Survey 2007: Guns and the City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/files/sas/publications/yearb2007.html (accessed May 1, 2011). 6. As of January 2012, thirteen EU missions are active across the world, three of which are located in the Balkans (EUFOR and EUPM in Bosnia, and EULEX in Kosovo). More than 60 percent of the staff active in the EU missions are engaged in the Balkans. 7. The current NATO mission in Kosovo (KFOR) is very likely to be taken over by the EU in the coming years. If this were to take place, it would be the largest EU mission, consisting of several thousand soldiers. 8. UNODC, Crime and Its Impact, 25. 9. Sebastian Leitner and Mario Holzner, “Economic Inequality in Central, East and Southeast Europe,” Intervention: European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies 5 no. 1 (2008): 156 (http://www.wiiw.ac.at/balkan/files/wiiw_GDN_SEE_Leitn erHolz ner08.pdf) (accessed May 2, 2011). 10. UNODC, Crime and Its Impact, 45. 11. United States Department of State, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, Volume I Drug and Chemical Control (Washington, D.C.: US Department of State, 2010), 166. http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/138548.pdf (accessed May 2, 2011). 12. UNODC, Crime and Its Impact, 65. 13. Council of Europe, Organised Crime Situation Report 2005, Focus on the Threat of Economic Crime (Strasbourg: COE, 2005), 29. 14. UNODC, Crime and Its Impact, 14. 15. Between 2000 and 2006 a number of Albanian suspects connected with heroin seizures in Germany decreased around four times. UNODC, Crime and Its Impact, 69. 16. For more information, see, the EU member states’ statistical offices. 17. Europol, The Threat from Organised Crime (Brussels: Europol, 2006), 2. 18. CPI measures the level of corruption in a country on a scale from “10” (very clean) to “0” (highly corrupt). Low results indicate serious corruption problems. 19. Bosnia has been competing for EU candidate status, which is conditional on reforms aimed at the establishment of a functional state. Unfortunately, the necessary reforms are challenged by resistance from the Bosnian Serbs. On the other hand, Kosovo has just started official talks on the liberalization of the visa system and has still not launched negotiations on the association agreement. Besides, Kosovo’s European perspective is debatable, as its independence has not yet been recognized by five EU member states (Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain). 20. On the other hand, according to the UNODC report Crime and Its Impact on the Balkans and Affected Countries, “Kosovo provides a good example of the way that

Turkey and Regional Security in the Western Balkans

233

strengthening the rule of law can retard the growth of crime. . . . It was the chaos accompanying the war and economic collapse that led to the growth of ethnic Albanian organized crime groups, and growing order appears to be undermining their competitiveness. . . . The more that social and political conditions normalize, the more that criminal groups will lose their grip on Kosovo.” UNODOC, Crime and Its Impact, 20. 21. International Crisis Group, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina—A Parallel Crisis. Europe Report n. 209, 28 September 2010, http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/ Files/europe/209%20Federation%20of%20Bosnia%20and%20Herzegovina%20---%20A %20Parallel%20Crisis.ashx (accessed May 2, 2011). 22. Vlado Azinović, “Challenges to International Security: The Case of BosniaHerzegovina,” Working Paper HUMSEC. http://www.humsec.eu/cms/fileadmin/user_ upload/humsec/Workin_Paper_Series/WP_Azinovic.pdf, 3 (accessed May 3, 2011). 23. Sandžak is a region divided between Serbia and Montenegro, which connects Bosnia and Kosovo. A large part its inhabitants are Bosniaks. 24. Juan Carlos Antunez Moreno, Foreign Influences in Islam in Bosnia and Hercegovina since 1995 (Sarejevo: ISEEF, 2010), 5, http://sim.ba/dokumenti/Foreign _Influences_in_Islam_in_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina_since_1995.pdf (accessed May 3, 2011). 25. The number of mujahideen who fought in Bosnia (1992–1995) is estimated to be between three and four thousand. Azinović, “Challenges to International Security,” 1. 26. On the other hand, Azinović argues, “the sole presence of Salafism / Wahhabism and the remaining mujahideen does not qualify Bosnia as a particular threat to international security. What does pose a significant threat is the fact that Bosnia is increasingly becoming a failed state.” Ibid., 2. 27. Under international pressure in early 2006, the Bosnian government formed a commission aimed at reviewing Bosnian citizenship gained by some 1,500 people, most of whom were fighters who came to Bosnia from Muslim countries during the war. The government has ordered the commencement of deportation of many of these foreigners. So far, some 600 citizenships have been revoked. Anes Alic, “Bosnia Rules to Revoke Citizenships,” International Relations and Security Network, July 14, 2006, http://www. isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?ots591=4888caa0-b3db-1461-98b 9-e20e7b9c13d4&lng=en&id=52180 (accessed May 3, 2011). 28. The main center of integrationist Islam in the Western Balkans is the King Fahd Mosque funded by Saudi Arabia. Its fundamentalist imam, Nezim Halilović, is a former mujahideen and is the head of directorate for pilgrimages to Mecca, an important institution in Muslim religious structures. 29. During the war in Bosnia, Vienna was a major logistic and financial center for the Bosnian government, and hosted several Islamic aid agencies that collected funds which were used for arming the Bosnian Army and transferring foreign fighters and weapons at a time when Bosnia was under an arms embargo. 30. A demonstration of the strength of the Wahhabis took place at the funeral of their leader in March 2007, when more than 3,000 Wahabis showed up. Wahhabis arrived at another demonstration in February 2008, when up to 5,000 people rallied in BosniaHerzegovina to express support for the famous Arab former fighter known as Abu Hamza, who was stripped of his Bosnian citizenship and risked being deported. Anes Alic, “Wahhabism: From Vienna to Bosnia,” International Relations and Security Network, April 6, 2007, http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/layout/set/print/content/view/full/73? id=53104&lng=en (accessed May 3, 2011). 31. Azinović, “Challenges to International Security,” 2. 32. The most important terrorist attack in Bosnia realized by Islamists took place in

234

Adam Balcer

June 2010, when a bomb exploded at a police station in Bugojno, some 70 kilometers southwest of the capital, Sarajevo, killing one police officer and injuring six others. 33. Today, the majority of the population of Albania, Bosnia and Kosovo are Muslim, as is a large portion of the citizens of Macedonia and Montenegro. Due to demographic trends (higher natural growth than Christians), the share of Muslims in the religious structure of the Western Balkans will substantially increase in the coming decades. 34. UNESCO, Global Education Digest 2011 (New York: United Nations Publications, 2011), 200. http://www.uis.unesco.org/Library/Documents/global_educa tion_digest_2011_en.pdf (accessed January 17, 2012). 35. Gallup Balkan Monitor, Insights and Perceptions: Voices of the Balkans, 2010, http://www.balkan-monitor.eu/index.php/dashboard (accessed May 4, 2011). 36. Ahmet Davutoğlu, Stratejik Derinlik (Istanbul: Küre Yayinlari, 2001). 37. For more information, see the Western Balkan states’ statistical offices. 38. Turkey’s share in volume of trade is substantially larger with the Bosniak cantons of the Federation than with the Serb Republic (Republika Srpska) and Croat cantons of the Federation. 39. Data from Central Bank of Bosnia and Hercegovina and Banka e Shqipersie (Bank of Albania), http://www.cbbh.ba/index.php?id=34&lang=en&table=stanje_direk tnih_stranih_ulaganja_po_zemljama (accessed March 1 2012), http://www.bankofalbania. org (accessed May 5, 2011). 40. Türkiye Müteahhitler Birliği, Türk Yurtdışı Müteahhitlik Hizmetleri, http://www. tmb.org.tr/genel.php?ID=10 (accessed December 5, 2011). 41. Türk İşbirliği ve Kalkınma İdaresi Başkanlığı, Raporlar (Ankara: Türk İşbirliği ve Kalkınma İdaresi Başkanlığı) http://www.tika.gov.tr/TR/Icerik.ASP?ID=273 (accessed May 3, 2011). 42. OECD Development Co-operation Directorate (DCD-DAC), Aid Statistics, Recipient Aid Charts, http://www.oecd.org/countrylist/0,3349,en_2649_34447_25602317 _1_1_1_1,00.html (accessed January 17, 2012). 43. According to the Gallup poll, Macedonians, among non-Muslim inhabitants of Western Balkans, have a particularly positive attitude towards Turkey. Around 80 percent of them perceive Turkey as a friendly country. Gallup Balkan Monitor, Insights and Perceptions (accessed May 4, 2011). 44. Ankara played the role of mediator, for the first time, successfully during the Bosniak Croat War (1993–1994), negotiating between Bosniaks and Croats. Turkey was able to gain the position of mediator because Turkish members of the UN peacekeeping force in Bosnia were deemed as impartial peacekeepers. Sule Kut, Balkanlar’da Kimlik ve Egemenlik (İstanbul: Bilgi Universitesi Yayinlari, 2005), 55–67. 45. The declaration condemned the crime against Bosniak (Muslim) residents of the town in the manner determined by the International Court of Justice. Besides condemning the crimes at Srebrenica, the resolution calls for all the countries of the former Yugoslavia to adopt similar resolutions condemning crimes committed against Serbs during the war and to continue the process of reconciliation and to strengthen conditions for living together, based on an equality of nationalities and on the full respect of human and minority rights and freedoms, to make sure that such crimes are never repeated. B92, Usvojena Deklaracija o Srebrenici, March 31, 2010, http://www.b92.net/info/ vesti/index.php?yyyy=2010&mm=03&dd=31&nav_id=421440 (accessed May 5, 2011). 46. Sule Kut, Balkanlar’da Kimlik ve Egemenlik, 55–67. 47. The Turkish police and officials in EULEX in Kosovo form 4 percent of the international contingent, while the percentage of Turkish police participating in EUPM in Bosnia is 6 percent. In the EUFOR/ALTHEA military mission, the Turks formed 15 per-

Turkey and Regional Security in the Western Balkans

235

cent of the contingent. In KFOR, the Turkish contingent constitutes around 5 percent of the force. 48. UNODC, World Drug Report 2010 (New York: United Nations Publication, Sales No. E.10.XI.13, 2010), 46, http://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2010/ World_Drug_Report_2010_lo-res.pdf (accessed May 6, 2011). 49. Ibid., 57. 50. Turkey, as the leader of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, is a member of the Steering Board of the Peace Implementation Council, an organization responsible for the implementation of Dayton Peace Accords in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Chapter Fourteen

Turkey and Greece: What Future for Rapprochement? James Ker-Lindsay One major outstanding security challenge facing Turkey in the years ahead is the question of the unresolved issues with Greece. The relationship between Athens and Ankara is widely regarded by many outside observers as being somehow primordial in nature. The general perception is that it is a conflict rooted in history and compounded by geography. Greeks and Turks are seen as eternal enemies destined to live as neighbors. Such a view is troubling on many levels. For a start, it offers a deterministic view of behavior. Such a view suggests that there is simply no point in trying to improve relations. All efforts will be bound to fail. This represents a troubling model for interstate affairs that has been comprehensively debunked by the emergence of the European Union (EU), which has managed to tackle many of the most entrenched and historically fraught conflicts elsewhere on the European continent. Secondly, such an account overlooks the fact that there have in fact been periods of cordial cooperation and contact between Athens and Ankara. This has been shown on numerous occasions over the past century. In the late 1920s, under the leadership of Kemal Atatürk and Eleftherios Venizelos, the two countries overcame the legacy of bitter conflict to embark on a process of normalizing their relations. This lasted until the mid1950s, when tensions over the island of Cyprus saw the deterioration in relations. More recently, a new process of rapprochement was initiated in 1999. This too helped to open up a new direction in relations. However, in this case, the process was seen to be closely linked to Turkey’s process of EU accession. This has raised questions about whether the process is truly sustainable. What happens if Turkey-EU relations remain stalled? Will this process of détente with Greece come to an end? This chapter will explore the development of Greek-Turkish relations and examine the process of rapprochement from 1999 until the present. It will show that while the progress has been limited on the key areas of bilateral difference, 237

238

James Ker-Lindsay

there are a range of areas—including a number of important “soft” security issues, such as trafficking, illegal immigration, organized crime and environmental questions—where the two countries need to cooperate for mutual benefit, not only to overcome their perceived threats from each other but also to tackle threats to them both. For this reason, the idea that the development of positive relations between Ankara and Athens must necessarily be tied to a resolution to the outstanding territorial disputes, or that it is somehow linked to Turkey’s EU accession path, is false. While it is important to solve these issues, and Turkey’s EU membership would certainly strengthen bilateral relations, there are good reasons why the two countries can, and should, continue to build on the progress that they have made so far in a range of other areas, some of which do directly contribute to their respective, and mutual, security.

A Short History of Greek-Turkish Relations Despite the fact that the Kingdom of Greece and the Ottoman Empire had been in conflict throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the formation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 marked the start of a new era in GreekTurkish relations. The Treaty of Lausanne had successfully resolved a number of important legal issues between the two countries. In the years that followed, the two countries appeared to be building a new relationship based on mutual trust. However, in 1955, after thirty years of relative harmony, the situation began to change as events on the island of Cyprus reawakened tensions. 1 In 1959, as the island hovered on the brink of civil war, Athens and Ankara reached a compromise and, in 1960, Republic of Cyprus became an independent state. However, hopes that bilateral relations between Greece and Turkey could now be repaired were short lived. Three years later fighting broke out between the two Cypriot communities, Turkish and Greek Cypriots. Despite the creation of a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping force in 1964, tensions continued for the next ten years until, in 1974, the Greek Junta ordered the overthrow of Archbishop Makarios, the President of Cyprus. In response, Turkey carried out a military operation in the island. By the time the operation was completed, over one-third of the island was under Turkish control. More importantly, Cyprus had now been confirmed as a central issue in Greek-Turkish relations. Meanwhile, in the early 1970s, the Aegean also emerged as a point of fundamental contention between the two countries. In large part the problems that arose were the result of differing interpretations over the rights and consequences of various treaties. For its part, Greece asserted that the question of the continental shelf, which sparked major crises in 1976 and 1987, is the only issue of contention.2 However, Ankara argued that the range of issues in the Aegean is in fact greater and includes questions over territorial waters, airspace and continental shelf. At present Greece claims six nautical miles of territorial waters and ten nautical miles of airspace. However, it reserves the right, as laid down under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea of 1982, to extend both to twelve nautical

Turkey and Greece: What Future for Rapprochement?

239

miles. In response, since Turkey is not a member of the convention it does not consider itself bound by it. Rather Turkey considers the convention as a treaty that only binds the signing parties. Thus, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi—TBMM) has passed a resolution declaring that the Turkish government may initiate hostilities in the event that any attempt is made by Greece to extend its territorial waters beyond the six miles currently in force.3 In order to press its claims, Turkish aircraft frequently mount incursions into claimed Greek airspace. Often these aircraft fly within the ten- mile limit, but nevertheless remain outside the six miles—the extent of territorial airspace recognized by Ankara. In addition, there are also disagreements over the militarization of a number of Greek islands that Turkey has argued should remain demilitarized.4 Then there is the contentious issue of the Grey Zones. These are areas in the Aegean where the Turkish government does not specifically lay territorial claim, but instead argues that Greek sovereignty is not automatic and is open to question. It was a dispute over one of these areas, the small islets of Imia (Kardak), that sparked a major crisis between Greece and Turkey in early 1996 that almost led to armed conflict.5 On top of this, there were also a number of lesser issues that nevertheless served to poison the overall atmosphere still further. For Greece, concerns center on the Greek minority in Turkey and the position of the Patriarch of Constantinople—widely regarded as the leader of the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians.6 Since the 1950s the number of Greeks living in Turkey has steadily dwindled and is now at an extremely low level, numbering no more than a couple of thousand. This has raised deep concerns about the future of the Patriarch, who, under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne, must be a Turkish citizen. At the same time, the failure of the Turkish government to reopen the seminary located on the island of Halki, which was closed in 1971, has also been a source of tension, as any Greeks wishing to train for the priesthood are forced to go abroad. The whole issue has also been exacerbated by occasional attacks on the Patriarchate by Turkish nationalists. Many in Greece believe that the Turkish government is not doing enough to provide protection. Indeed, some even argue that the moves are an attempt by the Turkish government to intimidate the Patriarch. While this has not been proven, the Turkish government nevertheless closely monitors the activity of the Patriarchate. 7 For Turkey, attention has been focused on the Muslim minority in Western Thrace. As with the case of Greeks in Turkey, the Muslim community in Greece has also faced persecution and human rights abuses over the years. 8 Similarly, there have been questions raised about religious freedom, as successive Greek governments sought to exercise control of religious appointments. However, these questions have tended to be rather secondary in recent years. On the one hand, this is due to Greece’s willingness to see the question of the Patriarch dealt with by the Greek community in the United States, which comes under the spiritual authority of the Patriarch, and therefore has put considerable pressure on the U.S. Congress and the successive administrations to act on this matter. As for Turkey, while concerns still exist about religious freedom, the conditions for the Muslim minority in Greece have steadily improved in recent years. This is in

240

James Ker-Lindsay

part due to increased public spending in the region and as a response to Greek membership of the EU, which has also provided infrastructure funds but has also put in place safeguards to protect minorities and ensure greater respect for human rights. For these reasons, these issues might best be regarded as irritants that serve to exacerbate the negative climate, rather than as direct causes for tension. In turn, over the years, the mistrust caused by these differences has led both countries to see the hidden hand of the other in a wide variety of problems that they face. The fact that there are a number of perceived differences, coupled with the fact that the level of mistrust is so great, has prompted external observers to view the problem as being embedded in historical antipathy and, therefore, without hope of resolution. Such a view is misguided. Contrary to widely held views, relations between Greeks and Turks have not always been bad. There were times within living memory when the two countries lived peacefully sideby-side and approached the bilateral relations in a positive atmosphere free of concern over territorial differences and minority rights. However, it has always been a sad feature of relations that these periods of peace have never lasted. This has led some to argue that there has in fact been a cyclical nature to GreekTurkish relations.9 In large part, these efforts failed because they were consciously trying to resolve the bilateral disputes without any agreement as to what exactly constituted the points of contention. Just as Greece would not recognize Turkish concerns in the Aegean, Turkey was unwilling to make any significant moves towards the reunification of Cyprus. Matters were also complicated by the fact that both countries were using what they perceived to be their natural strengths to secure their position. For the Turkish government this was an emphasis of military might. In the case of Greece this meant using its EU membership as a means by which to leverage concessions from Ankara. This was seen most clearly when, in December 1997, Turkey found its EU candidacy rejected at the Luxembourg European Council. As a result, the quarter of a century from 1974 to 1999 saw a gradual deterioration of relations and an increase in tensions as Greece felt continually threatened by its eastern neighbor and Turkey felt frustrated that its efforts to draw closer to Europe were being blocked.

The Process of Rapprochement The arrest of Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in February 1999, brought about yet another major crisis in bilateral relations. The discovery that Greece had harbored the man regarded by most Turks as being ultimately responsible for a fifteen-year civil war in their country was considered to be an unforgivable act of hostility. At the time, it was widely believed that it would take many years before the two countries could even begin to try to mend their relationship. Such views proved wildly off the mark. Instead, the first tentative steps towards reconciliation occurred a little over a month later with the start of the Kosovo conflict. Faced with a massive humanitarian crisis

Turkey and Greece: What Future for Rapprochement?

241

as tens of thousands of people fled the province, the two foreign ministers, İsmail Cem and George Papandreou, held a number of conversations to coordinate their responses to the situation.10 Following on from this, Cem sent a letter to his counterpart proposing talks on the issue of terrorism. Papandreou responded by suggesting that, in addition to terrorism, the two countries should start a dialogue on a number of other low-level issues, such as tourism, culture, trade and the environment.11 The first round of these talks was held in July 1999. Initial reports suggested they went well.12 However, in Greece there was widespread opposition to the talks in nationalist circles.13 But, just weeks later, the political landscape between the two countries changed dramatically. A massive earthquake that struck northwest Turkey, killing over 15,000 people, led to a massive and unprecedented outpouring of goodwill from Greece. In the weeks that followed the disaster, the people of Greece collected food, shelter and medical equipment to send to the devastated region. This in turn prompted many in Greece and Turkey to look at their neighbors in a new light.14 The developing feelings of mutual solidarity were further strengthened following the earthquake that struck Athens the following month, which brought rapid offers of help from across Turkey. This led to the development of so-called earthquake diplomacy between the two countries. At all levels and across all fields of activity, it suddenly became not just acceptable but in many cases fashionable to be seen as crossing the Aegean.15 In early September the governmental talks reconvened in a completely new political environment. This not only opened the way for significant progress to be made on the range of issues that had originally been tabled for discussion between the two governments, but also opened the possibility that Greece might change its long-standing opposition to Turkey’s EU candidacy. Such views were encouraged by the fact that, rather than viewing candidacy as a tool with which to exact concessions from Turkey, many in Greece saw candidacy as a mechanism for encouraging the development of a less threatening and confrontational neighbor. The trouble was that this could not be easily sold to the Greek public. To this extent, an effort was made to encourage Turkey to offer at least some sort of gesture prior to the European Council in Helsinki. In this endeavor, Greece was supported by its EU partners and by the United States.16 However, Ankara resisted pressure to do so. Faced with such a choice, the Greek government decided that the longer term interests of encouraging a peaceful and democratic Turkey outweighed the short-term requirement for a gesture. Instead, the Greek government successfully lobbied its EU partners to produce a form of wording in the final conclusions of the summit that could be sold at home as a Greek victory. On December 11, 1999, at the European Council in Helsinki, the EU formally announced that Turkey had been accepted as a candidate for membership. Significantly, the conclusions contained two vital elements for Greece. In the first instance, the statement contained a clear reference to the need to resolve territorial disputes by 2004 and that issues left outstanding by that point should be referred to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. 17 Although this did not explicitly mention Greece, Turkey or the Aegean it was nevertheless

242

James Ker-Lindsay

clear that this is what the text meant. At the same time, there was also a clear statement that a resolution of the Cyprus problem would not be a precondition for the island’s eventual membership of the EU. This naturally led to anger in Ankara. The statement about the ICJ was viewed as an unfair extra condition placed on Turkey over and above the other members, and the decision on Cyprus was seen to be a deliberate provocation. However, the EU was quickly able to defuse the tensions and persuade Prime Minister Ecevit that the conclusion represented a victory for Turkey.

The Evolution of Relations Since 1999 While the events of 1999 marked a profound shift in Greek-Turkish relations, the question that has been asked ever since is the degree to which the rapprochement that emerged in that year can be translated into a sustainable nonconfrontational relationship between the two countries. In terms of resolving the conflict between the two countries, progress has so far been limited. The hope was that in time the process might offer up an opportunity to resolve the various differences that exist between the two countries, most notably the Aegean disputes.18 However, this has not happened. While there have been high-level talks on the matter, they have, as yet, failed to produce any results. For example, a report appearing in the Greek media, in November 2010, that the two countries were on the verge of reaching an agreement over the twelve-mile limit on territorial waters was vigorously denied by Prime Minister Erdoğan.19 Certainly, there has been some improvement in the overall security situation in the region. Both Greece and Turkey soon announced decreases in defense spending, which contributed to the virtuous circle of détente that was developing.20 Similarly, an early development that also attracted considerable attention was the decision by the two countries to conduct joint exercises under NATO auspices. In early May 2000 a Turkish military aircraft landed in Greece as part of a joint NATO exercise. This was followed by the sight of Turkish marines coming ashore a Greek island—something that would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier. However, in other ways the pattern of confrontation has persisted. Greece still accuses Turkey of violating its airspace on a regular basis.21 In some cases, these incidents have resulted in collision and deaths, which have caused serious tensions.22 However, viewing rapprochement through the lens of the Aegean disputes, and the confrontations that arise because of them, is perhaps counter-productive. It takes attention away from the other, more positive results of the process. The process of détente was not only about trying to reduce tensions and finding ways of solving the long-standing issues of difference. It was also about confronting new challenges. While the two states had spent decades locked in disputes centered on traditional notions of sovereignty and the regional balance of power, the world had moved on around them. The end of the Cold War, as well as the wars that raged across the Balkans in the 1990s, had created a complex range of new

Turkey and Greece: What Future for Rapprochement?

243

threats across Southeast Europe. Terrorism, organized crime and illegal immigration represented the regional security challenges of the new era. Rather than pitting Athens and Ankara against each other, and therefore exacerbating the existing tensions, these new threats and problems represented a challenge to both countries. In this regard they served to emphasize the need for mutual cooperation. As Gündoğdu put it, “it became clear that one’s own security depended on the security of the other.”23 Similarly, there was an appreciation of the need for joint action to confront other important issues, such as environmental concerns. A number of further agreements have since been signed by the two countries. These have included a re-admission protocol intended to help combat organized crime, a protocol for the formation of a joint Hellenic-Turkish Disaster Response Unit, an agreement covering plant and veterinary protection, and a memorandum of cooperation between the diplomatic academies of the two countries. 24 Moreover, high-level contacts continued to take place between the two governments covering a range of areas. Importantly, these are no longer seen as being unusual or exceptional. Instead they have become normal, if not wholly mundane. Linked to this has been the establishment by Greece of a task force that aims to provide practical advice and assistance to Turkish officials as Turkey prepares to join the EU.25 In this regard, the process of rapprochement has been tremendously valuable in creating a new relationship of cooperation between the two countries on a range of specific areas that affect their respective and mutual security. And yet rapprochement was not just about building a new security relationship by confronting problems, of either the traditional or new varieties. It was also about generating opportunities for cooperation. Such activities have focused on a range of areas. For instance, there have been great improvements in terms of economic development, such as increasing trade and promoting joint tourist ventures in the Aegean. In this sphere there has most certainly been a profound change in relations. In the year following the start of the process, the number of tourists traveling across the Aegean doubled.26 At the same time, trade between the two countries expanded from $650 million prior rapprochement to €3.6 billion in 2008.27 Likewise, by 2009, Greek investment in Turkey had exceeded €5 billion.28 Such economic interdependence can also be a tremendously important means by which to lessen tensions and contribute to a more stable relationship. After all, this very notion, construed in terms of relations between France and Germany after three major wars in less than a century, lay at the heart of the European integration project. Similarly, détente has also seen an increase in contacts across a range of other areas. For example, sports played an important role. Quite apart from the apparent reduction in nationalist sentiment expressed at matches between teams from the two countries,29 it also provided opportunities for firm cooperation. In September 2000 Cem and Papandreou even announced a joint bid to host the 2008 European football championships.30 Although the bid was eventually unsuccessful, having been beaten by Austria and Switzerland, the fact that the bid was put forward was an important symbolic sign of the wish of the two governments to build upon the process established the year earlier. At the same time,

244

James Ker-Lindsay

cultural contacts between the two countries also flourished. Greek and Turkish musicians and artists regularly performed or exhibited their works in the other country. This was also seen in film and television. For instance, one of the most successful Greek films of recent years, released internationally under the title, “A Touch of Spice,” examined the expulsion of the Greek minority in Istanbul in 1964 from a far more sympathetic and non-confrontational angle than would have been the case in the past.31 Meanwhile, a Turkish soap opera, “Love without Borders,” about an affair between a Turkish man and a Greek woman, was the most watched television show in Greece a few years ago. At the same time, it was also noticeable that the news media in both countries started to adopt a more positive outlook towards bilateral relations. 32 In addition to their bilateral issues, the two countries have recognized a mutual interest in stabilizing the region.33 Energy has been another important area where ties have flourished. One of the most significant announcements was that the two countries had reached an agreement on the construction of a pipeline that would pump Iranian natural gas across Turkey into Greece and from there into Europe. Construction of the pipeline was inaugurated in July 2005.34 This was a highly symbolic step, which also proved to be geo-politically significant insofar as it was seen as a vital means by which to open up new energy supplies to Europe. It was therefore noteworthy that it was widely seen to be a product of the improving climate that had come about between Athens and Ankara.

Conclusion Throughout their history, Greece and Turkey have experienced periods of tension and hostility followed by all-too-brief periods of harmony and cooperation. In 1999, a new process of rapprochement began that many hoped would open the way for a fundamental reassessment of relations and concrete efforts to resolve the longstanding issues that blighted their relationship. However, for all the benefits that the process has undoubtedly brought to both countries, and while there have been no major crises that have brought the process of détente to a halt, the rapprochement has not produced the types of results that many had expected. Or more accurately, it had not produced the results in the time frame that many foresaw. While the benefits of increased cooperation have been felt across a wide range of areas—for example, there has been an improvement in the way that the two countries have treated each other’s minorities35—there has still been little indication that any moves are afoot to solve the main issue of bilateral contention. This has led to frustration. After a decade of efforts to resolve the key issues, little has been achieved. The question that naturally arises is, where does the relationship between Greece and Turkey go in the future? The answer, rather unsurprisingly, is that it is difficult to say. While the rapprochement was founded on the premise that Greece and Turkey share mutual concerns over a variety of matters beyond their bilateral relations, and that this should be the basis for a more cooperative rela-

Turkey and Greece: What Future for Rapprochement?

245

tionship, both governments have insisted that a full normalization of relations can only be achieved by resolving the outstanding disputes. To this extent the process must eventually deal with the Aegean and the other lesser bilateral issues that have blighted relations between the two countries. Yet the fact that the need to solve the issues is recognized does not mean that they can be solved overnight. Nor is it simply a case of finding the right political will, although this would certainly be helpful. It must also be remembered that Cyprus blights the relationship. As successive Greek governments have stressed, including the current administration under Prime Minister Papandreou, there cannot be a full normalization of relations until this matter is solved. 36 But whereas the Aegean is a strictly bilateral issue, and can therefore be solved by the two governments in a mutually acceptable manner, the Cyprus issue is primarily shaped by the political leaders of the two communities. Certainly Athens cannot impose a solution on the Greek Cypriots, and Ankara, contrary to the belief of many Greek and Greek Cypriots, cannot just impose a settlement on the Turkish Cypriots. Last, but certainly not least, there is the question of Turkey’s relationship with the EU. Conventional thinking is that if this process is interrupted, or even halted altogether, it could well lead to a resurgence of Greek-Turkish hostility. Certainly it is possible to see how such a development could lead to renewed tensions. However, it is sad to think that an improvement in Greek-Turkish relations can only be conceptualized in terms of Turkey’s integration with Europe. Although important, there should be much more to regional relations than this. Neither Athens nor Ankara should forget that the underlying rationale of the talks was to find areas of common interest. This is no less the case if Turkey remains outside the EU than if it joins. Likewise, neither should forget that no matter how bad relations may become in the future, there will always be areas of mutual concern that are best handled by cooperation rather than confrontation. If in the future it appears as if tensions are again emerging, both governments should pause to consider whether the re-emergence of conflict can really be seen to serve their best interests. Is it really worth returning to the hostility of the past when the process initiated over a decade ago has finally brought the two countries to the verge of a peaceful and sustainable coexistence? This is the question facing political leaders on both sides of the Aegean.

Notes 1. There is an extensive body of literature on the Cyprus issue. For a broad crosssection of views and competing analyses, see Oliver Richmond, Mediating in Cyprus (London: Frank Cass, 1998); Farid Mirbagheri, Cyprus and International Peacemaking (London: Hurst, 1987); Clement H. Dodd, The History and Politics of the Cyprus Conflict (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Joseph S. Joseph, Cyprus: Ethnic Conflict and International Politics: From Independence to the Threshold of the European Union (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999); Michael Emerson and Nathalie Tocci, Cyprus as the Lighthouse of the East Mediterranean: Shaping EU Accession and Reunification Together

246

James Ker-Lindsay

(Brussels: CEPS, 2002); David Hannay, Cyprus: The Search for a Solution (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005). 2. Melina Skouroliakou, “The Theory That Never Turned into Practice: Case Study from Eastern Mediterranean” (paper presented at the ISA-South Conference, Miami, November 3–5, 2005). 3. Süha Bölükbaşı, “The Turco-Greek Dispute,” in Turkish Foreign Policy: New Prospects, ed. Clement H. Dodd (Huntingdon: The Eothen Press, 1992), 38. 4. Phaedon John Kozyris, “The Legal Dimensions of the Current Greek-Turkish Conflict: A Greek View,” in Greek-Turkish Relations in the Era of Globalization, ed. Dimitris Keridis and Dimitrios Triantaphyllou (Dulles, Virginia: Brassey’s, 2001), 106. 5. “Holbrooke: Greece, Turkey were on Verge of Battle,” CNN, January 31, 1996. 6. Vincent Boland, “Faith, Hope and Parity,” Financial Times, August 25, 2005. 7. U.S. Department of State, Turkey Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1998, Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, February 26, 1998. 8. For an overview of the situation just prior to rapprochement, see Christopher Panico, “Greece: The Turks of Western Thrace,” Human Rights Watch 11, no. 1 (January 1999): 1–39. 9. This point was made to by Richard Clogg during a conference on Greek-Turkish relations held at St Antony’s College, Oxford University, in May 2004. South East European Studies Programme (SEESP), SEESP Newsletter, no. 2 (2004): 6. A notable example of this was a process of rapprochement (the Davos process) launched by Turgut Özal and Andreas Papandreou in 1988. Although widely hailed at the time, it eventually came to nothing. 10. Letter from İsmail Cem to George Papandreou, May 24, 1999, reproduced in James Ker-Lindsay, Crisis and Conciliation: A Year of Rapprochement between Greece and Turkey (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007). 11. Letter from George Papandreou to İsmail Cem, June 25, 1999, reproduced in James Ker-Lindsay, Crisis and Conciliation: A Year of Rapprochement between Greece and Turkey (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007). 12. “Greece/Turkey: ‘Positive’ Talks To Continue Today,” RFE/RL, July 29, 1999. 13. See, for example, Tipos tis Kyriakis, August 1, 1999. 14. Popular attitudes towards Turks had improved in Greece. They received an average sympathy score of 4.4 on a scale of one to ten. This put them ahead of SlavMacedonians (4.3) and Albanians (2.8)—the other two neighboring peoples that were traditionally demonized in popular Greek thinking. Poll published in Ta Nea, October 5, 1999. The poll was carried out between September 17 and 29, 1999, and had used 1,170 interviews. Meanwhile, another poll carried out in Athens for Mega Channel showed that 37 percent of respondents had a better view of Turkey and that only 3 percent had a worse view. Moreover, 40 percent believed that both countries had the responsibility to work together to improve relations. This was in contrast to the 49 percent who believed that Turkey should make the first move, and the 4 percent who believed that Athens should take the initiative. Cited in Panayotis Dimitras, “‘People’s Diplomacy’ Spearhead of Greek-Turkish Rapprochement,” AIM Athens, October 13, 1999. 15. For an overview of civic initiatives before and after 1999, see Bahar Rumelili, “The Talkers and the Silent Ones: The EU and Change in Greek Turkish Relations,” EU Border Conflicts Studies, Working Paper no. 10 (October 2004). 16. For example, during his visit to Istanbul for the OSCE summit, in November 1999, President Clinton urged Prime Minister Ecevit to make a gesture, such as opening the religious school in Halki. Milliyet, November 17, 1999.

Turkey and Greece: What Future for Rapprochement?

247

17. European Council, Helsinki European Council Presidency Conclusions, December 10–11, 1999. 18. F. Stephen Larrabee, “Turkish Foreign and Security Policy: New Dimensions and New Challenges,” in The Future of Turkish-Western Relations: Toward a Strategic Plan, ed. Zalmay Khalilzad, Ian O. Lesser, and F. Stephen Larrabee (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2000), 24. 19. “PM Erdoğan Denies News Reports in Greek Media that Agreement Reached in 12 Miles,” Today’s Zaman, November 22, 2010. 20. F. Stephen Larrabee and Ian O. Lesser, Turkish Foreign Policy in an Age of Uncertainty (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2003), 85. 21. See, for example, “Greece Protests Turkish Airspace Violations,” Reuters, January 7, 2009; “Turkish Jets Violate Greek Airspace Once Again,” Sofia Echo, June 10, 2010; and “Venizelos Firm on Aegean Row,” Kathimerini, November 9, 2010. 22. “Mid-air Fighter Plane Collision Risks New Greek-Turkish Crisis,” The Guardian, May 24, 2006. 23. Ayten Gündoğdu, “Identities in Question: Greek-Turkish Relations in a Period of Transformation?” Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) 5, no. 1 (March 2001): 106–17. 24. “Bilateral Relations (The Rapprochement Process),” Embassy of Greece, Washington, D.C., http://www.greekembassy.org/embassy/content/en/Article.aspx?office=1& folder=43&article=76 (accessed March 30, 2012). 25. Bilateral Relations (The Rapprochement Process), Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 26. The number of visitors to Turkey from Greece in 1996 was 147,553. In 2000 the total was 218,092. But by 2003 the number of visitors had risen to 368,425. Joanna Apap, Sergio Carrera and Kemal Kirişçi, “Turkey in the European Area of Freedom, Security and Justice,” Centre for European Policy Studies, EU-Turkey Working Paper, no. 3 (August 2004): 33. 27. “Despite Turkish-Greek Thaw, Cyprus Quarrel Is Not Melting,” New York Times, December 18, 2000. 28. “Greek, Turkish Businesspeople Urge Investment,” Anatolia News Agency, April 30, 2010. 29. Ali Çarkoğlu and Kemal Kirişçi, “The View from Turkey: Perceptions of Greeks and Greek-Turkish Rapprochement by the Turkish Public,” Turkish Studies 5, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 117. 30. “Greece and Turkey in Euro 2008 Bid,” BBC News, September 17, 2000. 31. In fact, the film was criticized by many Greek Cypriots, as it appeared to lay part of the blame for the expulsion of Greeks from Istanbul on Archbishop Makarios. 32. Çarkoğlu and Kirişçi, “The View from Turkey,” 117. 33. For a review of this subject, see Othon Anastasakis, “Greece and Turkey in the Balkans: Cooperation or Rivalry?” Turkish Studies 5, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 45–60. 34. “Karamanlis, Erdoğan Inaugurate Work for Vital Natural Gas Pipeline Project,” Athens News Agency, July 4, 2005. 35. Çarkoğlu and Kirişçi, “The View from Turkey,” 118. 36. “Papandreou Says Greek-Turkish Ties Hinge on Cyprus,” South East European Times, November 24, 2010.

Chapter Fifteen

Turkey’s Approach to Environmental Security: A Case for Soft Security Rana İzci Turkey became a party to the Kyoto Protocol on August 26, 2009, and completed the project on the development of a National Climate Change Action Plan in 2011. Environmentalists supported the developments but stated that they were merely delayed attempts and that Turkey should immediately improve both adaptation and mitigation policies. Nevertheless, many criticisms were also raised and various reservations were voiced against possible future commitments and their repercussions for Turkey within the global climate change regime on the grounds of Turkey’s special circumstances. In December 2009, Turkey and the European Union (EU) opened the environment chapter of negotiations. Approximation of the EU’s environmental legislation brings many challenges to its candidate countries. It is also the case for Turkey. Both financial and administrative burdens of compliance with the EU environmental legislation engendered significant concerns and objections in Turkey, even before the opening of the accession negotiations. Nonetheless, both being party to the Kyoto Protocol and the opening of the environment chapter of its accession negotiations have clearly underlined the urgent need for costly investments in all economic sectors and changes in consumption and production patterns as well as changes in policy-making considerations in Turkey. To put it briefly, these two events mark a turning point not only for environmental policy but also for all social and economic policies in Turkey. Now, environmental issues are at the heart of Turkish politics, recalling once again the inevitability of incorporating environmental considerations into all policy areas. Integration of environmental concerns into all areas of policy-making is a precondition to cope with all types of environmental challenges. Contemporary environmental challenges clearly underline the fact that there are interconnected relations between socio-economic systems and ecological systems. The environmental integration principle, therefore, offers a holistic approach to solve 249

250

Rana İzci

problems and to prevent new ones. Broadly speaking, achieving security today depends on achieving sustainability. Nonetheless, sustainability does not refer to a static relation or a situation, “therefore, is not a specific feature of the environment or of society, but refers to the viability of their relationship over long periods of time.”1 Although environmental challenges are also considered as soft security concerns, it is either economic or energy security that first comes to mind in Turkey when one mentions soft security. The environment, on the other hand, is rather seen as a background factor or a resource behind national power. It usually takes the center stage whenever a destructive event occurs, such as an earthquake, an epidemic disease and/or contamination of the soil by hazardous waste. This shows that there is actually a hierarchy among soft security concerns in Turkey. Turkey is a party to many multilateral environmental agreements, which can be seen as an opportunity to enhance peace and stability in its region and to strengthen its position in global environmental governance. However, commitments arising from environmental agreements are, sometimes, regarded as a serious burden for the competitiveness and development of the country. Unsurprisingly, less attention is given to the nature and future prospects of environmental security while the cost of mitigation policies and the financial (and administrative) burden of EU environmental legislation are intensely discussed in Turkey. What is usually ignored in Turkish politics is serious environmental degradation, which clearly requires a shift in the prevailing discourse of environmental security. It is obvious that environmental concerns need an equal footing with other components of security to guarantee the future of the country and achieve its full potential as a soft power in world politics. However, current economic policies, practices and their implications demonstrate that environmental security is predominantly seen as a technical issue. Furthermore, it is predominantly regarded as a sector serving economic security through achieving energy and food security and protecting public health in Turkey. It appears that economic security considerations and development policies often overshadow environmental concerns in Turkey. This chapter thus argues that both the international climate regime and the EU candidacy challenge development policies and the perception of environmental security in Turkey. In line with this argument, this chapter first looks at the evolution of the concept of environmental security, which includes a brief examination of the link between climate change and environmental security issues because climate change is regarded as one of the biggest threats to humanity. Second, this chapter presents a survey of Turkey’s approach to environmental security with special emphasis on global climate change. A brief discussion on the sustainability concerns of Turkey is also presented, with a view to outline the ongoing environment versus economic development dilemma that frames environmental security understanding in Turkey. While numerous studies in Turkey investigated transboundary issues, this study is only an attempt to understand the main dynamics that affect the current environmental security understanding in Turkey.2 To this end, the analysis includes official documents on climate change and development policies in Turkey as well as a basic literature review on environmental security.

Turkey’s Approach to Environmental Security

251

Environmental Change and Security Geologists have been constantly finding new scientific evidence all around the world reminding us of a widely acknowledged but somehow disregarded fact that environmental change has been part of human history since the very beginning.3 The fall of certain civilizations in the ancient world, the emergence of new epochs in human history or sometimes the results of wars reveal that environmental conditions are indispensable parts of the sustainability of humanity. Nevertheless, not only the state of the environment has affected human life and changed the course of history but also human activities have shaped the environment so far. As Oosthoek argues, “Human history is not only the story of the impact of its actions on the physical environment. It is also the story of human reaction to the changing natural world. It is the story of climatic change, slow geological processes and biological changes. The history of the relation between humans and their natural surroundings is a tale of interaction.”4 Growing human impact on the environment, however, disturbs this interaction and leads to large-scale and complicated challenges. Human-induced climate change (anthropogenic climate change), for instance, illustrates how the speed and impact of a natural phenomenon—occurring as a result of solar radiation or the earth’s orbital cycle—have changed in time by the increasing greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere produced by human activities. Scientific studies have clearly acknowledged that heavy and widespread use of fossil fuels in all economic activities and in daily life, along with changes in the use of land (due to mainly deforestation and agricultural activities), have changed the chain of causality on climate change.5 Briefly, human influence on the climate is increasing and causing irreversible damages to ecosystems, which in turn leads to slow-onset disasters and environmental degradation (such as desertification) or rapid and severe atmospheric events (heat waves, tropical storms, flash-floods, heavy rainfalls and sudden droughts). In general, human activities have been acknowledged as the prime factor behind the challenges that the world has to face, such as the loss of biological diversity, increased epidemic diseases, and food insecurity. Insecurity arguments arising from all these challenges plainly conjure up the concept of environmental security.6 Ever since the environment has appeared as one of the major issues of world politics, environmental scarcity-driven catastrophe scenarios have dominated the environmental security agenda. The famous Limits to Growth report by the Club of Rome in 1972 can be considered as the best alarmist scenario over finite resources and growing world population. Such scenarios and policy responses have their origins in the neo-Malthusian thinking on natural resources, human population, and geography, which simply puts scarcity at the center of politics.7 Another source is the human-centric approach to the environment, which asserts that there is a dividing line between human and non-humans, and the hierarchy of humans over everything—the so-called “anthropocentric approach.”8 This approach foresees a never-ending conflict in human-environment interaction, leading to environmental degradation.9

252

Rana İzci

Research on the broadening of the concept of security and attempts to redefine security have had profound effects on the evolution of environmental security as a concept in the post-Cold War era.10 When the primacy of military security was questioned, security as a concept was widened to encompass different categories of soft security issues, such as economic security, political security, societal security and environmental security. 11 Corruption, environmental problems and drug trafficking, for instance, were regarded as new security threats. From a historical perspective, the evolution of the concept of environmental security includes three generations. The first generation refers to debates on whether and how environmental concerns were to be integrated into the concept of security.12 For the proponents of environmental security, integration of environmental issues into the security agenda was considered as the best way to raise environmental consciousness of the high-rank officials and the politicians and to convince them to take immediate action. In this sense, environmental security was an attempt to show the interconnectedness between societal, economic and ecological components of security, drawing attention to environmental degradation and its devastating impacts on human life. The second generation in environmental security studies in 1990s focused on the issue of conflict.13 Environmental degradation was considered as the major cause of conflict in the developing world. Yet, critics about environmental security raised their concerns about the conflict-driven nature and anthropocentric viewpoints of the concept. That is, environmental security was considered as a way of imposing hard security concerns on the environment, though it was initially considered one of the appropriate tools to manage soft security threats. Moreover, this generation of studies was criticized because of their focus on the issue of conflict over scarce resources and on the cleavages between the North versus the South.14 Another strong criticism came from the environmentalists who argued that the concept of environmental security complicated environmental problems rather than overcoming them because it merely offered temporary solutions to the deep-rooted social, economic and political challenges.15 The third generation of studies concentrated mostly on the concept of development rather than conflict. Accordingly, the link between development and security is regarded as the main component of the third-generation studies.16 In this regard, for the maintenance of environmental security, greening of international organizations such as the World Bank and NATO becomes inevitable. 17 For instance, the World Bank offers special funds for environmental projects and sets certain environmental criteria for development projects. 18 On the other hand, NATO presents specific programs to facilitate stability through environmental cooperation.19 Nevertheless, strong criticisms are also raised against these attempts on the ground that these attempts could only provide ad hoc solutions to deep-rooted problems. They argue that these efforts are nothing more than reforming the system that caused the global environmental change.20 Thus a real solution lies in changing the whole system and its dynamics. Moreover, for some international relations scholars, the concept of the ecological also challenges the primacy of the state in the international system.21

Turkey’s Approach to Environmental Security

253

All these discussions take us back to the main question: How do we perceive the environment? Deriving from the basic assumption that human beings are part of the natural environment, the concept of ecological security depicts a collective well-being for all.22 In essence, ecological security argues that scarcity-led conflict themes only deepen the divides between the rich and the poor, human and non-human and create further inequalities.23 Although often interchangeably used, concepts of ecology and the environment denote different meanings.24 While the environment can be associated with more anthropocentric views, ecology refers to the interconnectedness and integrity in humanenvironment interaction and rejects the human dominance. The place (and the role) of human beings in defining the environment also draws the boundaries of the link between the environment and security. To some extent, this approach rejects the anthropocentricism that is well established in the international system. These trends in environmental security studies emerged in response to different environmental challenges. Moreover, scientific discoveries about environmental degradation, changing socio-economic dynamics and technological innovations continue to shape the perception of environmental security. These perceptions are distinct and competing, but not mutually exclusive. Therefore, it is possible to see that some experts are content with traditional approaches, while some others are in the search for alternative routes to reframe the environment-security link. Recent developments in the literature emphasize the sustainability, peace and cooperation themes in the contemporary environmental security agenda.25 Vulnerability, intergenerational equity, political reforms, governance, and participation become key components in this new research area, with a critical stance on human-environment relations and on the dynamics of the international system, as in the case of ecological security.26 At the very heart of these attempts to redefine environmental security is the recognition that global environmental problems have spatial dimensions (geographical location, for instance). This, however, should not be conflated with old geopolitical themes on natural resources and national power. It is rather associated with equity and sustainability concerns.27 When speaking of sustainability, the main reference is the humannature relationship. The equity, on the other hand, addresses issues related to distributional challenges and human rights considerations in general.28 For instance, climate change, as an environmental security challenge, has differential impacts in different parts of the world. Spatial politics or geopolitics of climate change mainly focuses on two types of actors: actors responsible for accumulating greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere and actors which cannot compete with the impacts of climate change.29 The actors responsible for the accumulation of greenhouse emissions are defined according to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol. On the other hand, the ability of a state to cope with the impact of climate as an environmental security challenge depends on two factors, namely sensitivity and vulnerability. States such as small island states or low-lying countries are more sensitive to certain environmental challenges due to their

254

Rana İzci

geographical location. Technology offers limited solutions for those states to decrease their exposure to the impact of natural hazards (such as through establishing protective dikes against sea level rise). Nonetheless, sensitivity partially defines environmental (in)security and potential losers of climate change (such as small island states). On the other hand, vulnerability is a dynamic process which mainly depends on a combination of three factors; exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. While chances for changing sensitivity of a given geographical place are limited, there are many possibilities to reduce its vulnerability. For instance, protection of ecosystems, improvement of disaster risk management policies, enhancing civil society, and poverty reduction are the measures that can increase the adaptive capacity of a state and reduce its vulnerability to climate change. Particularly social, economic and ecological resilience (the ability to recover after a shock or stress) of a given geographical space can decrease the degree of vulnerability and thus enhance security.30 It should be noted, however, that resilience can only be enhanced through promoting sustainability. Nevertheless, spatial factors are usually integrated into the environmentsecurity link in a negative way. Particularly, concerns over the environmental refugee problem and increasing demand for resources give alarming signals to the way in which the link between climate change and security is constructed. The term “environmental refugee” has a longer history than the term “climate refugee” and refers to people who are forced to leave their homeland due to sudden or slow-onset disasters, industrial accidents, scarcity conflicts or similar reasons.31 These people leave their original places “temporarily or permanently.”32 Climate refugees may lead to two important sources of insecurity. These are destabilization of national borders between neighboring countries and the tension caused by migration flows to overpopulated places of destination.33 Thus, displacement of people can be associated either with a clash of interests on resources or a direct violation of state sovereignty. If any impact of climate change, however, is conceived as a factor that might lead up to a clash of interests, then the situation might end up with a conflict—be it a regional or an international one. Possible internal and international tensions that might arise due to water scarcity and renewed geopolitical interests in, for instance, Arctic and Antarctic resources, also indicate a growing interest in natural resources. In any case, it appears that climate change is likely to worsen the environmental problems such as water scarcity and intensify “environmentally induced migration” aggravating the internal and international conflicts on distribution around the world.34 Nevertheless, specialists on the issue repeatedly underline that there are not many comprehensive case studies or models that demonstrate a clear relationship between climate change and violent conflict.35 In brief, they argue that climate change cannot define political actions by itself.36 Instead, there is a growing tendency to accept the climate change only as a “conditioning factor.”37 It appears that the impacts of climate change revive debates on environmental security. The relationship between climate change and security has been

Turkey’s Approach to Environmental Security

255

established since the first major climate conference in Toronto in 1988. However, the year 2007 became a turning point for this relationship when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). The report affirmed that climate change was not only a natural phenomenon.38 Human activities were the main causes of global warming since the industrial revolution.39 This conclusion strongly asserts that humans can and must take all the necessary actions to halt the global warming to a certain degree so that adaptation to the impacts of climate change can be possible. The same year, the UN Security Council held a debate on the impact of climate change on peace and security.40 The nature of climate change and the perception of climate change as a threat to human survival obviously lead to debates on the link between climate change and conflict. The main question in climate change and climate security research is, thus, whether climate change can cause violent conflict and threaten international security and stability.41 Concerned with this, the German Advisory Council on Global Change presented six categories of threats to international security and stability that global climate change could engender. These are: “possible increase in the number of weak and fragile states as a result of climate change, risk for global economic development, risk of growing international distributional conflicts between main drivers of climate change and those most affected, the risk to human rights and industrialized countries’ legitimacy as global actors, triggering and intensification of migration, overstretching of traditional security policy.”42 Any environmental problem can be a destabilizing factor either internally or regionally, particularly during and subsequent to large-scale devastating natural disasters (such as Hurricane Katrina in the United States, water and food shortages in some African countries, the earthquake in Indonesia, floods in Latin America). However, as the state of the environment clearly demonstrates, particularly for climate change: “The enemy is us not ‘they’ (the rival social class, religious or ethnic group, nation or alliance), it is ‘us’, ‘our consumptive behavior’ and ‘our use of fossil fuels’ (coal, oil, gas) . . . .”43 Put differently, it is usually the human activities that pave the way for the damaging effects of such disasters. Large-scale human suffering and environmental degradation could have been prevented in many disasters if only equity and sustainability concerns were integrated into policy-making processes. For this reason, not only is it very difficult (and complicated) to take action, but also traditional hard power and hard security understanding is of no use. Traditional security understanding is likely to jeopardize regional stability, and, thus, impair opportunities of international cooperation, which is a must to effectively deal with global climate change.44 Global environmental change is evidently engendered by activities of different actors, which in turn threatens human survival. For this reason, the interaction between human activities and the environment challenges the security agenda of states as well as global community. Now, climate change alters the international agenda, underlining the importance of almost all non-military threats such as poverty, environmental disasters, water shortages, rapid and sudden spread of epidemic diseases, and migration flows.

256

Rana İzci

Turkey and Environmental Security Environmental pressures, particularly from agriculture, energy, industry, tourism and transportation, are increasing in Turkey. This causes various challenges to the country ranging from air pollution to biodiversity loss.45 Such challenges, when combined with areas prone to natural disasters (such as landslides, droughts and increased desertification), decrease the ecological resilience all over the country. National environmental policies in Turkey have been developing since the 1970s. Development plans clearly reflect the evolution of environmental policy in the country. So far nine development plans were produced by the State Planning Organization, all of which had different impacts on the development and implementation of environmental policy in Turkey. It is, therefore, necessary to examine these plans in order to understand the dynamics of environmental policy and politics in Turkey. These plans also indicate national responses to international developments. For instance, the 1972 United Nations Conference on Human Environment had profound effects on environmental policy in Turkey. This impact could also be traced in the Third Five Year Development Plan (1973-1977). It was the first development plan which included a specific part on environmental concerns.46 Nevertheless, this plan also declared that environmental policy considerations should not impair development of the country.47 With the Sixth Five Year Development Plan (1990-1994) sustainable development understanding was integrated into fundamental objectives and policies of a development plan for the first time.48 Subsequently, the Seventh Five Year Development Plan (1996-2000) asked for the preparation of a National Environmental Action Plan (NEAP) to achieve a comprehensive strategy to put environmental concerns at the heart of socio-economic decision-making. However, the dilemma over the environment, that is, development and economic growth versus environmental protection, did not seem to be resolved in spite of several institutional and policy developments. The NEAP clearly stated that there was not much internalization of environmental concerns into economic and social decisions despite positive legal and institutional developments.49 This problem has not been resolved yet. For instance, in the Ninth Five Year Development Plan (2007-2013) of Turkey there is no clear-cut reference to the sustainable development, although sustainable growth is several times mentioned. There are only a few statements which are related to sustainable development, such as sustainable forest management and sustainable use of resources.50 Turkey is one of the fast growing economies and the “seventeenth largest economy” in the world.51 This economic growth, however, brings various challenges for the environment, particularly in terms of energy investments and nature protection. As Turkey’s energy supply heavily depends on imported fossil fuels, Turkey is likely to face big challenges with regard to its energy needs. For instance, Turkey’s greenhouse gas emissions per capita are well below the OECD countries and the EU average. However, Turkey had the highest green-

Turkey’s Approach to Environmental Security

257

house gas emissions increase between the years 1990 and 2007.52 What’s more, energy-related carbon emissions have been growing since 1990 at a rate faster than the economic growth in the country.53 On the other hand, the share of renewable energy sources in energy production in Turkey has increased between 1990 and 2004.54 Hydropower is the most important kind of renewable energy supply, which is followed by wind energy as a growing energy resource. However, these supplies are challenged by certain factors, such as where to locate the renewable energy power plants, or private sector participation in the construction and operations of new power plants. Furthermore, water shortages and changes in the wind force due to climate change might affect the effectiveness of renewable energy investments. All these challenges and concerns point out the significance of sustainability for development planning once again. Nevertheless, it is still not possible to talk about substantial consideration of sustainability and development concerns in the environmental security agenda in Turkey, which has focused on transboundary environmental issues so far.55 This eminent attitude towards environmental security arises mainly from neorealist and to some extent liberalist approaches to the environment in Turkey in which the environment is regarded as a total sum of natural resources and ecosystem services, and national power and interest are defined accordingly.56 Competition, conflict and cooperation over resources therefore take the central part in environmental security studies in Turkey. Critical approaches, however, seem to have less influence on environmental security studies.57 For instance, there is not much research on the ecological security understanding in Turkey. Although it might be regarded as a positive development by those who are against the securitization of environment, the weak link between development and security might impede attempts to achieve a sustainable future for Turkey. Nonetheless, climate change policies (both mitigation and adaptation) can provide a strong and productive basis for integrating sustainability concerns into the development and environmental security link. For instance, investments in the renewable energy sector and sustainable consumption and production policies, and urban planning have become urgent requirements for Turkey for at least two interrelated reasons: The first reason is to enhance the adaptive capacity of Turkey, increasing social economic and ecological resilience and thus reducing vulnerability to the adverse impacts of climate change. And the second one is very much related with Turkey-EU relations. As the scope of the EU environmental policy has grown, Turkey-EU relations have started to challenge more and more both development paths and environmental policy considerations in Turkey. Moreover, EU conditionality directly challenges Turkey’s environmental commitments at the international level.

Turkey, Climate Change and the EU

258

Rana İzci

As IPCC states in the AR4, Turkey is located in one of the areas that will be affected by climate change to a great extent.58 Its geographical location increases its sensitivity to climate change.59 On the other hand, forest fires, water shortages and erosion also make Turkey vulnerable to the adverse affects of climate change.60 Moreover, according to the 2010 Environmental Performance Index, Turkey has a low performance for maintaining ecosystem vitality, which in turn would challenge its adaptive capacity.61 Nevertheless, it is just recently that climate change appeared as a great concern at the state level in Turkey. This slow process can be explained by the deeprooted hierarchy among non-military threats in the country. Due to the lack of policy integration, the dilemma of environmental protection versus economic development and growth has visibly prevailed in the climate change policies in Turkey so far. It appears that in Turkey, economic concerns usually take precedence over the environment, as in many other countries in the world. When this dilemma on economic development versus environment is coupled with projected high costs of mitigation policies,62 Turkey remains reluctant to participate in international environmental regimes. Nonetheless, Turkey’s attitude towards global environmental issues oscillates “from hesitant observer to active supporter,” depending upon how the issue is perceived within the national interests with regard to development priorities.63 Indeed, Turkey’s participation in the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer in 1991 shows how national interests can be revised over time.64 Initially, the cost of compliance with the agreement was high for Turkey. However, the country changed its position when incentives were integrated into the ozone regime.65 Trade provisions of the Protocol also played an important role to convince Turkey to become a party to the ozone regime.66 No trade measure has been introduced in the existing climate regime as yet. However, the post-Kyoto climate regime will likely have trade sanctions in case of nonparticipation. The turning point for Turkey’s climate policy was the recognition of its unique position within the UNFCCC at the seventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP7) in 2001.67 After a long struggle, Turkey was deleted from Annex II of UNFCCC and became a party to the UNFCCC on May 24, 2004. It was vital for Turkey to be considered as a developing country and to have its name removed from both annexes. Basically, Annex I describes certain commitments for developed countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while, Annex II asks its parties to help developing countries.68 Although commitments were not binding under the Convention, their prospective implications forced Turkey to take a reluctant stance to join the Convention. Turkey argued that its historical responsibility in its accumulation of greenhouse gas emission was very low and it did not have the capacity to take mitigation targets.69 Although Turkey pursued a steady diplomacy since the very beginning, it failed to convince other states about its position in the UNFCCC during the Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee (ING) meetings. In the end, Turkey’s objections to be deleted from both Annexes of the UNFCCC were not accepted because it was an OECD member and Turkey was

Turkey’s Approach to Environmental Security

259

first placed together with developed countries in both Annexes of the UNFCCC. Once the UNFCCC regime was established, Turkey started to face further difficulties. Together with many other developed parties, the EU also rejected the Turkish proposal to be deleted from these Annexes due to Turkey’s EU candidacy.70 Nevertheless, Turkey participated in all meetings and submitted reports. Even before becoming a party to the UNFCCC, Turkey submitted a position paper entitled “Turkey and Greenhouse Gas Emissions” at the COP3, and its “Climate Change National Report” at COP4 in 1998 in Buenos Aires, which showed its good will and aspiration to take part and fulfill its commitments within the UNFCCC.71 In 1999, a Specialized Commission on Climate Change was established by the State Planning Organization (SPO) and it published a report on climate change in 2000 in preparation for the Eighth Development Plan (2001-2005) of Turkey.72 At the COP6, in 2000, Turkey changed its position and asked to be deleted only from Annex II. In the end the Turkish delegation had discovered a way to unlock the situation and get its position to be accepted. Its special circumstances and requests were accepted at the COP7 in 2001; Turkey became the 189th party to the UNFCCC on May 24, 2004, and attended the COP10 as a party. The special circumstances of Turkey acknowledge that Turkey has not completed its development yet, and, thus, its responsibilities arising from the climate regime should be described accordingly. The Eighth National Development Plan laid ground for Turkey’s accession to the UNFCCC despite the delays in its ratification. In the end of this lengthy process, Turkey started reformulating its perceptions on climate change. The Inter-ministerial Coordination Board on Climate Change (CBCC) was established in 2001 and its structure was revised in 2004. Furthermore, becoming a member of the European Environment Agency (EEA), in 2003, and, the establishment of an office by the Regional Environmental Centre for Central and Eastern Europe (REC), in 2004, ushered in new practices for Turkey.73 While the former provided progress on environmental management systems, the latter brought a new dynamic among the environmental stakeholders and made the scientific information more understandable for the lay people.74 Once Turkey’s special circumstances were formally acknowledged, Turkey was also able to receive Global Environmental Facility (GEF) funding for the preparation of the first national communication.75 The First National Inventory of Greenhouse Gas Emissions submitted to the UNFCCC Secretariat was also prepared with the assistance of UNFCCC experts, EEA and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 2006. the Turkish Grand National Assembly established a Research Commission on causes and effects of climate change in 2007. The First National Communication of Turkey on Climate Change was prepared in January 2007. Four major events endorsed further actions on climate change. On February 5, 2009, the Turkish Grand National Assembly approved a law to join the Kyoto Protocol. The National Climate Change Strategy Document was prepared in 2009 and came into effect in 2010. The Thirtieth Session of the IPCC was held on April 21–23, 2009, in Antalya. Subsequently, the project entitled “Developing Turkey’s National Climate Change” Action Plan start-

260

Rana İzci

ed in July 2009. Soon after, Turkey became a party to the Kyoto Protocol on August 26, 2009. This would indicate a beginning of a more challenging period for Turkey. Three recent projects draw attention to the priorities of Turkey with regard to climate change. These projects are: (i) enhancing the adaptation capacity to climate change, (ii) capacity building for climate change management and (iii) developing a national climate change action plan along with the preparations for the second National Communication to the UNFCCC.76 The first project—the adaptation capacity project—aimed at developing the capacity for managing climate change risks to rural and coastal development in Turkey. This project also aimed at mainstreaming climate change adaptation into development concerns and increasing institutional capacity for reducing natural disasters for longterm sustainability. Certainly the project would contribute to the institutional capacity building and cooperation, as well as the provision of solutions to three interrelated important problems, namely water stress and mismanagement, use of coastal areas and natural resources which could increase its overall vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. Concurrently, the second project on capacity building for climate change management mainly would create opportunities to increase the national capacity to participate and negotiate for the post-2012 and finding ways to participate efficiently in the Voluntary Carbon Markets. Lastly, developing a National Climate Change Action Plan was considered as the final outcome. In June 2011, the final draft of Turkey’s National Climate Change Action Plan was released. However, it was also criticized, particularly for not having clear mitigation targets. These are significant yet unsatisfactory developments for determining the basic framework for Turkey’s climate change action plan. Jointly, these projects aim at bringing attempts for increasing the national capacity to bargain its position for the post-Kyoto period through better mitigation and adaptation policies. However, the missing point in the management of these projects is the analysis of the perception of ecological integrity and its implementation in practice. A detailed assessment of this issue highlights the interconnection between nonmilitary threats and risks in overall security considerations for Turkish decisionmakers and public opinion. However, such an assessment requires a large-scale study on adaptive capacity and vulnerability of Turkey to climate change. If the National Climate Change Action Plan is based upon such assessments then it is likely to present significant insights for soft security threats and measures in Turkey. Furthermore, the architecture of the post-Kyoto climate regime poses uncertainty ahead for Turkey. Turkey is still searching for a proper negotiation position to achieve an international status that fits its special circumstances under the new post-Kyoto regime. Until now the fear of being out of the future climate regime and the possibility of facing trade sanctions have compelled Turkey to take part in the existing regime, under which Turkey has no binding commitments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Unquestionably, it is not only Turkey that faces with the development versus environmental protection dilemma. China, India and some other advanced developing states have also experi-

Turkey’s Approach to Environmental Security

261

enced similar circumstances. However, as the 2008 OECD Environmental Performance Review on Turkey stated: Turkey finds itself in a difficult position with respect to climate change. As a founding member of the OECD, and aspirant for accession to the EU, it is expected to join forces with the industrialized nations which have made commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, with the lowest per capita GDP of any OECD member, Turkey requires economic growth and industrialization to raise the living standards of a large and growing population. Further, Turkey has a per capita emission level of greenhouse gases (GHG) well below the OECD, EU and world averages.77

Since the establishment of the Customs Union in 1995, there has been increasing EU influence on Turkish environmental policy. Moreover, the assumed environmental leadership role of the EU at the international level poses significant challenges to both Member and candidate states. Therefore, opening the environmental chapter in EU accession talks draws more attention to environmental policy and investments in Turkey. Specific targets and timetables were set to achieve an approximation process in the field of the environment. Thus, EU conditionality is also regarded as another important factor behind Turkey’s participation in the global climate regime. Moreover, Turkey’s EU accession process has facilitated the efforts of different sectors in Turkey to catch up with global environmental governance and meet public expectations on environmental protection. Broadly speaking, the Europeanization of environmental policy in Turkey has already contributed positively to the efforts of greening the business and economy despite the high costs associated with the full implementation of the EU environmental legislation. From corporate social responsibility to green accounting, various measures have been employed in the last two decades to protect the environment, to increase environmental consciousness, and to remedy existing environmental damages. In 2006, Turkey adopted the EU Integrated Environmental Approximation Strategy (2007-2023) in order to ensure full compliance with the EU environmental acquis. In line with adaptation to international developments and the Europeanization of environmental policy in Turkey, growing numbers of business organizations admitted that environmental protection could offer new incentives for investments and employment. The idea of profiting from environmental protection has been a motto for many sectors in Turkey, as in the case of waste management and generating renewable energy. However, EU’s climate change policies (mitigation and adaptation) and targets alarmed some industries and public opinion with regard to economic growth.78 Moreover, ambiguities surrounding Turkey’s EU membership and controversies over EU environmental policy along with recent economic and financial crises in the world have challenged the environmental priorities in Turkey. Even the recently acclaimed development and environment understanding seemed to be distressed to some extent.79 It is, therefore, a deferred but still remarkable accomplishment that the State Planning Organization (SPO) in its Ninth Development Plan for the period

262

Rana İzci

2007-2013 stated that Turkey would prepare a National Climate Action Plan laying down mitigation policies and measures in line with its special circumstances and would carry out its commitment under the UNFCCC.80 This signifies that Turkey has noticed “the design of the international climate regime itself can offer positive incentives” for its economic growth and development. 81 Gradual involvement in the UNFCCC process as an active participant makes it obvious for Turkey that the cost of being an outsider could be bigger than taking part in the whole process. Indeed, being a party to the UNFCCC, Turkey has found out that it is very likely to benefit from carbon markets and funds for adaptation only if Turkey takes part in shaping the new climate change regime. Briefly, EU candidacy and possible repercussions that might arise from nonparticipation in the international climate regime have a significant impact on Turkish climate policy. However state-centered environmental foreign policy and semi-corporatist state tradition and policy-making which is sensitive to industrial interests affect environmental security and climate change policies in Turkey.82 Strong disagreements over mining activities and new hydropower projects in areas with rich biodiversity and cultural heritage demonstrate interesting examples of over-prioritization of economic security among other areas of soft security. On the other hand, growing interest of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in environmental issues challenges such traditions and the primacy of economic security in Turkey.83 Recent environmental activism illustrates the increasing concerns for sustainability and equity in Turkish civil society.84 It is noteworthy to stress once again that accession negotiations give a very important chance to Turkey to revise its development policies and perspectives on climate change and to reassess its geopolitical considerations in a new climate regime. As being an energy corridor would not be enough to achieve energy security for Turkey, it would not provide adequate assets to become an important peace and security actor in the region. On the contrary, implementing fully the Environmental Impact Assessment for energy investments as well as redesigning energy production and consumption polices would contribute more effectively to Turkey’s regional role not only in terms of environmental security, but also of energy security.

Conclusion Simon Dalby argues that ideas about the negative impact of human actions on the natural environment have gained widespread acceptance in public discussions and have become a (inter)national security problem after World War II.85 Today, scientific evidence underlines that environmental challenges are closely related to our consumption and production patterns. In brief, our ecological footprints affect the state of the environment, human survival and ecosystem integrity. Such trends are being accelerated by trade relations in the global world economy while hampering the social and ecological dimensions of worldwide sustainability. That is, current environmental problems address a more complex

Turkey’s Approach to Environmental Security

263

web of political, social, economic and ecologic issues than ever before. Nevertheless, they are still pressed in between conflict and security themes. This emerges mainly for the fact that we live in a period of uncertainty which is even “defined in terms of a previous era.”86 Global climate change visibly and deeply challenges collective understandings and perceptions of security and development all over the world. Since widespread unsustainable development patterns have already jeopardized human welfare, the development-security link has begun to influence global cooperation. On the other hand, resource scarcity-driven local and regional conflicts might occur, and these are likely to threaten international stability and security in the end. Apparently developed countries should take the lead in reformulating the criteria to define future development patterns due to their economic and technological capacities and historical responsibilities. Turkey’s environmental policy, in general, and climate change policies in particular have rather been on the back burner of the country’s political agenda. Nevertheless, it can be claimed that Turkey’s environmental policy is and will increasingly be affected by the EU’s environmental policy considerations in the negotiation process. This negotiation phase gives Turkey a great opportunity to evaluate how environmental change is perceived and how environmental considerations are integrated into other policy areas in Turkey. Turkey is a party to both the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol, on which the international climate regime is based. Regardless of their efficiency, they provide a forum for cooperation while trying to deal with one of the most complex soft security threats in the world. Thus, as a party to the international climate regime, looking at climate change in terms of human security and ecological integrity lenses would likely lessen the challenge of over-prioritization of economic risks and threats in Turkey. Indeed, on the way to the EU’s transition to a low-carbon future and its ambition to contribute to regional and international stability and sustainability; Turkey’s contribution would be significant, once soft security risks and threats receive fair and balanced priorities in the country. Conversely, if Turkey’s special circumstances continue to prevail in the political agenda, then they might lead to serious setbacks in the overall sustainability targets of Turkey. Contemporary developments, such as drought and famine in Somalia and the nuclear power blast in Japan, highlight the fact that sustainability is the keyword for security. These two events reveal that daily life risks and ecological destruction can cause large-scale human misery and threaten global security. Nevertheless, it is not easy to find a common ground for sustainability either at the international level or at the national level. Yet, attempts to reduce vulnerability at the national level would offer a sound framework for sustainability through integrating environmental considerations into development plans and increasing public participation into decision-making structures. This is also of vital importance for Turkey due to its ambitious national development targets and its assumed leadership and model role for its neighborhood.

264

Rana İzci

Notes 1. Egon Becker, Thomas Jahn and Immanuel Stiess, “Exploring Uncommon Ground: Sustainability and Social Sciences,” in Sustainability and the Social Sciences, ed. Egon Becker and Thomas Jahn (London and New York: Zed Books, 1999), 6. 2. See Nesrin Algan, “Environmental Security in the Aegean Sea,” in Turkish-Greek Relations: The Security Dilemma in the Aegean, ed. Mustafa Aydın and Kostas Ifantis (New York: Routledge, 2004), 185–210; and Ibrahim Mazlum, “Çevresel Güvenlik ve Ortadoğu Bölgesinde Sınıraşan Sular: Dicle-Fırat Havzası Örneği,” Environmental Security and Transboundary Watercourses in the Middle East: The Tigris–Euphrates Basin Case (PhD Thesis, Marmara University, 2003). 3. John R. McNeill, “The International System, Great Powers and Environmental Change,” in Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, ed. Hans Günter Brauch, Ursula Oswald Spring, John Grin, Crezlaw Mesjasz, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Navnita Cahdra Behera. Bechir Chourou, and Heinz Krummenacher (Berlin: Springer, 2009), 43–52. 4. Kornelis Jan W. Oosthoek, “Environmental History: Between Science and Philosophy,” Environmental History Resources 2009, http://www.eh-resources.org/ philosophy.html (accessed July 23, 2010). 5. For detailed information, see Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2007 Synthesis Report, Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Core Writing Team, ed. Rajendra K. Pachauri, and Andy Reisinger (Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC, 2007). http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf (accessed July 12, 2011); European Environment Agency (EEA), Joint Research Center (JRC) and World Health Organization (WHO), Impacts of Europe’s Changing Climate—2008 Indicator-Based Assessment, EEA Report No 4/2008, JRC Reference No JRC47756 (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2008), http://www. eea.europa.eu/publications/eea_report_2008_4/pp1-19_CC2008Executive_Summary.pdf (accessed July 18, 2001); and John Houghton, Global Warming, the Complete Briefing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 6. For detailed reading, see Ragnhild Nordås and Nils Peter Gleditsch, “Climate Change and Conflict,” Political Geography 26 (2007): 627–38; Michio Umegaki, Lynn Thiesmeyer and Atsushi Watabe, eds., Human Insecurity in East Asia (Tokyo: United Nations University, 2009); Simon Dalby, Security and Environmental Change (Cambridge: Polity, 2009); Alan Collins, ed., Contemporary Security Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Dan Caldwell and Robert E. Williams, Seeking Security in an Insecure World (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). 7. Dalby, Security and Environmental Change, 16–20. 8. Robin Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory (London: UCL Press, 1992), 49. 9. Basically, when the environment is regarded as a background factor consisting of natural resources to support national power, then the scarcity of those resources is likely to cause conflicts. Old geopolitical approaches can serve as a good example of this understanding. See Daniel Deudney, “Bringing Nature Back In: Geopolitical Theory from the Greeks to the Global Era,” in Contested Grounds: Security and Conflict in the New Environmental Politics, ed. Daniel Deudney and Richard Matthew (Albany: State University

Turkey’s Approach to Environmental Security

265

of New York Press, 1999), 25–57; and Richard Grove, Ecology, Climate and Empire: Colonialism and Global Environmental History 1400-1940 (Cambridge: White Horse, 1997). 10. Lester Brown, “Redefining National Security,” Worldwatch Paper 14 (1977): 1– 46; Jessica Mathews Tuchman, “Redefining Security,” Foreign Affairs 68 (1989): 162– 77; Richard Ullman, “Redefining Security,” International Security 8 (1983): 129–53; Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991); Michael T. Claire, “Redefining Security: The New Global Schisms,” Current History 95, no. 604 (November 1996): 353–58. 11. Barry Buzan, Ole Waever and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998). 12. Marc Levy, “Is the Environment a National Security Issue?” International Security 20 (1995): 36–62; Kenneth Broda-Bahm, “Finding Protection in Definitions: The Quest for Environmental Security,” Argumentation and Advocacy 35 (Spring 1999): 159– 70; Nina Graeger, “Environmental Security,” Journal of Peace Research 33, no. 1 (1996): 109–16. 13. Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, “Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases,” International Security 16, no. 1 (1994): 5–40. Thomas F. HomerDixon and Jessica Blitt, eds., Ecoviolence: Links among Environment, Population and Security (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1998). 14. Daniel Deudney, “The Case against Linking Environmental Degradation and National Security,” Millennium 19 (1990): 461–76; Dennis Clark Pirages and Theresa Manley DeGeest, eds., Ecological Security: An Evolutionary Perspective on Globalization (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004); Jon Barnett, The Meaning of Environmental Security: Ecological Politics and Policy in the New Security Era (London: Zed, 2001). 15. This criticism is also an answer to both the Neo-Malthusian and human-centric approaches to the environment. Simon Dalby, Environmental Security (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 24–26, 76. For detailed discussion, Nancy Peluso and Michael Watts, eds., Violent Environments (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001). 16. Sanjeev Khagram, William C. Clark and Dana Firas Raad, “From the Environment and Human Security to Sustainable Security and Development,” Journal of Human Development 4, no. 2 (2003): 289–313; and Mark Halle, Geoffrey Dabelko, Steve Lonergan, and Richard Matthew, State-of-the-Art Review on Environment, Security and Development Co-operation, Report for the Working Party on Development and Cooperation and Environment OECD Development Assistance Committee (Gland, Switzerland: World Conservation Union, IUCN, 1999), http://www.sustainablepeace.org/download/state_ of_art_envsec_oecd_review.pdf (accessed July 14, 2011). 17. Loraine Elliott, “Global Environmental Governance,” in Global Governance, Critical Perspectives, ed. Rorden Wilkinson and Steve Hughes (London: Routledge, 2004), 57–74; Duncan Brack, “Balancing Trade and the Environment,” International Affairs 71, no. 3 (1997): 497–514; Kenneth Piddington, “The Role of the World Bank,” in

266

Rana İzci

The International Politics of the Environment, ed. Andrew Hurrell and Benedict Kingsbury (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 212–27. 18. The World Bank, “Environment,” http://data.worldbank.org/topic/environment (accessed July 12, 2011); Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD), Handbook for Appraisal of Environmental Projects Financed from Public Funds (2002), http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/10/63/38786197.pdf (accessed July 14, 2011). 19. In 2004 NATO became an associate member of the Environment and Security Initiative (ENVSEC), which was established in 2003 by UNEP, UNDP and the OECD. 20. Robyn Eckersley, “The Big Chill: The WTO and Multilateral Trade Agreements” Global Environmental Politics 4, no. 2 (2004): 24–50; Matthew Paterson, Understanding Global Environmental Politics: Domination, Accumulation and Resistance (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2001). 21. Karen T. Litfin, “Sovereignty in World Ecopolitics,” Mershon International Studies Review 41, no. 2 (1997): 167–204; John Vogler and Mark F. Imber, The Environment and International Relations (London: Routledge, 1996). 22. Pirages and DeGeest, Ecological Security. 23. Dennis Pirages and Ken Cousins, eds., From Resource Scarcity to Ecological Security (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005). 24. However, taking the historical evolution of the concept into account, environmental security is used for the sake of simplicity in this study. For detailed discussion, see Robin Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory; Eric Laferrière and Peter J. Stoett, International Relations and Ecological Thought (London: Routledge, 1999); Andrew Dobson, Green Political Thought (London: Routledge, 2000); and Arne Naess, “The Shallow and Deep Ecology Movement,” Inquiry 16 (1973): 95–100. 25. See Dennis Tanzler, Geoffrey D. Dabelko and Alexander Carius, Environmental Cooperation and Conflict Prevention at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Berlin: National University of Costa Rica Mesoamerican Center für Sustainable Development of the Dry Tropics, The Environmental Change and Security Project Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Adelphi Research, 2004), http://waterwiki. net/images/0/08/Environmental_Cooperation_and_Conflict_Prevention_at_the_WSSD_7 2dpi.pdf (accessed July 14, 2011); Douglas L. Tookey, “The Environment, Security and Regional Cooperation in Central Asia,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 40 (2007): 191–208; and Mihaela Papa, “Rethinking Conflict Prevention in South Eastern Europe: An Emerging Environmental Security Agenda?” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 6, no. 3 (2006): 315–33; Ken Conca and Geoffrey D. Dabelko, eds., Environmental Peacemaking (Washington and Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and John Hopkins University Press, 2002). 26. Jon Barnett and Stephen Dovers, “Environmental Security, Sustainability and Policy,” Pacifica Review 3, no. 2 (June 2001): 157–69. 27. For instance see Jon Barnett and Stephen Dovers, “Environmental Security, Sustainability and Policy,” Pacifica Review 13, no. 2 (2001): 157–69. 28. Jaap de Wilde, “The Power Politics of Sustainability, Equity and Liveability,” in The World at the Crossroads: Towards a Sustainable, Liveable and Equitable World, ed. Phillip B. Smith, Samuel E. Okoye, Jaap de Wilde and Priya Deshingkar (London: Earthscan, 1994), 159–76; Paavola Jouni and Neil Adger, “Justice and Adaptation to Climate Change,” Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Working Paper 23 (Oc-

Turkey’s Approach to Environmental Security

267

tober 2002), http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/sites/default/files/wp23.pdf (accessed July 30, 2010). 29. Jon Barnett, “The Geopolitics of Climate Change,” Geography Compass 1/16 (2007): 1361–1375; and Peter Halden, The Geopolitics of Climate Change Challenges to the International System, FOI Swedish Defense Research Agency Report no: FOI-R-2377—SE 37, 2007 http://www.foi.se/upload/projects/Africa/FOI-R--2377--SE.pdf (accessed July 12, 2010). 30. Richard J. T. Klein, Robert J. Nicolls, and Frank Thomella, “Resilience to Natural Hazards: How Useful is This Concept?” Environmental Hazards 5, nos. 1–2 (2003): 35–45. 31. Vicram Odedra Kolmannskog, Future Floods of Refugees (Oslo: Norwegian Refugee Council, 2008), 8–9, http://www.nrc.no/arch/_img/9268480.pdf (accessed July 30, 2010). Although neither the term “climate refugees” nor “environmental refugee” has a clear definition, more and more people find their livelihood insecure and leave their homes temporarily or permanently due to sudden and devastating disasters. Jouni and Adger, “Justice and Adaptation to Climate Change.” 32. Kolmannskog, Future Floods of Refugees, 8. 33. Ibid., 8–9, 15, 19, 22. 34. German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), Climate Change as a Security Risk (London: Earthscan, 2008), 1. http://www.crid.or.cr/digitalizacion/pdf/eng/ doc17839/seccion-a.pdf (accessed July 25, 2010). 35. Halden, “The Geopolitics of Climate Change.” 36. Ibid., 29, 32, 148. 37. Ibid., 36. 38. IPCC, Climate Change 2007 Synthesis Report, 39. 39. Ibid. Global climate change involves both warming and cooling cycles. According to some estimates, the warming trend started in the late 1800s. 40. United Nations Security Council, SC/9000, April 17, 2007, http://www.un.org/ News/Press/docs/2007/sc9000.doc.htm (accessed June 05, 2010). 41. WBGU, Climate Change, 1. 42. Ibid., 5–6. 43. Hans Günter Brauch, “Securitization of Global Environmental Change,” in Facing Global Environmental Change, ed., Brauch et al., 65. 44. Ibid., 66. 45. Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD), Environmental Performance Reviews: Turkey 2008 (December, 2008). OECD Publishing., doi: 10.1787/9789264049161-en. 46. Nesrin Algan and Aysegul Mengi, “Turkey’s Sustainable Development Policies in the EU Accession Process,” European Environmental Law Review (April 2005): 95, 97; Devlet Planlama Teşkilatı, Üçüncü Beş Yıllık Kalkınma Planı (1973–1977), http://ekutup.dpt.gov.tr/plan/plan3.pdf (accessed July 14, 2011). 47. Ibid., 866. 48. Devlet Planlama Teşkilatı, Altıncı Beş Yıllık Kalkınma Planı (1990-1994) DPT 2174, (Ankara, T.C Başbakanlik Devlet Planlama Teşkilatı, 1989), www.dpt.gov.tr/ DocObjects/Download/1971/plan6.pdf (accessed July 14, 2011).

268

Rana İzci

49. Devlet Planlama Teşkilatı, Ulusal Çevre Stratejisi ve Eylem Planı (Ankara, T.C Başbakanlik Devlet Planlama Teşkilatı, 1998), http://ekutup.dpt.gov.tr/cevre/ eylempla/ucep.html (accessed July 11, 2011). 50. Devlet Planlama Teşkilatı, Dokuzuncu Kalkınma Planı (2007-2013) Çevre Özel İhtisas Komisyonu Raporu no. 2737, OİK: 688 (Ankara, 2007). www.dpt.gov.tr/Doc Objects/Download/3192/oik688.pdf (accessed July 14,2011). 51. International Energy Agency (IEA), Energy Policy of IEA Countries, Turkey 2009 Report (2010), 13, http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2009/turkey2009.pdf (accessed July 14, 2011). 52. United Nations, National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Data for the Period 19902007, FCCC/SBI/2009/12, (October 21, 2009), 7, http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/ sbi/eng/12.pdf (accessed July 14, 2011). 53. Kamil Kaygusuz, “Climate Change Mitigation in Turkey,” Energy Sources 26 (2004): 564–65. 54. Ethem Toklu, Meltem S. Güney, Memiş Işık, Ömer Çomaklı and Kamil Kaygusuz, “Energy Production, Consumption, Policies and Recent Developments in Turkey,” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 14 (2010): 1172–86. 55. For studies on the sustainability-security link in Turkey see Nesrin Algan, “Kirlilikten Ulusal Güvenliğe,” Yeşil Ufuklar Dergisi 1, no. 1 (Ocak 2005): 14–15; Seçil Mine Türk, “Marmara Denizi’nde Çevresel Güvenlik” (PhD Thesis, Ankara University, 2008). 56. For realist and liberalist approaches in environmental politics see Garret Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (1968): 1243–48; Lorraine Elliott, “The Global Politics of the Environment: The Hegemony of Neoliberalism,” in The New Agenda for International Relations: From Polarization to Globalization in World Politics, ed. Stephanie Lawson (London: Polity Press, 2001), 109–27; David Law, “Global Environmental Issues and the World Bank,” in Globalization, Democratization and Multilateralism, ed. Stephen Gill (London/Tokyo: Macmillan/United Nations University Press, 1997), 171–93; Marc A. Levy, Peter M. Haas and Robert O. Keohane, “Institutions for the Earth: Promoting International Environmental Protection,” Environment 34, no. 4 (1992): 12–17. 57. See Eric Laferrirère and Peter J.Stoett, eds., International Ecopolitical Theory: Critical Approaches (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2006). 58. IPCC, Climate Change 2007 Synthesis Report, 49, 52, 72. 59. Ministry of Environment and Forestry, First National Communication of Turkey on Climate Change, Republic of Turkey (Ankara: Ministry of Environment and Forestry, 2007), 18–19. 60. Ibid., 161–78. 61. The Environmental Performance Index was produced by experts at Yale University and Columbia University. This index was based on the assessments in twenty-five categories and two main objectives; environmental public health and ecosystem vitality. Turkey ranks seventy-seventh out of 163 countries. Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, “Environmental Performance Index 2010” http://epi.yale.edu/file_columns /0000/0157/epi2010_report.pdf (accessed July 23, 2011). 62. Cost of mitigation for reducing greenhouse gas emissions required comprehensive and costly changes in energy and industrial infrastructure. It was not only about

Turkey’s Approach to Environmental Security

269

abatement of certain substances but a radical shift in production and consumption structures, and, particularly, in energy systems. 63. Semra Cerit Mazlum, “Turkey’s Foreign Policy towards the Global Environment: From Hesitant Observer to Active Supporter” (paper presented at the ISA-WISC First Global International Studies Conference, Bilgi University, Istanbul, August 24–27, 2005). 64. Semra Cerit Mazlum, “Turkish Foreign Policy on Global Atmospheric Commons: Climate Change and Ozone Depletion,” in Climate Change and Foreign Policy: Case Studies from East to West, ed. Paul Harris (London: Routledge, 2009), 68–84. 65. Ibid., 71, 81. 66. Ibid., 71. 67. The country had been communicated with via the secretariat through the document FCCC/CP/1997/MISC.3 The decision 26/CP.7 OF COP7 in 2001 placed Turkey in a situation different from other parties included in Annex 1 to the Convention. 68. Annex I parties are developed countries which are members of the OECD in 1992, the European Union and the countries with economies in transition (EIT), including the Russian Federation, the Baltic States, and several Central and Eastern European states. Annex II parties are the OECD members of Annex I parties and the European Union. There is a special obligation for the Annex II parties. They have to help the developing countries by providing financial resources and technological assistance. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, “Glossary of climate change acronyms,” undated, http://unfccc.int/essential_background/glossary/items/3666.php (accessed July 18, 2011). 69. Cerit Mazlum, “Turkish Foreign Policy on,” 72–73. 70. Joanna Depledge, “The Road Less Traveled: Difficulties in Moving between Annexes in the Climate Change Regime,” Climate Policy 9 (2009): 281. 71. Murat Türkeş, Türkiye Dünya Sürdürülebilir Kalkınma Zirvesi Ulusal Hazırlıkları, İklim Değişikliği ve Sürdürülebilir Kalkınma Ulusal Raporu (Ankara: TTGV, 2002). 72. Ibid. 73. REC Turkey was co-funded by the European Commission and the Government of Turkey. 74. OECD, Environmental Performance, 180. For instance, REC Turkey provides grants for non-governmental NGOs and environmental movements. Moreover, it tries to encourage different stakeholders to work together through seminars, training programs and projects on certain environmental issues. Regional Environmental Center Turkey, http://www.rec.org.tr/?lang=en (accessed July 14, 2011). 75. Depledge, “The Road Less Traveled,” Climate Policy, 281. 76. MDG-F 1680 Enhancing the Capacity of Turkey to Adapt to the Climate Change (January 2008–December 2010) is a UN Joint Programme Project, http://www. undp.org.tr/Gozlem2.aspx?WebSayfaNo=1392 (accessed July 12, 2010); “Capacity Building for Climate Change Management in Turkey: Developing the capacity of Turkey to participate efficiently in the international climate change negotiations and to join the flexible mechanisms of Kyoto through better experiencing the voluntary carbon markets” (January 2009–June 2010) http://www.undp.org.tr/Gozlem2.aspx?WebSayfaNo=1892 (accessed July 12, 2010); “Developing Turkey’s National Climate Change Action Plan”

270

Rana İzci

(June 2009–September 2010) funded by the UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office Strategic Programme Fund, under the Low-Carbon, High-Growth Programme, http:// www.undp.org.tr/Gozlem2.aspx?WebSayfaNo=2057 (accessed July 12, 2010). 77. OECD, Environmental Performance, 184. 78. The EU declared its energy and climate package, known as “20 20 by 2020,” in 2008. This package aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent and increase the share of renewable energy by 2020. All these developments have been the basic steps for the EU’s transition towards a low-carbon future. For detailed information, Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions: 20 20 By 2020 Europe’s Climate Change Opportunity, COM(2008) Final (Brussels: January 23, 2008). http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUri Serv/LexUri Serv.do?uri=COM:2008:0030:FIN:EN:PDF (accessed June 20, 2010). 79. Günter Seufert, Subidey Togan and Cesar Colino, SGI Sustainable Governance Indicators 2001, Turkey Report, SG1 2011/2 (Germany: Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2011), http://www.sgi-network.org/pdf/SGI11_Turkey.pdf (accessed July 18, 2011). 80. State Planning Organization, The Ninth Development Plan 2007-2013: Competitiveness, Employment, Human Development, Regional Development, Effectiveness in Public Services (Ankara: T.R Prime Ministry, State Planning Organization, 2006), 87. 81. Jonathan B. Wiener, “Climate Change Policy and Policy Change in China,” UCLA Law Review 55 (2008): 1805. 82. Cerit Mazlum,“Turkish Foreign Policy on,” 78. 83. Fikret Adaman and Murat Arsel, eds., Environmentalism in Turkey: Between Democracy and Development? (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). 84. For a recent example of environmental activism see Cengiz Aktar, “March of Anatolia against the Plunder of Nature, Culture, Cities,” Hurriyet Daily News, April 29, 2011, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=the-great-march-of-anatoliaagainsttheplunder-of-nature-culture-and-cities-2011-04-29 (accessed July 16, 2011). 85. Simon Dalby, “Geopolitical Change and Contemporary Security Studies: Contextualizing the Human Security Agenda” (Institute of International Relations, The University of British Colombia Working Paper 30, April 2000), http://www.cepen. org/download/114/ (accessed July 12, 2011). 86. Ibid., 1.

Chapter Sixteen

Turkish Political Elite Perceptions on Security Çiğdem Üstün and Özgehan Şenyuva The understanding and definition of security, security threats and perceptions of states have changed through time, depending on the political, economic and military needs and necessities of those states. Several attempts have been made to define security in a general framework, such as absence of fear that a nation’s values will be attacked,1 being free from the danger of having to sacrifice core values to avoid war,2 the pursuit of freedom from threat, the ability of states and societies to maintain their independent identity and their functional integrity,3 survival in the face of existential threats4 and a process of emancipation.5 However, throughout history, the conceptualization and perception of security threats have been in a process of constant change. 6 The end of the Cold War, the reunification of Germany, and the war in Yugoslavia have all altered the world scene dramatically. The war in Yugoslavia brought a vicious, devastating and long-lasting conflict into a region which had been peaceful for fifty years. Issues of ethnic violence and ethnic cleansing, as well as micro-nationalism, took over the global agenda. The ethnic or religious motives of the groups involved had been suppressed by Cold War bipolarity. The decline of one of the superpowers, the Soviet Union, removed the ideological restraints, leading to the creation of a political vacuum that, in turn, sparked a crisis close to the European Union’s (EU) borders. When the Cold War ended, it was assumed that military force would no longer be as essential as it had been, and that spending on arms would decrease. This proved not to be the case. Terrorism and organized crime, which are non-governmental security issues, became global in terms of their effects. After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, an important authority gap occurred in “Eurasia,” leading to conflicts in Central Asia, the Balkans and the Caucasus. In particular, conflicts in Central Asia and the Caucasus have been destabilizing, since these areas hold significant resources of oil and natural gas for western countries.7 The global system is now much more polycentric; on the 271

272

Çiğdem Üstün and Özgehan Şenyuva

one hand, there are globalizing trends, on the other, there are religious or ethnic conflicts and, juggled in between, the regionalization experiments of some groups of states. Turkey, as a country straddling the border between Europe and Asia, has been affected by these changes and forced to respond to the international socio-economic, political and military transformations and necessities. In this chapter, we offer an analysis of the development of the security understanding of the Turkish parliamentary elite. From a classical realist perspective, the elite should solely hold the control of policy-making mechanisms, especially of foreign policy and security policies, in which the survival of the state is at stake. Even in the arguments of democratic elitism, elites were seen as more sophisticated due to the advantages they held—better education, better socialization into and better grasp of the political mechanisms, a high degree of expertise, and an affluent background of higher socio-economic strata of the society. In the lines of foreign policy, for many years, what Holsti calls the “AlmondLippmann consensus” dominated the literature, arguing that the public opinion was not stable, rational and influential in foreign policy. 8 Mearsheimer observes that “public opinion on national security issues is notoriously fickle and responsive to elite manipulation and world events.” 9 From this perspective, the elite should be leading public opinion on foreign policy issues, not following it.10 Despite the challenges to this understanding over the years and the contrary evidence on public opinion, the elite still remains the main unit of analysis on foreign policy issues, and even to a larger extent in security studies. In Turkey, the parliamentary elite is strikingly under-researched and there is a lack of systemic data. Many of the political elite studies are based on limited individual open-ended interviews.11 There is a shortage of studies that take the individual Members of Parliament (MP) as the main unit of analysis. As Sayarı and Hasanov illustrate, with the 2002 general elections in Turkey, a new parliamentary elite has emerged.12 However, a systematic study of the perceptions of this new elite has not been done. Hence, this study aims to contribute to the literature on the Turkish parliamentary elite. For the analysis of the current state of the security understanding of the Turkish parliamentary elite, we use data from the Turkish Elite Survey, conducted by the Center for European Studies in 2009 under the “SInAN-Strengthening and Integrating Academic Networks” project funded by the EU “Promotion of Civil Society Dialogue between the EU and Turkey: Universities Grant Scheme.” We also utilize in-depth interviews conducted with several high-level security policy-makers and a descriptive analysis of the related debates in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi—TBMM).

Turkish Security Perception: A Historical Evaluation In the Cold War years, Turkey acted as a buffer zone between communism and capitalism. It was a significant player in the security setting of the Cold War era due to the importance of the Turkish straits, its geopolitical and strategic position, and proximity to the perceived security threat areas. It has also been argued

Turkish Political Elite Perceptions on Security

273

that due to the political and economic needs of the country, Turkey did not have abundant alternatives in the Cold War years, in terms of its security options, other than to look to the western bloc.13 What should also be taken into consideration is that the ultimate aim of the Turkish elite has always been stated as achieving a contemporary level of [western] civilization, a goal set by M. Kemal Atatürk in the establishment years of the Turkish Republic. The Turkish elite’s main focus has been alliance with the western countries and becoming a part of the western bloc—even prior to the start of the Cold War. Therefore, Turkey’s security perception has been in line with those of western countries, since the main security threat was the expansion of communism during the Cold War years. Scholars of Turkish security studies agree that the Ottoman legacy has had a definitive effect on the structure of Turkish security understanding and threat perceptions.14 Relations with European countries; Britain’s and France’s influence on Turkey’s neighbors such as Syria, Iran, and Greece; and these neighbors’ attitudes towards Turkey, both during World War I and the Independence War, all had effects on Turkish perceptions of its neighbors, security and threat. In this framework, Turkey defined its security as “ensuring the survival of the population; the protection of its territorial integrity; and the preservation of basic identity.”15 Similarly, definitions of national security stressed the importance of the protection of the constitutional system, the state’s existence and indivisibility, and the protection of state interests. 16 It has been argued that the Turkish security perception has been in line with the realist understanding based on survival, both due to the distrustful relations with its neighbors and to the international agenda in the Cold War years. 17 Even after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the emergence of a new international environment focusing on the cooperation and collaboration among states, Turkey retained its realist perspective. Bayülken summarizes the attitude of the Turkish state when it comes to the national security issue as being able to have capabilities and opportunities if there is a need. 18 It is believed that the location of the country forces it to accept the principle of the Roman Empire, which can be summarized as “If you want to live in peace, you should be ready for war whenever necessary.”19 Therefore, Turkey has always given priority to its security agreements and alliances with other countries. This attitude has sometimes even been referred to as the national security syndrome. 20 As former President Evren stressed, “Turkey’s historical position indicates that it is obliged to pursue a policy based on being strong and stable within its region . . . [since] it is surrounded by unfriendly neighbors.”21 After the Cold War, Turkey’s relations with its neighbors, especially with Syria, Iran and Greece, have been the focus of Turkish foreign and security policies. The problems with its neighbors have mainly concentrated on issues such as Cyprus, water (Euphrates and Tigris), fundamental Islamists and their attacks against Turkish intellectuals, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Kurdish question and the possibility of an independent Kurdish state in Northern Iraq. Throughout the years it has been observed that all these problems have fed each other and grown larger and larger. In particular, relations with Syria and Greece

274

Çiğdem Üstün and Özgehan Şenyuva

deteriorated to the level that there was a fear of hot conflict, even war, in the mid-1990s. In this framework, Turkey used its soft security power, such as water, as a tool to push its Middle Eastern neighbors to stop support for Abdullah Öcalan and the PKK; this is clearly seen from the statements of presidents and prime ministers. For instance, Turgut Özal, the then prime minister, stated that “the control of the rivers is in the hands of Turkey, so our neighbors need to find a way to get along with us!”22 In this region, Turkish foreign and security policies emphasized the significance of the status quo; this required stability, and any destabilizing development was perceived as creating security problems for Turkey. 23 In this environment, Germany, Greece and France are the countries with which Turkey has had the most problems regarding the Kurdish issue. Germany did not want to recognize the PKK as a terrorist organization for some time; it even gave shelter to the terrorists, so that, for example, PKK members were able to build up their own districts in Germany.24 Another European country, France, has also been seen as a supporter of the PKK.25 Help was seen to come from Greece, as well. The former prime minister and later president, Süleyman Demirel, claimed that Greece gave the Lavrion Camp to terrorist groups, where they were able to train.26 Turkish authorities also claimed that the PKK was allowed to open a representative office in Athens in 1994. Öcalan’s speeches, which referred to moral and economic support from the Greek authorities, have been used by the Turkish authorities to support their claims.27 Turkey has had very problematic relations with Greece since the 1950s. The Cyprus issue, minority issues between the two countries, violence against minorities in both countries and, finally, the 1974 Turkish intervention in Cyprus all contributed to deterioration in relations between the two neighbors.28 The main problems are the extent of their respective territorial waters, the delimitation of the continental shelf, the militarization of the Eastern Aegean islands, airspacerelated problems, islands, islets and rocks in the Aegean, and maritime boundaries. One of the most serious recent incidents took place in 1995 –1996, when a crisis arose over the Imia (Kardak) rocks in the Aegean Sea.29 All in all, although Turkish and western threat perceptions were similar in the Cold War era, in the 1990s Turkish security and threat perceptions drifted away from western perceptions. The end of the Cold War created a security vacuum in the region, which pushed Turkey to focus more on its insecure neighborhood. In the Cold War, the main security understanding was based on the realist approach, which stressed the importance of hard security. Turkey continued to follow this approach after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, partly due to the above-mentioned security vacuum, and partly because it has sought to define an international role for itself after its role as a buffer zone came to an end. Then again, the end of the 1990s witnessed the start of slight but significant changes in relations between Turkey and Greece. Especially after the earthquakes in both countries, personal relations between the foreign ministers— İsmail Cem and George Papandreou—helped economic, trade, tourism, cultural, and environmental relations to improve. Such developments in relations affected the National Security Document, and Greece began to be mentioned as a “part-

Turkish Political Elite Perceptions on Security

275

ner.” However, maritime boundaries, air space, the extent of territorial waters, and the delimitation of the continental shelf have remained problematic issues in the relations between the two countries. In the post-Cold War era, the Turkish political elite started to realize that civilian participation tends to be increasingly significant, 30 and to understand the need for increasing soft power. American geostrategist and statesman Brzezinski has been very influential in the mindset of the Turkish elite, thus affecting policy-making in Turkish foreign affairs. 31 He stressed the fact that “Turkey’s importance is not derived from its power and motivation but rather from its sensitive location which is able to deny access to areas or resources to a significant player.”32 Brzezinski’s approach has been indicative evidence for Turkey while it tried to find a new role for itself in the new global world order, while stressing the importance of its geopolitical and strategic location, proximity to natural resources, and its potential to be a key actor in the region, acting as a mediator and a real bridge between Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Therefore, it can be argued that the improvement in Turkey-Greece relations; the increase in trade and economic relations with the neighboring regions in the later 1990s;33 and former President Demirel’s proposal for a Caucasus Platform between Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan all demonstrate the start of a transformation in Turkish security perceptions and policies. The decade between the end of the Cold War and the September 11 attacks was a very ambiguous era for Turkey and its security understanding, due to the fact that Turkey was unsure of its international role in the new world system. While Turkey had tried to set a new role for itself by using some soft security measures in addition to its military power by the end of the 1990s, the September 11 attacks changed the international security agenda once again.

The New Security Understanding and Turkey In the twenty-first century, due to the de-territorialization process, it is harder to locate, monitor and contain security threats which are neither concrete nor specific—unlike during the Cold War, when the West expected the threat to come only from the communist world. In contrast to the Cold War era, in the twentyfirst century, as Tony Blair said, “the threat is chaos.” 34 The scope of security has widened to include diseases, computer viruses, environmental problems, drug smugglers, political terrorists, criminal organizations and ethnic insurgents.35 Moreover, globalization brought about a global trade in nuclear materials, not only between states but also between non-state actors and organizations.36 Bilgin argues that high technology combined with globalization creates a global market for military resources.37 Due to the states’ lack of control on the global market, the states’ control on security matters decreases. Therefore, globalization forces states to change their security policies as these new challenges appear.

276

Çiğdem Üstün and Özgehan Şenyuva

Turkey is not an isolated case in this framework, and has felt the need to transform its security policies as well as its threat and security perceptions. The first and foremost obvious transformation has been in the perceptions towards neighbors such as Syria, Armenia, and Iran. Relations with Syria started to improve after Öcalan’s capture, and negotiations on the water issue started. In January 2004, the President of Syria visited Turkey and met with the president of the TBMM, Bülent Arınç. This visit was the first at the presidential level between the two countries in fifty-seven years. In 2007, the countries signed the “Memorandum of Understanding for Cooperation between Turkey and Syria” concerning “Politics and Security,” “Economy” and “Energy and Water.” A deepening of the cooperation between the Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) and the Syrian Oil Company, and progress in visits and opinion exchange in the field of water were agreed upon. Also, Turkey designed a “Three Staged Plan” based on the fact that the Euphrates and the Tigris make up a single trans-boundary river system, and envisaged the preparation of common inventories of water and land resources for a final allocation of water between the riparian states. However, the main transformation regarding relations has been the lifting of visa requirements between the two countries, in 2009. Turkey’s problematic relations with Armenia have been another foreign policy issue that is subject to change. After 1991, diplomatic relations between Turkey and Armenia were suspended for a decade. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Turkey’s determined support of Azerbaijan has been an important issue. In addition, Armenian claims on the 1915 events have always been a major challenge in the relations between Turkey and Armenia. In 2001, tentative steps were taken, such as the establishment of the Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission, and, since 2002, many further positive developments in the relations with Armenia have taken place. Mainly in 2007, there were significant steps taken to further relations with Armenia, such as confidence-building measures, including facilitation of transit transportation to and from Armenia, and direct flight connections between Yerevan and various destinations in Turkey. Besides these measures, an initiative was proposed regarding the establishment of a commission comprising Turkish and Armenian historians, as well as other experts aiming to study the 1915 events. Furthermore, in 2008, the Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform was initiated, with an aim to create an international platform for regular dialogue in the region. Regarding Iran, the possession of nuclear devices was the subject on the table in 2005. The vice president of the Eurasian Strategic Research Centre stated that these nuclear devices would give Iran hegemony in the region, and he stressed that Turkey should watch this very closely.38 In the newer version (June 2006) of the document on national security policies, Iran, with its missiles and nuclear capacity, was cited as one of the most important security threats to Turkey. The worries of the Turkish government and military forces focused on the range of the missile that Iran was working on, namely the “Şahap 3.” On the other hand, trade reached $2.3 billion in 2004. In 2007 Turkey reached an agreement with Iran to transport Iranian and Turkmen natural gas to

Turkish Political Elite Perceptions on Security

277

Europe.39 On the military front, Turkish and Iranian security forces signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate on promoting security measures against the PKK.40 In 2010, relations with Iran progressed when Iran, Turkey and Brazil signed a deal in order to facilitate nuclear cooperation, according to which the Islamic Republic of Iran agreed to deposit 1200 kilograms (kg) of low-enriched uranium in Turkey. The agreement also foresaw a proper arrangement between Iran and the Vienna Group—the United States, Russia, France and the International Atomic Energy Agency—that specifically committed itself to deliver 120 kg of fuel needed for the Tehran Research Reactor. 41 However, western countries continued to be skeptical about the deal, and argued that it did not address the central nuclear issue dealt with by successive United Nations (UN) Security Council resolutions—Iran’s refusal to halt its enrichment program.42 In this context, the UN Security Council leveled its fourth round of sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program, although Turkey and Brazil voted against the sanctions. This raised some questions about Turkey’s foreign policy and security perceptions. Turkey has always acted together with its western allies in international organizations and with its main partner, the United States. It has been argued that Turkish security perceptions have been changing, that Turkey is turning its face to the East rather than the West. At this conjuncture, Turkey-Israel relations have deteriorated due to Turkey’s criticism of Israel’s military assault on Gaza, Turkey’s defense of Iran’s nuclear program and its expanding economic ties with Iran at a moment when the United States seeks to isolate Tehran, and its attempts to repair relations with Syria. Furthermore, Turkey has scrapped visa requirements for Russia, Lebanon and Jordan, raising doubts about Turkey’s ambition to become a part of the European Club. However, these same neighbor-friendly efforts—increasing trade and economic ties with its neighbors, introducing visa-free travel, and starting to act as a more moderate and soft actor in its region—have been perceived as Turkey’s means to transform itself from an imminent hard power into a major regional power broker, which coincides with Turkey’s ambitions to become closer to the EU’s neighborhood policies.

Methodology As part of the Turkish Elite Survey, conducted by the Center for European Studies in 2009 under the “SInAN—Strengthening and Integrating Academic Networks” project, a total of sixty-two Members of Parliament (MPs)—out of a total of 550 MPs in the TBMM—were interviewed in the period between June and December 2009. Interviews were done face-to-face, with a close-ended questionnaire. Each interview took, on average, forty minutes. The sample of the surveyed MPs was selected according to methodology set by the “Integrated and United? A Quest for Citizenship in an Ever Closer Europe” (IntUne) project. The IntUne project included two waves of elite surveys across eighteen Europe-

278

Çiğdem Üstün and Özgehan Şenyuva

an countries.43 The Turkish Elite Survey was conducted in cooperation and accordance with the IntUne project, in order to create systematic and comparative data. The sample of sixty-two interviewed Turkish MPs was selected through quota sampling according to the methodology set by the IntUne project. The number of MPs from different parties reflects the distribution of seats in the assembly among the parties: thirty-nine MPs of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP), ten MPs of the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi—CHP), eight MPs of the Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi—MHP), four MPs of the Democratic Left Party (Demokratik Sol Parti—DSP) and one MP of the Democratic Society Party (Demoktratik Toplum Partisi—DTP). In the sample, the DSP is overrepresented, as it had only eight seats in the TBMM at the time our survey was conducted. On the other hand, the DTP is under-represented, as its representation in the assembly amounted to 20 seats. Due to problems with accessibility, we were able to interview only one DTP representative. Either the contacted party members refused to be interviewed, or their main concern was the process that the party was going through. 44 The interviewed MPs included sixteen former ministers, former or present standing committee chairs, deputy chairs or chairs of international parliamentary groups. Twelve of the group of front benchers were composed of MPs of AKP, two of MHP, one of CHP and one of DSP. Eighteen of the MPs we interviewed were deputy chairs or parliamentary assembly members. Thirteen of these MPs were from AKP, three were from CHP and two were from MHP.45

Empirical Analysis In the literature it is argued that elite socialization, constructive impact and communication are influential, and a growing interaction among national foreign policy actors is believed to lead to intense cooperation and contacts. 46 As the relevant decision-makers are socialized into the system, political cooperation and a certain amount of deviation to a common purpose are achieved. 47 In the foreign policy domain, learning and socialization become especially important, since it is a platform for the convergence of ideas. 48 In this framework it is believed that the acceleration of relations with the EU after the 1999 Helsinki Summit, and the opening of negotiations in 2003, increased the socialization and interactions among the EU and Turkish elites, which resulted in an increase in the coordination of foreign and security policies. A large majority of the interviewed MPs expressed approval of Turkey’s compliance with the EU’s Neighborhood Policy (ENP), even in regards to its implementation prior to Turkey’s membership.49 In our survey, we asked the MPs the question, “How much should Turkey comply with the Neighborhood Policy prior to full membership?” Responses were coded on an 11-point scale, with “0” indicating no compliance whatsoever and “10” indicating full compli-

Turkish Political Elite Perceptions on Security

279

ance. In the responses, the mean score was 6.85, with a standard deviation of 2.75. Figure 16.1 showed that 65 percent of the MPs chose high and full compliance and stated their willingness to increase compliance with the ENP.50 Figure 16.1. EU Neighborhood Policy and Turkey (%)

Source: SInAN Elite Survey 2009. Question: “In your view, to what extent should Turkey be compliant with the EU Neighborhood Policy before becoming a full EU member? 0 points indicates no compliance. 10 points indicates full compliance.”

The de-territorialization, increase in communication, and butterfly effect of the new global order push countries to be engaged in wider geographies, rather than in specific, limited areas. Turkey has widened its interest areas and started to engage not only with Europe, but also the Middle East, Mediterranean, and the Black Sea regions, which are included in the framework of the ENP. Our survey revealed this understanding and support for increased diversity of the regions in which Turkey becomes engaged. A majority of interviewed parliamentarians (54 percent) believed that Turkey should give priority and weight to multiple regions within the ENP, even though we had kept this option as an optional category in our questionnaire (Figure 16.2). Only one-third of the participants (34 percent) stated that they preferred a closer engagement with the Mediterranean and Middle East (presented as a single category), while the Black Sea region was at the bottom of the alternatives (3 percent). In this context, the Turkish elite’s perceptions on the ENP demonstrate that the necessity to comply with the requirements of the new global world and the EU is perceived as a crucial global factor by the Turkish foreign and security

280

Çiğdem Üstün and Özgehan Şenyuva

policy-makers. This also shows us that there is a level of reorientation and renovation in the security perceptions of Turkey, with an aim to come abreast with the globalized times, requiring more cooperation, economic and trade links, and political and social channels among the states, rather than pure hard power based on a realist approach. Figure 16.2. Turkey’s Preferred Involvement in Different Regions (%)

Source: SInAN Elite Survey 2009. Question: “Neighboring countries are grouped under regions in the EU Neighborhood Policy. Turkey should give more importance and weight to the Mediterranean and the Middle East; the Caucasus; Black Sea Region; Multiple regions?”

However, in order to understand real change among the Turkish elite, one needs to look at their perceptions regarding security structures at the European level. Although changes in relations with its neighbors is an important step for Turkey, military cooperation, harmonization and integration at the military level can be considered as a different case. As part of the Turkish Elite Survey, questions were asked in order to elicit the views of Turkish parliamentarians on the future of European security structures. Strikingly, 52 percent of the surveyed MPs preferred an EU-level arrangement to deal with European security (Figure 16.3). Only 23 percent stated that NATO would be more appropriate to deal with European security (Figure 16.3). During our interviews, representatives from both government and opposition parties stressed the importance of the necessity of the EU’s ability to protect and sustain its own security, independent from the United States and NATO. It

Turkish Political Elite Perceptions on Security

281

is believed that the result is based on the opinion that the EU is a much more appropriate actor in the region, compared to the United States, since it is perceived as a benign power.51 Figure 16.3. Preferred Authority for European Security (%)

Source: SInAN Elite Survey 2009. Question: “Which authority would be more appropriate to deal with European security?”

When one tries to understand the security perceptions of the people, it is important to first understand the ongoing debate on a European army, and cooperation between the national armies. A European army has been on the agenda for over 50 years, and in the recent Lisbon Treaty it was a subject of debate under the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), formerly known as the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). It is very difficult to see a full reference or complete integration regarding the defense and army issues, since these delicate subjects touch upon the sovereignty of the nation-states. The Lisbon Treaty foresees “joint disarmament operations; military advice and assistance task, peace-making and post-conflict stabilization; conflict prevention and post-conflict stabilization missions” and also contributes to combating terrorism “in supporting third countries in their territories.”52 The solidarity clause in the Treaty is a new mechanism, which aims to unify the Member States when one of them is the victim of a terrorist attack or of a natural or man-made disaster. According to the Treaty, the EU will mobilize all the instruments at its disposal, including military resources made available by Member States, to assist. In this framework, although the military capabilities remain in the national hands of the Member States and any Member State has the right to oppose CSDP operations

282

Çiğdem Üstün and Özgehan Şenyuva

and all contributions to them will always be on a voluntary basis, Europe’s ability to retain its own security has always been an intriguing subject. In this context, we investigated the Turkish parliamentary elite’s perceptions about a European army. Our analysis showed that a significant majority of Turkish parliamentarians (76 percent) supported the establishment of an EU army along with a national army, as proposed by the Lisbon Treaty. Only a small minority (7 percent) felt that national armies should be abolished in favor of a Single European Army (Figure 16.4). Figure 16.4. European Army vs. National Army (%)

Source: Sinan Elite Survey 2009. Question: “Single European Army or keep Turkey’s own national army. What's your opinion?”

The majority of MPs preferred to keep the national army in addition to supporting the establishment of a single European army, which showed a general reluctance to transfer authority.53 Such reluctance was also evident in conception of the transfer of authority in designing security policy. Almost half of the MPs favored keeping security policy-making at the national level (Figure 16.5). On the other hand, 21 percent opted for a combined security-making formation with the collaboration of national and European authorities. Remarkably, however, one-quarter of the Turkish parliamentary elite approved a transfer of authority from the national to the European level (Figure 16.5).

Turkish Political Elite Perceptions on Security

283

Figure 16.5. Transfer of Authority in Security Policy (%)

Source: SInAN Elite Survey 2009. Question: “How do you think it would be most appropriate to deal with each of the following policy areas? Security policy”

Conclusion The necessities of the new global order, especially after the September 11 attacks in the United States which were followed by several terrorist attacks in EU member states, have transformed the security and foreign policies of the nationstates and the EU. Turkey, as a country which has sought an international role for itself since the end of the Cold War, has understood that global security threats could not be overcome solely by its border security measures and hard power tools, such as its vast military forces. The new security understanding included natural resources, environment and energy security, which extended the territorial security understanding. In order to, first, guarantee its security in a region where a security vacuum occurred after the Cold War and, second, to enhance its role in the international arena, Turkey started to focus on soft power tools—such as deeper economic and trade links with neighbors, visa-free trade areas with countries such as Syria, Russia, Lebanon and Jordan, and increased energy links with supplier countries such as Iran and Russia. It has also been observed that Turkey became a more active actor in international organizations—i.e., the UN, OSCE, BSEC, and OIC. However, these renovative steps did not necessarily mean that Turkey gave

284

Çiğdem Üstün and Özgehan Şenyuva

up on its hard power tools. The geopolitical location of the country is still perceived as a challenging neighborhood, since it is situated in the middle of main problematic regions such as the Middle East and the Caucasus, where hot conflicts continue to define internal and external politics. In such a framework, although the general understanding regarding the security issues has been that they should be handled at the national level, the necessity of reacting to regional and global crises and threats effectively and efficiently increased the importance of the international and regional cooperation efforts. As it has been realized that the security understanding has been changing globally, the need for a more soft and civilian power has been revealed. Since the EU has been perceived as a more benign, soft power in the new global system, Turkish policies moved closer to those of the EU as a result of this increased necessity for a soft power image and Europeanization, due to its EU candidacy. In this context, as Turkey’s EU integration process continues, the EU has substantially changed the image of Turkey into a more positive one in its neighborhood, and has increased the role of the country as a soft power.54 Although the research conducted demonstrates this twist in the security and foreign policies of the country, it also reemphasizes that the political elite finds it important for the EU to have capabilities to take care of its own security matters in cooperation with national security forces. All in all, Turkish elites and policy-makers, while aiming both to accelerate Turkey’s EU accession process and to increase its role in the region and the international system, believe in the necessity of hard and soft power tools. Therefore, although it is difficult to deduce a complete transformation regarding the security perceptions of the Turkish elite, it is fair to underline the fact that Turkey has been aware of the global changes and the requirements of the new security order, which have pushed soft security tools and measures to the forefront.

Notes 1. Arnold Wolfers, “Discord and Collaboration,” (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), quoted in Andris Rucis, Latvia towards Europe: Internal Security Issues (Riga: NATO, 1999), 150. 2. Working Group on Curriculum Development, Partnership for Peace Consortium on Defence Academies and Security Studies Institutes, National Security Dimension, www.isn.ethz.ch (accessed March 20, 2004). 3. Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1998), 18–19. 4. Ibid., 27, quoted in Federica Bicchi, “European Security Perceptions vis-à-vis the Mediterranean: Theoretical and Empirical Considerations from the 1990s,” Jean Monnet Working Papers in Comparative and International Politics, no. 39 (November 2001), http://aei.pitt.edu/393/1/jmwp39.htm (accessed March 12, 2004). 5. Kenneth Booth, “Security and Emancipation,” Review of International Studies 17, no. 1 (1991): 317, quoted in Tan See Seng, Human Security: Discourse, Statecraft, Emancipation (Singapore: Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, May 2001), www.ntu.edu.sg/IDSS (accessed March 12, 2004).

Turkish Political Elite Perceptions on Security

285

6. Fulvio Attina, “Partnership and Security: Some Theoretical and Empirical Reasons for Positive Developments in the Euro-Mediterranean Area,” Jean Monnet Working Papers, no 27 (July 2000), http://aei.pitt.edu/400/1/jmwp27.htm (accessed October 2, 2011). 7. “Küreselleşme Tehdidi,” teror.gen.tr (accessed March 5, 2004). 8. Ole R. Holsti, “Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: Challenges to the AlmondLippmann Consensus,” International Studies Quarterly 36, no. 4 (1992): 439–66. 9. John J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War,” International Security 15, no. 5 (1990): 41. 10. Gabriel A. Almond, The American People and Foreign Policy (New York: Praeger, 1950); Bernard Cohen, The Public’s Impact on Foreign Policy (Boston: Little, 1973), Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973). 11. See Gamze Avcı, “Turkey’s EU Politics: Consolidating Democracy through Enlargement,” in Questioning the Enlargement: Europe in Search of Identity, ed. Helene Sjursen (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 62–77. 12. Sabri Sayarı and Alim Hasanov, “The 2007 Elections and Parliamentary Elites in Turkey: The Emergence of a New Political Class?” Turkish Studies 9, no. 2 (2008): 345– 61. 13. Çiğdem Üstün, Turkey and European Security Defence Policy Compatibility and Security Cultures in a Globalised World (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010). 14. Metin Heper, “The Ottoman Legacy and Turkish Politics,” Journal of International Affairs 54, no. 1 (2000): 63–82; Mustafa Aydın, “Security Conceptualization in Turkey,” in Security and Environment in the Mediterranean, Conceptualizing Security and Environment Conflicts, ed. Hans Günter Brauch, P. H. Liotta, Antonio Marquina, Paul F. Rogers, and Mohammad El-Sayed Selim, (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlang, 2003), 345–57; Ali L. Karaosmanoğlu, “The Evolution of National Security Culture and Military in Turkey,” Journal of International Affairs 54, no. 1 (2000): 199–216; Dietrich Jung and Wolfango Piccoli, Turkey at the Crossroads: Ottoman Legacies and a Greater Middle East (London: Zed Books, 2001). 15. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Turkey’s Security and its Relations with NATO,” in Mustafa Aydın, “Securitization of History and Geography: Understanding of Security in Turkey,” Southeast Europe and Black Sea Studies 3, no. 2 (2003): 164. 16. Code of National Security Council and General Secretary of National Security Council, mgk.gov.tr (accessed August 7, 2004). 17. Özden Zeynep Oktav, “Water Dispute and Kurdish Separatism in Turkish-Syrian Relations,” The Turkish Year Book 34 (2003); Erik J. Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004); Bilge Criss and Pinar Bilgin, “Turkish Foreign Policy toward the Middle East,” MERIA 1, no. 1 (1997); Dietrich Jung, “Turkey and the Arab World, Historical Narratives and New Political Realities,” Mediterranean Politics 10, no. 1 (2005): 1–17; Mustafa Aydın, “The Determinants of Turkish Foreign Policy and Turkey's European Vocation,” Review of International Affairs 3, no. 2 (2003): 306–31; Tarık Oğuzlu, “The Changing Dynamics of Turkey–Israel Relations: A Structural Realist Account,” Mediterranean Politics 5, no. 2 (2010): 273–88. 18. Haluk Bayülken, Türkiye-Yunanistan Dış ve Güvenlik Politikası ile İlgili Sorunlar (Ankara: T.C Başbakanlık Basın Yayın ve Enformasyon Genel Müdürlüğü, 1986). 19. Ibid., 35. 20. Several speeches by former Prime Minister Mesut Yılmaz, www.milliyet.com.tr; www.hurriyet.com.tr (accessed March 15, 2004).

286

Çiğdem Üstün and Özgehan Şenyuva

21. Kenan Evren, Statement, Newspot, September 7, 1984, in Mustafa Aydın, “Securitization of History and Geography: Understanding of Security in Turkey,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 3, no. 2 (2003): 167. 22. Hasan Cemal, Kürtler (İstanbul: Doğan Kitap, 2004), 108. 23. Mustafa Aydın, “Securitization of History and Geography,” 172. 24. Interviews by Çiğdem Üstün, TBMM, January 2005. (The names of the MPs that are interviewed cannot be revealed due to the confidentiality agreement.) 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. One of the campaigns that the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs used against the relation between the PKK and Greece was to publish booklets and books on this issue. These booklets include pictures of Abdullah Öcalan with Greek MPs, visits of the Greek Parliamentarian Delegation to Öcalan, plans of the camps situated in Greece, and examples of European newspapers and magazines, such as The Observer, and Europe, writing on the support given by Greece to the PKK, and testimonies of the terrorists trained in Greece. See Greece and PKK Terrorism (Ankara: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, February 1999). 28. The detailed history of the problems between Greece and Turkey can be read from D. Vamık Volkan and Norman Itzkowitz, Turks and Greeks, Neighbours in Conflict (London: The Eothen Press, 1994). The history begins with Anatolia before the Turks, Persian Wars, and a detailed history of the Ottoman Empire, the last century of the Ottoman Empire, the War of Independence. Also, the Cyprus issue, Davos, the effect of the Gulf War, and cultural similarities and dissimilarities are explained in detail in this book. 29. The historical background of this issue is given in great detail in Onur Öymen, Silahsız Savaş Bir Mücadele Sanatı Olarak Diplomasi (İstanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 2002). 30. Ali L. Karaosmanoğlu, “The Evolution of the National Security,” 200. 31. Interviews by Çiğdem Üstün, TBMM, December 2004 and January 2005. 32. Zbigniev Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 41. 33. In 1994, Turkey’s export to Greece was $168.7 million, and its import was $105.1 million. These numbers increased to $369.2 million and $319.7 million, in 1998. In 2005, they went up to $1.122 million and $721 million. Barış P. Karayılanoğlu, Yunanistan’ın Temel Ekonomik Göstergeleri ve Türkiye-Yunanistan Ticari Ekonomik İlişkileri (İzmir: İzmir Ticaret Odası, 2007), 9. 34. Ibid., 333. 35. Victor D. Cha, “Globalisation and the Study of International Security,” Journal of Peace Research 37, no. 3, (2000): 392. 36. Christopher Coker, “Globalisation and Terrorism,” Paper presented at a seminar on The Prospects for the Canadian Summit, (Tokyo: Nippon Press Centre, June 10, 2002), 7, quoted in Omar Lizardo, “The Effect of Economic and Cultural Globalisation on Anti-US Transnational Terrorism 1971–2000,” Journal of World Systems Research 12, no 1 (July 2006): 157. 37. Pınar Bilgin, “Rethinking Turkey’s Security Discourse: The Challenge of Globalisation” (paper presented at the annual meeting of American Political Science Association, Boston, August 29–September 1, 2002). 38. Sami Kohen, “Türkiye için Tehdit mi?” Milliyet, August 25, 2004. 39. “Turkey to Transfer Iran Gas to Europe,” Press TV, www.presstv.com (accessed June 15, 2009). 40. Alexander Murinson, “The Strategic Depth Doctrine of Turkish Foreign Policy,” Middle Eastern Studies 42, no. 6 (2006): 958.

Turkish Political Elite Perceptions on Security

287

41. Julian Borger’s Global Security Blog, “Text of the Iran-Turkey-Brazil Deal,” Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/julian-borger-global-security-blog/2010/may /17/iran-brazil-turkey-nuclear (accessed August 12, 2010). 42. “West Sceptical over Iran Nuclear Deal”, BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/ hi/middle_east/8688467.stm (accessed October 2, 2011). 43. For more information on the IntUne project see http://www.circap.unisi.it/. 44. The DTP was banned by the Constitutional Court on December 11, 2009, while two of its MPs were expelled from the parliament and the remaining party members established the Peace and Democracy Party (Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi—BDP). 45. Our sampling also relates to the gender balance in the parliament. Thirteen percent of our respondents were female, whereas only 9 percent of the MPs at TGNA were female. Given the small size of the sample, the deviations do not present problems with regards to representation. Thus, we did not weight the results. 46. Christoph Knill and Wolfgang Wagner, The Europeanization of National Foreign Policy: The Domestic Impact of European Union Membership on the (Post)-Neutral Countries Ireland and Austria (Konstanz: Universität Konstanz, 2005), 8. 47. Çiğdem Üstün, “Europeanization of Foreign Policy: The Case of Turkish Foreign Policy towards the Black Sea Region,” Southeast Europe and Black Sea Studies 10, no. 2 (2010): 227. 48. Simon J. Bulmer and Claudio M. Radaelli, “The Europeanisation of National Policy?” Queen’s Papers on Europeanisation, no. 1 (2004). 49. The ENP was developed in 2004 with an aim to avoid the emergence of new dividing lines between the enlarged EU and neighbors and instead strengthen prosperity, stability and security. The ENP is a distinct policy from the enlargement of the Union; therefore it includes the neighboring countries except the candidates and potential candidates. The ENP builds Partnership and Cooperation Agreements or Association Agreements. Implementation of the ENP is jointly promoted and monitored through the Committees and sub-Committees established in the frame of these agreements, and the European Commission under its own responsibility publishes each year the ENP Progress Reports for each country. Countries included in this policy are Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Moldova, Morocco, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Syria, Tunisia and Ukraine. 50. The categories are created by collapsing the scores as follows: No–Low (0–3), Medium (4–6), High (7–9) and Full (10). All analysis included in this chapter is given in valid percentages, calculated as a proportion of total valid answers, excluding “Don’t Know” and “Refusal” responses. 51. Petr Kratochvil, “Discursive Constructions of the EU’s Identity in the Neighbourhood: An Equal among Equals or the Power Centre?” European Political Economy Review 9 (Autumn 2009): 6. 52. Treaty of Lisbon, Article 28 B, paragraph 1. 53. Sait Akşit, Özgehan Şenyuva and Çiğdem Üstün, Myths and Elites Turkish Elite Survey 2009: Initial Findings (Ankara: Zeplin İletişim, 2010). 54. Atila Eralp, “Conclusion: Diverging or Converging Orientations in the Neighbourhood,” in Turkey and the EU: the Process of Change and Neighbourhood, ed. Atila Eralp and Çiğdem Üstün (Ankara: Zeplin İletişim, 2009), 212.

Conclusion: What Future for Security? Ebru Canan-Sokullu The twenty-first century’s new security agenda has been witnessing an expansion of the scope and gravity of foreign policy “challenges,” “threats” and “risks” that transcend socio-economic, demographic and geographic boundaries. Turkey holds a unique position within these developments as regards its geopolitical location, strategic extension and socio-cultural dynamics in international and regional politics. In the twenty-first century, Turkey’s new involvement in security politics carries multidimensional, multiregional and multisectoral attributes. The thawing of the Cold War presented a particular source of various challenges as well as opportunities in the changing foreign and security context for Turkey. It is well-known that Turkey’s “security” was historically defined by traditional hard security issues rather than by soft security considerations. It concentrated on military power and territorial defense against potential aggressors, and national security policies focused on finding a way to survive the “security dilemma.” However, the end of the Cold War was characterized by an increasing recognition of the reduced value and importance of military power, so that security became more concerned with issues such as economic and social conditions, environmental damage, ethnic, religious, civil conflict, terrorism, and organized crime. One of the conclusions that we can draw from the analyses in the book is that Turkey’s appeal as a “soft power” in the Middle East, Balkans and Central Asia has increased, especially in this last decade. Besides its participation in traditional hard security-oriented foreign policy initiatives, in the last decade, Turkey has increased its strategic value through diplomatic initiatives relevant to a new global security environment, such as providing an energy corridor between the EU, the Trans-Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East. Turkey has also acted as a promoter of stability to meet the security needs of the Euro-Atlantic security community to link the Euro-Atlantic sphere with the Eurasian geopolitical system at economic, political and strategic

289

290

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

levels. Furthermore, mediating and contributing to solving chronic problems through intensive diplomatic initiatives with eastern neighbors has added to the role of Turkey’s soft power in its multidimensional foreign policy framework. This potential and recognition of Turkey’s soft power is deemed as a very important step forward for Turkey’s “redefined” foreign and security policy. This book has argued that Turkey’s unique position as regards its geopolitical location, strategic extension and socio-cultural dynamics in international and regional politics has altered the country’s security policies towards a more multidimensional, multiregional and multisectoral approach. Since the end of the Cold War the security challenges and opportunities that Turkey has faced have been in constant change. The new security agenda that emerged in the post-Cold War era reduced the value and importance of military power, and transformed hard security concerns and norms into a soft security agenda. Thus, Turkey’s security agenda witnessed a restructuring and reformulation at national, regional and sub-systemic levels, particularly during the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—Justice and Development Party) period.

Conceptual Overview of “Security” and “Challenge” This volume has concentrated on those challenges and threats posed to the contemporary international system that can no longer be reduced to a state-centric security calculus. It has examined Turkish foreign and security policy in the twenty-first century, in tandem with its regional and transatlantic connections, during the AKP government. In particular, the book has investigated Turkey’s security agenda in the twenty-first century with specific reference to the concept of “security challenge.” Security challenges have been examined at different levels of analysis, with the most frequent emphasis being on a region-specific level of analysis. The multiplicity of agents and targets of security challenges have also been assessed, ranging from the domestic dynamics internal to the state to global dynamics such as environmental risks. In doing so, this book has presented various arguments relating to the sectoral extension of security and challenges, as argued by the Copenhagen School. Part I devoted itself to discussing the evolution of the theoretical debate over the meaning of security and the means of achieving security. Craig Snyder, in chapter 1—titled “Security and Challenges in the Twenty-first Century: A Theoretical Outlook”—introduced the reader to the broader theoretical perspectives covered in the book. To provide an overview of “change” in the security agenda, he surveyed the major themes and evolution of strategic/security studies over the past sixty years, namely classical thought, modern strategic theory (from the inter-war period through to the Cold War), and contemporary theoretical assumptions. He examined how concepts such as security and challenge have widened and deepened, both as a result of geo-political changes in the post-Cold War era but also through academic debates concerning the study of security. For

Conclusion: What Future for Security?

291

states such as Turkey, these changes are immense, as the nature and direction of threats have shifted radically during the last decade of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century to include internal political and social threats as much as external military threats. More specifically, Snyder argued that the nature of the study of security has had a direct influence on the nature of the security policies adopted. In the case of Turkey, Snyder argued that over-emphasizing Cold War-era threats resulted in overlooking “a plethora of security threats and challenges that may have been resolved before they manifested themselves into violent episodes.” He argued that during the Cold War, as a front-line state, Turkish foreign and security policy was especially focused on the East-West confrontation. With the end of the Cold War, Turkey continued to find itself on the front-line, but this time between the West and radical Islamic forces. As a new set of security challenges rose to the fore, transcending national borders, Turkey has needed to develop a “regional” reference to face challenges. Snyder pointed out that, echoing global trends, Turkey has undergone a transformation in its foreign and security policy outlook. This transformation has also provided a case study for the literature on security in international relations. While the Cold War era was predominantly shaped with reference to the nation-state and national interest, interdependence was recognized as an important issue only with reference to military security. The concept of “collective security” sought greater interdependence among states after the September 11 attacks underscored the vulnerability of modern industrial states to unconventional threats, which now constituted the new security agenda. The new global security agenda raises an important question about “how” states should meet the new challenges and threats. In Turkey’s case, its regional engagement policy aims to develop a new type of collective security to meet contemporary security challenges. Theoretical debates about how to understand Turkey’s security policies regarding contemporary challenges were addressed in chapter 2—titled “Insulator, Bridge, Regional Center? Turkey and Regional Security Complexes”—by Thomas Diez, with specific focus on “Regional Security Complex Theory” (RSCT). This theory sees Turkey as an “insulator” state between the European, the Middle Eastern and the Central Asian security complexes; yet Turkey is unable to draw these security complexes together into a coherent whole. Diez explored the concept of “insulator” in the theory, and challenged the idea of “insulating.” He suggested that, rather than being an insulator, Turkey could be seen as a meeting ground of security dynamics that result in domestic political struggles about the legitimate order. The Turkish case shows, firstly, striving to define clear-cut borders for security complexes is problematic, and that it would be better to conceptualize regional security complexes as overlapping. Secondly, the focus on “macrosecuritization” prevented the opportunity to analyze more closely the role that securitizing moves play in domestic political debates. Diez argued that such reconceptualization would work better analytically in the Turkish case. At the same time, it would focus more on Turkish political actors and their way of engaging in the broader security context. He also suggested that

292

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

states caught between security dynamics always have an option to act passively or pursue an active policy of “barrier” or “bridge.” Diez concluded that the treatment of Turkey as an insulator did not only bring with it problematic political consequences, it also reinforced the illusion of orderly borders between security regions. Theoretical debate about the relationship between the nature of “security” and “challenge” in the Turkish context, and its implications for the neighboring regions from a multidimensional approach was covered in chapter 3— titled “Continuities and Changes in Turkish Foreign and Security Policy in the Twenty-first Century and the EU.” Selcen Öner critically analyzed how Turkey’s traditionally Hobbesian foreign and security policy evolved during the AKP era. She argued that this Hobbesian approach was abandoned by the AKP, who adopted instead a Kantian approach to security. That is, the former “win-lose approach” to security was replaced by a “win-win approach” as new opportunities and challenges to security emerged. Rather than focusing on military security and the balance of power, Turkey’s foreign and security policy has moved, under the AKP, towards an increasing emphasis on civilian instruments, such as law and diplomacy, with more emphasis on being active, cooperative, and constructive. The focus of this transformation, as Öner argued, rests in the “Strategic Depth” vision of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmet Davutoğlu, which has played an active role in reconstructing Turkey’s security policy as a policy of “zero problems” with neighbors.

Internal Security Challenges: The Military–Civilian Divide and Political Islam In part II, this book covered two internal security challenges facing Turkish democracy, which are the long-lasting intrusive role of the military in domestic politics when faced with ethno-religious tensions, and the Islamic challenge to democracy and laïcité caused by the rise of political Islam. In chapter 4—titled “Beyond Military Tutelage? Turkish Military Politics and the AKP Government”—İsmet Akça and Evren Balta-Paker concentrated on the issue of the military–civilian divide in order to debate the question of whether and to what extent it was a challenge to regime security in Turkey. Since the foundation of the Republic, Kemalist ideology has affected almost all aspects of Turkish security policies. The Kemalist Turkish state established strict controls in the name of secularism over religion, religious institutions, and radical activism, and over all different ethnic and cultural identities and groups and separatist movements in the name of protecting national identity. The most visible result of this process was the militarization of domestic politics, and the Turkish Armed Forces’ (TAF) significant power, at least until the start of the twenty-first century, to define internal as well as external security challenges, and to undertake operations against all manifestations of these challenges.

Conclusion: What Future for Security?

293

İsmet Akça and Evren Balta-Paker demonstrated that the frequent recourse to authoritarian modes of governance, which has been the major obstacle to the democratization process in Turkey, has begun to change as the balance of forces in civil–military relations has gradually swung in favor of the civilian government. Analyzing the first eight years of AKP government, they argued that the transformation of civil–military relations in Turkey related to three factors: the presence of international conditionality, a decrease in the level of internal threats, and the emergence of a domestic political actor with the capacity and will to challenge the military establishment. As a result of the highly polarizing and exclusionary tactics of the military elites, the AKP government was obliged to pursue a civilianization agenda in order to be able to remain in the political arena. Thus, the interaction between the civilian government and the military elites transformed the civilians into strategic democrats. The June 2011 elections, which marked the AKP’s third electoral victory in a row, was followed by the resignation of Turkey’s top military commanders, the chief of staff, Gen. Işık Koşaner, together with the commanders of the navy, army and air forces. Closely related to the ongoing Ergenekon and Balyoz trials, this mass resignation was of a symbolic value as, Gen. Koşaner had said that if he could not defend the rights of the men who had been detained—as of August 2011, about 250 military personnel are in jail in relation to these trials, including 173 serving and seventy-seven retired staff—it would not be possible to continue in his job. This resignation of these top generals was without precedent in Turkish history, yet it failed to cause a political crisis or a strong public response. Akça and Balta-Paker concluded that this therefore represents a symbolic turning point in the ongoing transformation of civil–military relations that marked the end of the military dominance of Turkish politics. The other contentious internal security challenge covered in the book is the Islamization of the political and public domains as a challenge to the secularity of state. Selin Özoğuz-Bolgi, in chapter 5—titled “Islamization: A Challenge to Turkey’s Secular Democracy?”—examined whether Islamization truly represents a challenge to Turkey’s secular democracy, with specific focus on the AKP era. Secularization, which has been a top-down process in Turkey based on the Republican understanding of laicism, has institutionalized a form of “stateIslam.” That secularism was a tool to protect the nation-state, so the state has become profoundly involved in how Islam should be understood and practiced, which has inevitably created a more visible popular and political tension during the AKP era. Similarly to Akça and Balta-Paker, Özoğuz-Bolgi argued that the AKP has positioned itself as more of a center-right party than a politically Islamist one, due to domestic and international conditions. She argued that the AKP government used the EU accession process and the international climate for its own leverage, but that later, party officials realized that in order to attract a wider constituency and stay in power, they needed to change their Islamic worldview. Hence, they deliberately reinvented themselves as a center-right party. In search of an answer to whether the AKP’s “conservative democratic” stance, which is considered by many as a moderate expression of political Islamic tendency, is a challenge to the security of the secular regime in Turkey,

294

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

Özoğuz-Bolgi suggested that when democratic ways are opened to politically Islamic-inclined parties, it is more likely that, rather than becoming more radical, they become more moderate. This means that oppression cannot be the method for opposing such movements. She concluded that opening up the political arena to pluralistic views may enhance future democratic consolidation, while calming radical movements and disputes.

External Security Challenges: Old Neighbors and New Challenges Part III of this book examined Turkey’s external security challenges through detailed analysis of issues ranging from soft security challenges to military concerns, and across regions, including both Turkey’s security relations with the countries in the “near abroad”—the Mediterranean, Middle East, Caucasus, and Caspian regions—as well as with its Transatlantic “good old friend”— concentrating on different units of analysis ranging from states to foreign policy elites. The “Cyprus issue”—an important cornerstone of Turkish foreign and security policy in the Mediterranean—has long been defined as an impasse because it reflected one of the most uneasy and long-lasting security concerns of Turkey. Ahmet Sözen in chapter 6—titled “Turkey’s New Cyprus Policy: Transforming a Military Base into a Basin of Cooperation”—explored Turkey’s new Cyprus policy to argue that Cyprus has transformed from being a pure military base to a basin of cooperation. According to Sözen, in the changing context of Turkey’s security concerns and subsequent security policies with regard to the Cyprus impasse, the AKP government’s clear foreign policy agenda, driven by the “strategic depth” approach of Davutoğlu, reflected a clear political will to shift Turkey’s security considerations concerning the Mediterranean from a military and strategic perspective to one based on soft power, and regional cooperation. Citing Davutoğlu’s definition of Turkey’s objectives in Cyprus—the designing of a new order where the Turkish Cypriots’ existence and security are guaranteed, and the protection of the balance (of power) in the Mediterranean— Sözen suggested that these objectives, without a doubt, have been reflected in Turkey’s recent policy vis-à-vis the Cyprus conflict and the peace negotiations. Sözen identifies certain prospects for the success of this vision and of the Cyprus problem compared to the past. One part of the solution relates to Turkey’s increased use of soft power, coupled with its insistence on solving the Cyprus issue through established UN parameters. The remaining part of the solution is inevitably linked to whether the Greek Cypriots will either settle for a UNsponsored settlement or leave the negotiation table and pay the price, which ranges from the formation of a Taiwanized North Cyprus, where the TRNC normalizes its relations with the international community without formal recognition, to a Kosovoized North Cyprus, where a certain number of countries recognize the TRNC. Besides these external factors, Sözen concluded that the pos-

Conclusion: What Future for Security?

295

sibility to turn Cyprus into a basin of cooperation will be tested by a critical juncture in foreign policy-making in the future. That is, the normalization of military–civilian relations on the domestic front, and degree of entrenchment of the civilian-elected ruling elites’ new principles in Turkish foreign policy should continue to win over the role of the traditional Turkish military–bureaucratic elite. Similarly, Turkey has been normalizing its security relations with the Middle East—replete with multiple challenges—with reference to the interests of regional actors (e.g., Israel and Iraq), transatlantic actors (e.g., the United States and the EU), as well as Turkey’s strategic national self-interest, as recently redefined by the civilian elected ruling elites against the traditional Turkish military–bureaucratic elite. Considering the multiple security challenges of the Middle East that not only the countries in the region but also international actors such as the EU and the United States face, Turkey has undeniably developed a new role as a security provider and mediator. However, despite support for Turkey’s presence in the region due to its soft power, from a military security perspective, the ambivalent position of Turkey as a NATO member complicates its presence in the region. This is considered as a threat that increases Arab distrust of the NATO alliance and sours the relationship between Turkey and the Arab countries of the region. That skepticism towards American interests, which are intertwined with those of Israel in the region, boosts anti-Americanism among the Arabs. This inevitably challenges Turkey’s ability to be a security actor in the region. In chapter 7—titled “Turkey’s Changing Relations with the Middle East: New Challenges and Opportunities in the 2000s”—Özlem Tür analyzed Turkey’s relations with its neighbors in the Middle East since the 1990s—years associated with tension and conflict—in order to demonstrate the AKP’s impact and Davutoğlu’s “zero-problems with neighbors” vision on Turkey’s changing activism in the region. The “change” she focused on includes contributions to peace and security in the region through the creation of economic interdependency and dialogue. However, the question remains as to what extent these policies have been successful. Apart from a lively economic relationship and much travel around the region by policy-makers, as well as the free movement of people, what has Turkey achieved in its relations with the Middle East? Tür’s answer remains rather critical, claiming that, even at the height of its improved relations with Syria, Turkey seemed to lack any concrete agreements regarding the Hatay issue and water rights on the Tigris and Euphrates. For the sake of prioritizing relations with Hamas, Turkey alienated Israel, which damaged its objectivity on the Palestinian issue, and resulted in its exclusion from the recent Arab-Israeli peace process, where it was replaced by Egypt and Jordan. Tür argued that Turkey’s foreign policy towards the Middle East increased the domestic popularity of the AKP government. To this end, the government also brought the Palestinian issue onto the agenda of world politics, especially by attacking Israel in public speeches and on international platforms, such as the Davos Summit of 2009, and over the Mavi Marmara incident. Despite international criticisms about a “shift of axis,” Turkey’s closer relations with the Mid-

296

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

dle East have produced economic benefits, due to the attachment to “historical depth,” as argued by Davutoğlu. However, Tür remained rather cautious in her analysis. She concluded that the prospects for success depend on the risks of Turkey’s involvement in the region, which are largely dependent on the shaky and fragile dynamics of the region. Focusing more on Turkish security concerns related to Israel, Nathalie Tocci, in chapter 8—titled “Switching Sides or Novel Force? Turkey’s Relations with Israel and the Palestinians”—questioned whether Turkey’s security policies since the 1990s have merely “switched sides” or have undergone a qualitative jump to represent a constructive “novel force” in the region. In other words, does the change in Turkish foreign and security policy today replicate the same dynamics of the 1990s, or has it generated new and more constructive ones in the Middle East? Tocci argued that Turkey’s activism in the Arab–Israeli conflict hub is not new. Its interventions in the past fit into the balance of power logic of the broader Arab-Israeli/Soviet-American conflict. In the 1990s, however, Turkey’s security policies were marked by assertiveness and confrontation. While Turkey’s military relationship with Israel found favor in the West, Turkey’s actions also made the Middle East an even more unstable and crisis-prone region, almost triggering a war with Syria in 1998. Tocci contended that Turkey’s relationship with Israel and Palestine has undergone a structural turn in recent years. This change has been made all too evident by the fiery rhetoric of Turkish political leaders, which has become a cause for concern in the United States and Europe. Her analysis made it clear that, while Turkey has improved relations with its southern neighbors and enjoyed a qualitatively better image in the Arab world, Turkish–Israeli relations have witnessed a deterioration. Her analysis offers several policy prescriptions to Turkey’s foreign and security policy-makers. In order for Turkey’s transformed security relations with Israel and the Palestinians to become a constructive novel force for peaceful change in the region, Turkey’s foreign policy needs to develop consistency. That is, if Turkey denounces Israeli policies in Gaza, then she should adopt a similar line of policy in cases such as Sudan. Related to this, she argued that Turkish foreign policy must act in the name of universal norms and international law, and not according to particularistic ethnic/religious affinities. Her analysis concluded with the expectation that Turkey can run a balanced policy in the Middle East that avoids any participation in identity-driven clashes involving populist rhetoric, by promoting reconciliation driven by international law and values. This approach would also contribute to Turkey’s becoming a novel constructive force for peaceful change in the region. Another challenge to Turkey’s external as well as internal security in the Middle East has been the long-debated question of the “Iraqi conundrum,” which is deeply related to the southeastern border with Northern Iraq, the Kurdistan People’s Party (PKK) terror, and the “Kurdish issue.” Armağan Gözkaman, in chapter 9—titled “The Iraqi Conundrum: A Source of Insecurity for Turkey?”—examined the web of complex issues faced by Turkey’s foreign and security policy in regards to the Iraqi predicament. According to Gözkaman, Turkey’s role in the region is an indispensable one. For example, Turkey sup-

Conclusion: What Future for Security?

297

ported efforts towards achieving national reconciliation, security and peace in Iraq, in the aftermath of the 2003 war. It has been carrying out such important tasks as training Iraqi security forces, organizing seminars for Iraqi political parties, diplomats, media representatives and health personnel, and hosting an enlarged meeting of Iraq’s neighboring countries to support national reconciliation and stabilization in the country in the post-Iraq war era. However, despite these efforts, the situation in Iraq does not leave much room for optimism considering the high death toll, violence and ethno-religious clashes, which contribute to the growing insecurity in the country, as well as in the region. Efficient cooperation on the PKK issue with the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq is Turkey’s foremost demand. However, it seems unlikely that the KRG will take decisive measures against the PKK as demanded by Ankara. The inclusion of Kerkuk in the KRG’s jurisdiction presents another potential source of friction between Turkey and the Kurdish administration. Gözkaman concluded that Turkey’s security needs will require multilateral efforts, and the will for closer cooperation and friendly relations, which are an integral part of the struggle with strongly interrelated security challenges. Besides the fact that Turkey’s security interests are deeply embedded in the Middle East in the twenty-first century, security concerns on the northeastern borders, the southern Caucasus and the Caspian region are also particularly important for both regional and sectoral reasons. Concerning the regional reasons, not only at the micro-regional level, where bilateral relations with immediate neighbors such as Armenia and Azerbaijan are important, macro-regional dynamics and relations with countries such as Russia are an essential pillar of the security dynamics in the Caucasus. Burcu Gültekin-Punsmann analyzed in chapter 10—titled “Turkish-Russian Rapprochement and the Security Dialogue in the Black Sea-South Caucasus Region”—the new patterns of Turkish– Russian relations that reveal the positive impacts on bilateral political relations of adopting a pragmatic approach based on business initiatives. GültekinPunsmann argued that the twenty-first century Turkish–Russian rapprochement will also positively affect regional security dynamics. In her view, a rapprochement between Moscow and Ankara has provided a chance to turn the Transcaucasus into a zone of stability and cooperation, while neutralizing the efforts of other actors who aimed at instability in the region. Furthermore, Ankara’s belief that antagonizing Moscow would destabilize the region, and that Russia is a key party to the resolution of the frozen conflicts in the region, has definitely contributed to this new stability. The explicit linkage between regional stability and conflict resolution means that the Caucasus Platform initiative is able to solve problems stemming from regional conflicts in the common geographic neighborhood. As her analysis also pointed out, transferring economic bilateral cooperation between Russia and Turkey to the Black Sea-Caucasian neighborhood might lead to the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations, contribute to the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, help to open up and reintegrate Abkhazia into the region, and overcome tensions in the Crimea. This chapter also elaborated on the possibilities that Turkish-–Russian rapprochement, by contributing to peace-building efforts in the Black Sea Cauca-

298

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

sus, could strengthen the European security architecture by preventing the collapse of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe. Besides discussing the political and economic importance of the Black SeaCaucasus region, including the particular significance of Turkey’s relations with Russia, this book also dealt with energy supply per se as a significant security sector that reinforces Turkey’s position in the Caucasian regional economic security puzzle. Owing to the vast oil and gas reserves in the Caspian basin, Turkey, while pursuing its own interests in seeking energy sources and energy security, can serve as an energy corridor within the EU’s neighborhood. In chapter 11, Özgür Ünal Eriş discussed this issue within the framework of the EU Neighborhood Policy (ENP). Her analyses explored the significance of energy security as reflected in the ENP, especially after the Russia–Ukraine energy disputes in 2006 and 2009. Turkey’s role in this regard was two-fold: as a contributor and as a stakeholder in the ENP and energy security. Ünal Eriş addressed the two developments which showed the importance the EU gives to ENP countries in the sphere of energy security. One was the substantial inclusion of energy security in the Eastern Partnership Initiative in order to improve the ENP through promoting further integration with the EU’s six immediate eastern neighbors—Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. The other development was related to the EU’s democratization efforts in the region, especially with Azerbaijan and Ukraine, which would reinforce its interests in the context of energy security. However, despite these flagship initiatives, Ünal Eriş showed that the ENP suffers from certain institutional inadequacies, preventing it from implementing the EU’s design for energy security. She suggested that Turkey can play an important role by helping the EU improve its ENP due to Turkey’s strategic location between Europe and its neighborhood, within which Turkey and the EU have shared interests. Turkey can improve the EU’s energy security in particular because it is a bridge between Europe and the Caspian region, which is becoming a significant alternative to other energy sources and supply routes through its significant infrastructure of pipelines carrying gas and oil to Europe. She therefore concluded that Turkey can be a key asset assisting the EU to fulfill two of its main strategic aims: first, to maintain its character as a security community through an improved and better functioning ENP; second, to enable the ENP to provide a more effective solution to the EU’s energy security problem. This contribution is not only important for European interests but also in line with the foreign policy priorities of Turkey, which aims to be an influential regional power through the constructive relationships it builds with all of its neighbors. In part IV, Turkey’s relations with the Euro-Atlantic partners were examined with reference to hard and soft security issues. Relations with the United States have always been a central dimension of Turkey’s foreign and security politics since the beginning of World War II. The security priorities of both countries have been strongly interdependent. Turkey has been recognized as the United States’ reliable “strategic partner.” Regions in which Turkey has historically had interests, like the Balkans, the Caspian basin, the Middle East, and the Eastern Mediterranean, have also been important for the United States’ regional

Conclusion: What Future for Security?

299

security strategies. Reciprocally, the weight of the transatlantic pillar for Turkey’s security interdependence has always been undeniable. Though the Iraqi War harmed the relationship between the United States and Turkey, the new U.S. foreign policy in the Obama era was to enlist and empower dialogue with a secular and democratic Turkey. Emre İşeri, in chapter 12—titled “Security Challenges of Turkish-American Relations in the Post-Bush Era”—examined the security challenges of Turkey’s relations with the United States, concentrating on the post-Bush era. He analyzed Turkey’s emerging autonomous power in the Greater Middle East (GME) with reference to the changing “strategic partnership” concept of TurkishAmerican relations from the Cold War to the post-Cold War period. He then moved on to an analysis of the principal security developments and challenges in post-Saddam Iraq, Iran, and Israel, and their impacts on Turkish-American relations under the Obama presidency. İşeri concluded that these security challenges do not have much to do with the character of Turkish-American bi-lateral relations; rather, they have to do with the unwillingness of the United States to adapt its Cold War-oriented foreign policy to the realities of the twenty-first century. In his analysis, one of the core findings was that President Obama has been endeavoring to make a change in American foreign policy by improving relations with the wider Muslim world, reconstitute U.S. alliances, and regain its lost prestige. Hence, İşeri suggested that Turkey has once again become an ally that the United States needs, particularly at a time when American troops have been withdrawing from Iraq, and anti-American regimes in the Middle East have resulted in the outbreak of the Arab spring. Thus, for U.S. regional interests, the Turkish-American rapprochement has become an integral factor for ensuring peace and stability in the GME, and in relation to U.S. efforts to rebuild its image in the Muslim world. As he concluded, without a profound change in the orientation of American foreign policy in the region, Turkish-American security relations will not regain their earlier strategic partnership characteristics in the post-Bush era. From a security perspective, on the western front, Turkey has undeniably been a pivotal country and faithful ally. While it has been a traditionally proAmerican country, in terms of the security equilibrium, some circles in Turkey see the EU as a force to balance an overpowering American hegemony, and conversely the U.S. partnership has been considered as support vis-à-vis ambivalent Turkey-EU relations. As far as the European security architecture is concerned, Turkey has offered itself as a security corridor to contribute to facing hard and soft security challenges, using both its military and soft-power potentials. As regards military and non-military security concerns involving various actors within which Turkey has an institutional presence, Turkey’s immediate areas of interest—the Balkans, Cyprus and the Aegean Sea—were given particular attention in this book. Adam Balcer, in chapter 13—titled “Turkey as a Stakeholder and Contributor to Regional Security in the Western Balkans”—concentrated on Turkey’s role as a security provider in the Western Balkans, and on the impact of an even-

300

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

tual increase of Turkish engagement on the stabilization of the region. Balcer’s analysis covered the security challenges in the Western Balkans since the wars of the 1990s, which have shifted from a military-oriented hard security domain to the domain of soft security. His focus was particularly on organized crime and religious and nationalist extremism, not only with reference to these challenges as posed to countries in the region, but also as they constitute challenges for Turkey’s security needs in the twenty-first century. Balcer argued that, as a country with historical, social, economic, cultural and security stakes in the region, Turkey’s contribution to regional stability has been timely and instrumental in serving its own interests in the region. For Turkey, effective engagement efforts in stabilizing the Western Balkans support Turkey’s process of accession to the EU. Yet at the same time, a permanent crisis in Turkey’s accession to the EU may have a serious negative effect on cooperation between Brussels and Ankara in the Western Balkans. Although, as Balcer speculated, Turkey would not torpedo the EU’s agenda in the Western Balkan region, Turkey might push for a substantial slowdown of the enlargement process in certain Western Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia), resulting in an increasing Euroskepticism among the Balkan Muslims. He concluded that it would be in both parties’ interests to link the EU accession processes of Turkey and stability in the Western Balkans. Concerning Turkey’s longstanding disputes with Greece, a skeptical approach has historically marked trilateral Turkey-EU-Greece relations. Greece and Turkey have historically experienced periods of tension and hostility. In 1999, a new process of rapprochement began that many hoped would open the way for a fundamental reassessment of relations, and concrete efforts to resolve the longstanding issues that blighted their relationship. There has been a much greater degree of co-operation between Athens and Ankara on a wide range of issues, such as the environment, transport, tourism, trade and the combating of organized crime. However, as James Ker-Lindsay argued in chapter 14, titled “Turkey and Greece: What Future for Rapprochement?” the rapprochement has not produced the types of results that many had expected, which has led to frustration. Instead, after a decade of efforts to resolve the key issues, little has been achieved. Ker-Lindsay argued that while the rapprochement was founded on the premise that Greece and Turkey share mutual concerns over a variety of matters beyond their bilateral relations, both governments have insisted that a full normalization of relations can only be achieved by resolving the outstanding disputes, namely the Aegean dispute and the issue of Cyprus, as outlined by Sözen in chapter 6 in this book. Whereas the Aegean is a strictly bilateral issue, and must therefore be solved by the two governments in a mutually acceptable manner, the Cyprus issue is primarily shaped by the political leaders of the two communities. According to Ker-Lindsay, neither Athens nor Ankara can impose a solution on the Greek and Turkish Cypriots. As stated above, these issues are also related to the EU presence concerning the regional dynamics. Conventional thinking is that if Turkey’s EU integration process is interrupted, or even halted altogether, it could well lead to a resurgence of Greek-Turkish hostility. Likewise, Ker-Lindsay found it unfortunate to think that an improvement in Greek-

Conclusion: What Future for Security?

301

Turkish relations can only be conceptualized in terms of Turkey’s integration with Europe. He contended that neither Athens nor Ankara should forget that the underlying rationale of the talks was to find areas of common interest in soft- as well as hard-security domains. Soft-security challenges and Turkey’s aspirations to share the EU’s softsecurity concerns were further analyzed with specific reference to environmental security in chapter 15—titled “Turkey’s Approach to Environmental Security: A Case for Soft Security”—by Rana İzci. İzci focused on the non-military security issue of environmental security and Turkey’s commitment and capacity to comply with global and regional efforts to provide security in terms of protection of the environment. This analysis shed light on the challenge of global climate change, which visibly and deeply altered collective understandings and perceptions of security and development all over the world. However, Turkey’s environmental policy in general, and concerning climate change policies in particular, have been given a rather low priority on the country’s political agenda, although, as İzci claimed, Turkey’s environmental policy has become increasingly linked to the EU’s environmental policy considerations. This would give Turkey a great opportunity to evaluate how environmental change is perceived and environmental considerations are integrated into other policy areas in the country. These developments have clearly underlined the urgent need for costly investments in all economic sectors and changes in consumption and production patterns, as well as changes in policy-making considerations in Turkey. However, none of them has adequately touched upon Turkey’s environmental security understanding. While heated debates about these developments center on high politics, serious environmental degradation requires a shift in the prevailing discourse of environmental security in Turkey. As a party to the international climate regime, Turkey needs to look at climate change in terms of human security and ecological integrity. İzci argued that this would likely lessen the challenge of over-prioritization of economic risks and threats in Turkey. According to her, Turkey’s non-contribution to the EU’s efforts to transition to a lowcarbon future would lead to serious setbacks in overall sustainability targets of the country. The final debate that this book touched upon was the security-democracy nexus as a necessary component of a constructive and peace-oriented foreign policy. Analysis so far revolved around different stakeholders’ interests and contributions to Turkey’s security policies, and how recent hard- as well as softsecurity challenges have transformed these policies at the governmental level. In this approach, the foreign policy elites—be they elected governments or the military–bureaucratic elite—play an important role in decision-making. These highly interconnected and specialized groups of individuals are equipped with political power, technical expertise, and economic, social or cultural capital. Following this line of argument, in chapter 16—titled “Turkish Political Elite Perceptions on Security”—Çiğdem Üstün and Özgehan Şenyuva studied the Turkish political elites’ perceptions on security. Democratic elitism suggests that elites are more sophisticated due to the advantages they hold: better education, better socialization into and better grasp of political mechanisms, a high

302

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

degree of expertise, and an affluent background of higher socio-economic strata of the society. The elite still remain as the main unit of analysis in foreign policy issues, and even to a larger extent in security studies. The authors argued that Turkey’s security understanding, cultivated through an elite-driven process, has been dominated by the perceived threats emanating from both the country’s geopolitical situation and historical memory. Turkey has long been seen as a country investing in hard security matters, and so it has been important for Turkey that the state maintains an independent military production capability and capacity, since its borders with neighboring countries have been perceived as potential sources of insecurity. However, in the last decade it appears that the security understanding of the elites in Turkey has shifted from a hard to a rather soft understanding. In this chapter, Üstün and Şenyuva discussed whether there has really been a substantial change in the security perceptions of the political elite. The authors further investigated the main characteristics and determinants of this change, asking how elites foresaw the future of security policy-making in terms of Turkey-EU relations, the European Army, and the future of NATO. Their analyses led to several interesting findings. First, although the general understanding regarding the security issues has been that they should be handled at the national level, the necessity of reacting to regional and global crises and threats effectively and efficiently increased the importance of regional and international cooperation efforts. Second, the Turkish political elite found it important for the EU to have the capability to take care of its own security matters in cooperation with national security forces. Yet, contrary to their initial expectation, Üstün and Şenyuva found that the Turkish elite and policy-makers, while aiming both to accelerate Turkey’s EU accession process and to increase its role regionally and internationally, believed in the necessity of both hard- and soft-power tools, rather than abandoning hard-power in favor of soft-power instruments.

What Future for Security? This edited volume aimed to give a detailed account of the strategic and security agenda facing Turkey in an era of uncertainty and swift transformation in global politics and local dynamics in the twenty-first century. Adopting a multisectoral and multidimensional approach, it sought to describe the challenges and opportunities that Turkey has been encountering at the international, regional and national levels at the beginning of the twenty-first century, which has been not only a time of extraordinary flux for the global world order, but also for Turkey’s internal political environment. The aim of this book was twofold. First, by outlining alternative theoretical viewpoints, it offered the reader the opportunity to locate Turkey’s security dynamics and strategies in a conceptual framework. The conceptual debate on Turkey’s security discourses and policies provided an extensive overview of the paradigms of security and the conceptual debate over the new activism in Turkish foreign and security policy in the late Westphalian

Conclusion: What Future for Security?

303

international order. In particular, the concepts of “security” and “challenge” of alternative paradigms were extensively investigated. Second, through detailed case-specific and issue-based analyses, this book contributed to the positioning of Turkey in the new global security order within a multidimensional framework in order to address the aforementioned— although by no means exhaustive—political agenda. Following so many chapters outlining the contemporary security challenges, the reader may look for a synthetic summary and a set of suggestions and predictions about the future directions of Turkey’s foreign and security policies. Let me therefore briefly recapitulate the main conclusions we can draw from this study, which enable us to rethink the security environment within which Turkey is located, and its extended connections and emergencies in terms of the broader twenty-first century security agenda. All in all, this study concentrated on several crucial themes, trying to manage the problematic task of locating Turkey within the new security equations in the region and at the global level, from a comparative perspective. It tried to develop in-depth country-specific and issue-oriented analytical contributions, and to generate critical thinking about the new state of Turkish foreign and security policy, together with inextricable European, transatlantic, Eurasian, transCaucasian and Middle Eastern components focusing on the hard- and soft-power foreign policy agenda. It pointed to the need to further elaborate an overall evaluation of Turkey’s political affairs, both domestic and foreign, and to trace the critical conjuncture of its transatlantic relations, its recent role in the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and its bid for full EU membership within the security context. The book reflected on where Turkey’s security challenges and prospects stand from both internal and external perspectives through an interactive foreign policy assessment. Finally, this book aimed to offer conclusions and suggestions for the country’s future security strategies and politics. In this regard, it was also designed to offer significant policy choices for decision-makers at national, regional and transatlantic levels concerning Turkey, and it aimed to map out a future research agenda on Turkish foreign and security policy that integrates hard-power and soft-power dynamics. In terms of originality, this study started as an innovative project. It was neither summarizing previous research nor providing a literature survey. Rather, it concentrated on the challenging themes of contemporary security, trying to offer an insightful analysis of Turkey’s security policy in a multidimensional framework. Each analysis aimed at contributing to the development of theoretically and empirically meaningful constructs and generating better ways of thinking about the new state of the security politics within global, national and local dynamics. It is true that there are various other topics that fall under contemporary security studies which have not been touched on in this volume due to space limitations. Therefore, the selection of the security issues and regional foci in this study do not represent a universal set, but provide instead a representative sample. I recognize the methodological tension in building conclusions from a limited sample of selected issues of security and countries or regions. At the

304

Ebru Canan-Sokullu

same time, as the purpose of this book was to provide some insightful “rules of thumb” about the contemporary understanding of “change” and “challenge” in the context of security, and concerning the specific case of Turkey during the AKP era, it deliberately avoided an overly narrow focus. This project proceeded in a synergistic way by trying to develop a multidimensional explanation based on a selection of country- and issue-specific examinations of Turkey’s security politics. This whole volume, with the bringing together of these many insightful analyses, was a technically demanding effort. It aimed to convey the detailed findings in a straightforwardly literal interpretative style, so that each chapter was comprehensible and “open” to all. As for the meaning of “all,” the potential users of this study, outside the academic community, can well be identified as decision-makers who are involved in foreign and security policies. The research presented here primarily contributes to and has implications for foreign and security policy analysis, and secondarily to transatlantic studies and comparative politics. Specifically, it contributes to the debate on security from theoretical, prescriptive, and analytical aspects. Theoretically it presents a comprehensive overview of security literature, which reviewed the concepts of “security” and “challenge” and incorporated it into each chapter while dealing with various security issues. This has allowed insights to be made concerning the analysis of the debates over the security challenges of the twenty-first century. Prescriptively, the in-depth analysis of security issues specific to Turkey, at a time of great transformation at a global as well as local level, is instructive for foreign policy strategists in these surrounding and neighboring regions. This research should assist with further democratic consolidation by promoting our understanding of transatlantic relations. Analytically, it is expanding the literature on security focusing on Turkey through case-specific and longitudinal investigation. Finally, the findings of this project are intended to challenge the traditional military-oriented analysis of Turkish security politics and to offer a multidimensional analysis of the concept of “security challenge” by concentrating on the political, economic, societal sectors of security. It is simplistic to limit our understanding of a two-dimensional typology of hard-security versus soft-security to the former. In an era of multidimensionality in every aspect of life, not only in politics, the state’s security policies cannot be perceived as a monomorphous organism. Instead, it exists in a large variety of sectors, at various levels of analysis. To conclude, this edited volume aims to stimulate detailed debate on Turkey’s current security challenges amid the changing security climate and evolving conceptual understandings of security. Has it succeeded in achieving its principal aims? This is a question to be answered only by the reader. An analogy may best summarize what has been attempted: What we have seen here is only one tree in a forest. Yet, to see even “one” tree is already a big step ahead for the future in order to get a glimpse of the entire forest . . . and the taking of a picture of the forest is what future research should deal with.

Bibliography Abbasov, Shahin. “Russia Scores Double Match Point with Azerbaijani Gas Deal.” Eurasia Insight, June 30, 2009. “ABD: Suriye’ye Bastırın.” Radikal, March 15, 2005. Abramowitz, Morton, and Henri J. Barkey. “Turkey’s Transformers: The AKP Sees Big.” Foreign Affairs 88, no. 6 (November–December 2009): 118–28. Adıvar, Abdulhak Adnan. “The Interaction of Islamic and Western Thought in Turkey.” Pp. 127–39 in Near Eastern Culture and Society, edited by Cuyler Young. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1951. Akça, İsmet. Military-Economic Structure in Turkey: Present Situation, Problems, and Solutions. İstanbul: TESEV Publications, 2010. Akçura, Belma. “Ergenekon Belgeleri 7 Yıl Kasada Saklandı.” Milliyet, August 7, 2008. http://www.milliyet.com.tr/Siyaset/HaberDetay.aspx?aType=Haber Detay&ArticleID=975630&Kategori=siyaset&Date=07.08.2008&b=Sis%.2 0Perdesi&ver=63, 2008 (accessed December 3, 2008). Akgün, Mensur, Gökçe Perçinoğlu, and Sabiha Senyücel Gündoğar. “The Perception of Turkey in the Middle East 2010.” TESEV Publications, February 2, 2011. Akşit, Sait, Özgehan Şenyuva, and Çiğdem Üstün. Myths and Elites Turkish Elite Survey 2009: Initial Findings. Centre for European Studies, Middle East Technical University. Ankara: Zeplin İletişim, 2010. Alic, Anes. “Bosnia Rules to Revoke Citizenships.” International Relations and Security Network. July 14, 2006. http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/CurrentAffairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?ots591=4888caa0-b3db-1461-98b9e20e7b9 c13d4&lng=en&id=52180 (accessed May 3, 2011). ———. “Wahhabism: From Vienna to Bosnia.” International Relations and Security Network. April 6, 2007. http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/layout/set/print /content/view/full/73?id=53104&lng=en (accessed May 3, 2011). Alirıza, Bülent. “President Obama’s Trip to Turkey: Building a Model Partnership.” http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/090408_turkey_update.pdf (accessed May 29, 2010). Allison, Roy. “Military Forces in Soviet Successor States.” ADELPHI Paper no. 280 (1993). 305

306

Bibliography

Almond, Gabriel A. “Comparative Political Systems.” Journal of Politics 18 (1956): 391–409. ———. The American People and Foreign Policy. New York: Praeger, 1950. Alpay, Şahin. “Vesayetçiler İçten ve Dıştan Atağa Geçti.” Zaman, July 8, 2010. www.zaman.com.tr/yazar.do?yazino=1003579&title=vesayetciler-icten-vedistan-ataga-gecti (accessed August 30, 2010). Alpay, Şahin. “Vesayetçiler İçten ve Dıştan Atağa Geçti.” Zaman, July 8, 2010. www.zaman.com.tr/yazar.do?yazino=1003579&title=vesayetciler-icten-vedistan-ataga-gecti (accessed August 30, 2010). Altınay, Ayşe Gül. The Myth of the Military-Nation: Militarism, Gender and Education in Turkey. New York: Palgrave, 2004. Altunışık, Meliha. “Turkey’s Changing Middle East Policy.” UNISCI Discussion Papers, no. 23 (May 2010): 149–62. ———. “Worldviews and Turkish Foreign Policy in the Middle East.” New Perspectives on Turkey no. 40 (2009): 169–92. ———. “The Possibilities and Limits of Turkey’s Soft Power in the Middle East.” Insight Turkey 10, no. 2 (2008): 41–54. Altunışık, Meliha, and Özlem Tür. “From Distant Neighbours to Partners? Changing Syrian-Turkish Relations.” Security Dialogue 37, no. 2 (June 2006): 229–48. ———. Turkey: Challenges of Continuity and Change. London: Routledge, 2005. Anastasakis, Othon. “Greece and Turkey in the Balkans: Cooperation or Rivalry?” Turkish Studies 5, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 45–60. “Anatolian Eagle Exercise Begins.” July 10, 2010. http://www.todayszaman. com/tz-web/news-212466-100-anatolian-eagle-exercise-begins-israeli-milita ry-excluded.html (accessed July 10, 2010). Aoun, Sami. “Un Renouveau des Relations avec le Monde Musulman? Limites de la Séduction et Turbulences de la Décision.” La Revue Internationale et Stratégique no. 76 (Hiver 2009/2010): 169–73. Apap, Joanna, Sergio Carrera, and Kemal Kirişçi. “Turkey in the European Area of Freedom, Security and Justice.” Centre for European Policy Studies, EUTurkey Working Paper, no. 3 (August 2004). Aras, Bülent. “Turkey’s Rise in the Greater Middle East: Peace-building in the Periphery.” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 11, no. 1 (March 2009): 29–41. Aras, Bülent, and Rabia Karakaya Polat. “From Conflict to Cooperation: Desecuritization of Turkey’s Relations with Syria and Iran.” Security Dialogue 39, no. 5 (October 2008): 495–515. Aras, Bülent, and Salih Bicakci. “Europe, Turkey and the Middle East: Is Harmonisation Possible?” East European Quarterly 40, no. 3 (September 2006): 367–81. Armaoğlu, Fahir. Kıbrıs Meselesi 1954–1959. Ankara: Sevinç Matbaası, 1963. Articles et Documents, January 29, 1946, n. 449. Paris: Ministère de l’Information, direction de la Documentation.

Bibliography

307

“Askeri Vesayetin Hukuki Altyapısı.” Radikal, August 5, 2010. www.radikal. com.tr/Radikal.aspx?aType=RadikalHaberDetay&ArticleID=1010234&Dat e=05.08.2010&CategoryID=97 (accessed August 30, 2010). Atay, Faruk, and Ceren Kalfa. “Neoliberalizmin Krizi ve AKP’nin Yükselişi.” Pp. 303–33 in Küreselleşme, Kriz ve Türkiye’de Neoliberal Dönüşüm, edited by Nergis Mütevellioğlu and Sinan Sönmez. İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Publications, 2009. Attina, Fulvio. “Partnership and Security: Some Theoretical and Empirical Reasons for Positive Developments in the Euro-Mediterranean Area.” Jean Monnet Working Papers, no. 27 (July 2000). Avcı, Gamze. “Turkey’s EU Politics: Consolidating Democracy through Enlargement.” Pp. 62–77 in Questioning the Enlargement: Europe in Search of Identity, edited by Helene Sjursen. London: Routledge, 2006. Aydın, Mustafa. “Reconstructing Turkish-American Relations: Divergences versus Convergences.” New Perspectives on Turkey 40 (Spring 2009): 127– 48. ———. “Europe’s New Region: The Black Sea in the Wider Europe Neighborhood.” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 5, no. 2 (May 2005): 257–83. ———. “Security Conceptualization in Turkey.” Pp. 345–57 in Security and Environment in the Mediterranean Conceptualizing Security and Environment Conflicts, edited by Hans Günter Brauch, P.H. Liotta, Antonio Marquina, Paul F. Rogers, and Mohammad El-Sayed Selim. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2003. ———. “Securitization of History and Geography: Understanding of Security in Turkey.” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 3, no. 2 (May 2003): 163–84. ———. “The Determinants of Turkish Foreign Policy and Turkey’s European Vocation.” Review of International Affairs 3, no. 2 (2003): 306–31. Aydın, Mustafa, and Sinem A. Açıkmeşe. “Europeanization through EU Conditionality: Understanding the New Era in Turkish Foreign Policy.” Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 9, no.3, (December 2007): 263–74. Aydın, Senem, and Ruşen Çakır. “Political Islam in Turkey.” CEPS Working Document, no. 265 (2007): 1–13. Aydıntaşbaş, Aslı. “Kırmızı Kitapta Köklü Değişim.” Milliyet, August 23, 2010. www.milliyet.com.tr/kirmizi-kitapta-koklu-degisim/asli-aydintasbas/siyaset/ yazardetay/23.08.2010/1279655/default.htm (accessed August 23, 2010). ———. “Should the Red Booklet Be Released?” The Journal of Turkish Weekly, June 22, 2005. www.turkishweekly.net/print.asp?type=3&id=1317 (accessed May 12, 2010). Aykan, Mehmet Bali. “The Palestinian Question in Turkish Foreign Policy from the 1950s to the 1990s.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 25, no. 1 (January 1993): 91–110. ———. “The Turkish-Syrian Crisis of October 1998: A Turkish View.” Middle East Policy 6, no. 4 (December 1999): 174–91.

308

Bibliography

Aytürk, İlker. “Between Crises and Cooperation: The Future of Turkish-Israeli Relations.” Insight Turkey 11, no. 2 (April–June 2009): 57–74. Azinović, Vlado. “Challenges to International Security: The Case of Bosnia Herzegovina.” HUMSEC Working Paper. http://www.humsec.eu/cms/file amin/user_upload/humsec/Workin_Paper_Series/WP_Azinovic.pdf (accessed May 3, 2011). Bacık, Gökhan. “Turkish-Israeli Relations after Davos: A View from Turkey.” Insight Turkey 11, no. 2 (April–June 2009): 31–41. Baç, Meltem Müftüler. “Turkey’s Political Reforms and the Impact of the European Union.” South European Society and Politics 10, no. 1 (2009): 17–31. Bahgat, Gawdat. “Central Asia and Energy Security.” Asian Affairs 37, no. 1 (March 2006): 1–17. Balcı, Ali. “Türkiye’nin Dış Politikası ve İsrail: 1990lar ve 2000lere İlişkin bir Karşılaştırma.” Ortadoğu Etütleri 2, no. 2 (January 2011): 117–36. Balcı, Ali, and Nebi Miş. “Turkey’s Role in the Alliance of Civilizations: A New Perspective in Turkish Foreign Policy?” Turkish Studies 9, no. 3 (September 2008): 387–406. Baldwin, David A. “Security Studies and the End of the Cold War.” World Politics 48, no. 1 (October 1995): 117–41. Balta Paker, Evren. “The Ceasefire This Time.” MERIP Online, August 31, 2005. http://www.merip.org/mero/mero083105.html (accessed November 21, 2010). Balta Paker, Evren, and İsmet Akça, eds. Türkiye’de Ordu, Devlet ve Güvenlik Siyaseti. İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Publications, 2010. Barkey, Henry J. “Turkey’s Moment of Inflection.” Survival 52, no. 3 (June– July 2010): 39–50. “Başbakan Erdoğan Mübarek’e Seslendi.” HABERTÜRK, February 1, 2011. http://www.haberturk.com/dunya/haber/597069-basbakan-erdogan-mubareke-seslendi.” Bayramoğlu, Ali, and Ahmet İnsel, eds. Almanak Türkiye 2006–2008: Güvenlik Sektörü ve Demokratik Gözetim. İstanbul: TESEV Publications, 2009. Bayülken, Haluk. Türkiye-Yunanistan Dış ve Güvenlik Politikası ile İlgili Sorunlar. Ankara: T. C. Başbakanlık Basın Yayın ve Enformasyon Genel Müdürlüğü, 1986. Bengio, Ofra. “Altercating Interests and Orientations between Israel and Turkey: A View from Israel.” Insight Turkey 11, no. 2 (June 2009): 43–55. Bennett, Richard M. “The Defence of Baghdad—Special Military Report.” AFI Research Intelligence Briefing. April 3, 2003. http://www.globalresearch. ca/articles/BEN304A.html (accessed June 8, 2010). Betts, Richard K. “Should Strategic Studies Survive?” World Politics 50, no. 1 (October 1997): 7–33. ———. Surprise Attack: Lessons for Defense Planning. Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 1982. Bicchi, Federica. “Our Size Fits All: Normative Power Europe and the Mediterranean.” Journal of European Public Policy 13, no. 2 (2006): 292–302.

Bibliography

309

———. “European Security Perceptions vis-à-vis the Mediterranean: Theoretical and Empirical Considerations from the 1990s.” Jean Monnet Working Papers in Comparative and International Politics, no. 39 (November 2001). Bila, Fikret. “Hem Terör, Hem Tehdit, Hem Açılım Nasıl Olacak?” Milliyet, June 4, 2010. http://www.milliyet.com.tr/hem-teror-hem-tehdit-hem-acilimnasil-olacak-/fikret-bila/siyaset/yazardetayarsiv/25.07.2010/1246886/default .htm (accessed July 4, 2010). ———. “45 Günlük Bilanço,” Milliyet, July 7, 2010. http://www.milliyet.com.tr /45-gunluk-bilanco/fikret-bila/siyaset/yazardetayarsiv/25.07.2010/1260188/ default.htm (accessed July 7, 2010). Bilgin, Mert. “New Prospects in the Political Economy of Inner-Caspian Hydrocarbons and Western Energy Corridor through Turkey.” Energy Policy 35, no. 12 (June 2007): 6383–94. Bilgin, Pınar. “The Securityness of Secularism? The Case of Turkey.” Security Dialogue 39, no. 6 (December 2008): 593–614. ———. “Making Turkey’s Transformation Possible: Claiming ‘Securityspeak’—not Desecuritization!” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 7, no. 4 (December 2007): 555–71. ———. “Turkey’s Changing Security Discourses: The Challenge of Globalization.” European Journal of Political Science 44, no. 1 (January 2005): 175– 201. ———. “Rethinking Turkey’s Security Discourse: The Challenge of Globalisation.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of American Political Science Association, Boston, August 29–September 1, 2002. Birand, Mehmet Ali. “İsrail’e ve Avrupa’ya Sırtını Dönmüş bir Türkiye Cazip Değil.” Posta, November 8, 2009. Bisley, Nicholas. “Regional Security and Regional Conflict.” Pp. 210–29 in Contemporary Security and Strategy, edited by Craig A. Snyder. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Blaufarb, Douglas S. The Counterinsurgency Era: U.S. Doctrine and Performance—1950 to the Present. New York: Free Press, 1977. Booth, Kenneth. “Security and Emancipation.” Review of International Studies 17, no. 1 (1991): 313–26. Borger, Julian. “Text of the Iran-Turkey-Brazil Deal.” Guardian, May 17, 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/julian-borger-global-security-blog/2010/m ay/17/iran-brazil-turkey-nuclear (accessed August 12, 2010). Bouchard, Joseph F. Command in Crisis: Four Case Studies. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Boutin, J. D. Kenneth, and Craig A. Snyder. “New Approaches to Security: From Strategic Studies to Security Studies.” Pp. 69–82 in Global Risks and Crises, edited by Sally Totman and Scott Burchill. London: Oxford University Press, 2008. Bozkurt, Göksel. “Details of Kurdish Opening Get Clearer.” Hürriyet Daily News. July 31, 2009. http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=detailsofkurdish-opening-gets-clear-2009-07-31 (accessed November 15, 2010).

310

Bibliography

Bölükbaşı, Süha. “The Turco-Greek Dispute.” Pp. 27–54 in Turkish Foreign Policy: New Prospects, edited by Clement H. Dodd. Huntingdon: The Eothen Press, 1992. Brezezinski, Zbigniev. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. N.Y.: Basic Books, 1997. Bulaç, Ali. “Askeri Vesayet.” Zaman, June 30, 2010. www.zaman.com.tr/yazar. do?yazino=1001034 (accessed August 30, 2010). Bull, Hedley. “Strategic Studies and its Critics.” World Politics 20, no. 4 (July 1968): 593–605. Bulmer, Simon J., and Claudio M. Radaelli, “The Europeanisation of National Policy?” Queen’s Papers on Europeanisation, no. 1 (2004). Buzan, Barry. “Rethinking Security after the Cold War.” Cooperation and Conflict 32, no. 1 (March 1997): 5–28. ———. People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1991. ———. An Introduction to Strategic Studies: Military Technology and International Relations. London: Macmillan, 1987. Buzan, Barry, and Ole Wæver. Regions and Powers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Buzan, Barry, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde. Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1998. “Büyükanıt: Terör Mücadelemize Destek Yok.” Sabah, July 3, 2007. http://arsiv.sabah.com.tr/2007/07/03/haber,BF0B8E71CD01445284F73E85 0BD3D5B8.html (accessed May 5, 2010). Cable, Larry E. Conflict of Myths: The Development of American Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the Vietnam War. New York: New York University Press, 1986. Caldwell, Dan, and Robert E. Williams. Seeking Security in an Insecure World Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. Can, Eyüp. “Türkiye Esad’a Nasıl Seslenecek.” Radikal, August 9, 2011. Canan-Sokullu, Ebru. “Turco-scepticism and Threat Perception: European Public and Elite Opinion on Turkey’s Protracted Membership.” South European Society and Politics 16, no. 3 (September 2011): 483–97. Canan-Sokullu, Ebru, and Çigdem Kentmen. “Public Opinion Dimension: Turkey in the EU? An Empirical Analysis of European Public Opinion on Turkey’s Protracted Candidacy.” Pp. 105–31 in A Sisyphean Story: Fifty Years of EU-Turkey Relations (1959-2009), edited by Armağan Emre Çakır. London: Routledge, 2011. Casanova, José. “Religion, European Secular Identities and European Integration.” Pp. 65–93 in Religion in an Expanding Europe, edited by Timothy A. Brynes and Peter J. Katzenstein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Cemal, Hasan. Kürtler. İstanbul: Doğan Kitap, 2004. Cha, Victor D. “Globalisation and the Study of International Security.” Journal of Peace Research 37, no. 3 (2000): 391–403.

Bibliography

311

Charrett, Catherine. “A Critical Application of Securitization Theory: Overcoming the Normative Dilemma of Writing Security.” Barcelona: International Catalan Institute for Peace, December 2009. http://www20.gencat.cat/docs/ icip/Continguts/Publicacions/WorkingPapers/Arxius/WP7_ANG.pdf (accessed September 8, 2010). Chase, Robert S., Emily B. Hill, and Paul Kennedy. “Pivotal States and US Strategy.” Foreign Affairs 75, no. 1, (January–February 1996): 33–51. “Chief of Staff Özkök Says No Immediate Intention to Send Turkish Troops into Northern Iraq.” Turkey News, March 25–31, 2003. Chittick, William O., and Keith R. Billingsley. “The Structure of Elite Foreign Policy Beliefs.” The Western Political Quarterly 42, no. 2 (1989): 201–24. “Civil-Military Standoff in Turkey Resolved, for Now.” Hürriyet, August 9, 2010. http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=standoff-resolved-for-no w-civil-military-ties-still-at-odds-2010-08-09 (accessed October 18, 2010). Cizre, Ümit. “Introduction: The Justice and Development Party: Making Choices, Revisions and Reversals Interactively.” Pp. 1–15 in Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party, edited by Ümit Cizre. Oxon: Routledge, 2008. ———. “The Justice and Development Party and the Military: Recreating the Past after Reforming It?” Pp. 132–71 in Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party, edited by Ümit Cizre. London; New York: Routledge, 2008. ———. “Politics and Military in Turkey into the 21st Century.” EUI Working Papers RSC no. 24. European University Institute, 2000. Cizre, Ümit, ed. Almanak Türkiye 2005: Güvenlik Sektörü ve Demokratik Gözetim. İstanbul: TESEV Publications, 2006. Cizre, Ümit, and Menderes Çınar. “Turkey 2002: Kemalism, Islamism, and Politics in the Light of the February 28 Process.” The South Atlantic Quarterly 102, no. 23 (Spring–Summer 2003): 309–32. Cizre Sakallıoğlu, Ümit. “The Anatomy of the Turkish Military’s Political Autonomy.” Comparative Politics 29, no. 2 (January 1997): 151–66. Clogg, Richard. Comments made at the Conference on Greek-Turkish relations held at St Antony’s College, Oxford University, May 2004. South East European Studies Programme (SEESP), SEESP Newsletter, no. 2 (2004). Code of National Security Council and General Secretary of National Security Council, mgk.gov.tr (accessed August 7, 2004). Cohen, Bernard. The Public’s Impact on Foreign Policy. Boston: Little, 1973. Cohen, Elliot A. Citizens and Soldiers: The Dilemmas of Military Service. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985. Commission Staff Working Document Accompanying the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council, Implementation of the European Neighborhood Policy in 2009, Progress Report Ukraine SEC (2010) 524, Brussels, May 12, 2010. Commission Staff Working Document Accompanying the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council, Implementa-

312

Bibliography

tion of the European Neighborhood Policy in 2009, Progress Report Azerbaijan SEC (2010) 519, Brussels, May 12, 2010, 1–18. Commission Staff Working Document Accompanying the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council, Implementation of the European Neighborhood Policy in 2009, Progress Report Georgia SEC (2010) 518, Brussels, May 12, 2010, 1–24. Commission Staff Working Document Accompanying the Communication from the Commission Staff Working Document SEC (2008) 403, Brussels, April 3, 2008. Concise Oxford Dictionary, Tenth Edition for 2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Cook, Fay Lomax, Jason Barabas, and Benjamin I. Page. “Invoking Public Opinion: Policy Elites and Social Security.” The Public Opinion Quarterly 66, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 235–64. Cornell, Svante E. “The Kurdish Question in Turkish Politics.” Pp. 123–42 in Dangerous Neighborhood: Contemporary Issues in Turkey’s Foreign Relations, edited by Michael S. Radu. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2003. Council of Europe. Organised Crime Situation Report 2005 Focus on the Threat of Economic Crime. Strasbourg: COE, 2005. Criss, Bilge. “The Parameters of Turkish Foreign Policy under the AKP Governments.” UNISCI Discussion Papers, no. 23 (May 2010): 9–22. Criss, Bilge, and Pinar Bilgin. “Turkish Foreign Policy toward the Middle East.” MERIA 1, no. 1 (1997). http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/1997/issue1/jv1n1a3. html (accessed March 3, 2012). Çağaptay, Soner. “Turkey Lost Turkey.” Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2010. ———. “‘Kurdish Opening’ Closed Shut.” Foreign Policy. 2009. http:// www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/28/kurdish_opening_closed_shut? page=0,1 (accessed June 21, 2010). ———. Turkey at a Crossroads: Preserving Ankara’s Western Orientation. Washington: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2005. ———. “European Union Reforms Diminish the Role of the Turkish Military: Ankara Knocking on Brussels’ Door.” August 12, 2003. http://Dergiler.An kara.Edu.Tr/Dergiler/44/674/8592.Pdf (accessed June 28, 2010). Çağaptay, Soner, and Zeynep Eroğlu. “The PKK, PJAK, and Iran: Implications for U.S-Turkish Relations.” June 13, 2007. http://www.cagaptay.com/692/ the-pkk-pjak-and-iran (accessed September 3, 2010). Çağlıyan-İçener, Zeyneb. “The Justice and Development Party’s Conception of ‘Conservative Democracy’: Invention or Reinterpretation.” Turkish Studies 10, no. 4 (December 2009): 595–612. Çakır, Murat. Die Pseudodemokraten. Türkische Lobbyisten und Islamisten. Düsseldorf: GDF Publikation, 2000. Çandar, Cengiz. “İsrail ile Savaşsız Savaş.” Radikal, June 8, 2010. ———. “Turkey’s ‘Soft Power’ Strategy: A New Vision for a Multi-Polar World.” Seta Policy Brief 38 (December 2009): 1–12.

Bibliography

313

Çarkoğlu, Ali. “Societal Perceptions of Turkey’s EU Membership.” Pp. 19–45 in Turkey and European Integration, edited by Mehmet Uğur and Nergis Canefe. London: Routledge, 2004. Çarkoğlu, Ali, and Kemal Kirişçi. “The View from Turkey: Perceptions of Greeks and Greek-Turkish Rapprochement by the Turkish Public.” Turkish Studies 5, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 117–53. Çarkoğlu, Ali, and Binnaz Toprak. Religion, Society and Politics in Turkey. Tesev Publications. November 16, 2006. Çay, Abdulhaluk. Kıbrıs’ta Kanlı Noel. Forum Turkey. 1989. www.frmtr.com/ kitap-ozetleri/1663646-kibrista-kanli-noel-1963-.html (accessed August 19, 2010). Çelenk, Ayşe Aslıhan. “Democratization of the National Security Discourse and the Political Parties in Turkey.” Erciyes Üniversitesi İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi Dergisi 33 (July–December 2009): 119–34. Çınar, Menderes. “The Justice and Development Party and the Kemalist Establishment.” Pp. 109–29 in Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party, edited by Ümit Cizre. London and New York: Routledge, 2008. ———. “Turkey’s Transformation under the AKP Rule.” Muslim World 96, no. 3 (2006): 469–86. Dannreuther, Ronald. “Europe and the Middle East: Attempting to Bridge the Divide.” Pp. 135–54 in European Security in a Global Context, edited by Thierry Tardy. London: Routledge, 2009. Davison, Andrew. “Turkey a ‘Secular’ State: The Challenge of Description.” South Atlantic Quarterly 102, nos. 2–3 (Spring-Summer 2003): 333–50. Davutoğlu, Ahmet. “Turkish Vision of Regional and Global Order: Theoretical Background and Practical Implementation.” Political Reflections 1, no. 2 (June–August 2010): 36–51. ———. “Turkish Foreign Policy and the EU in 2010.” Turkish Policy Quarterly 8, no. 3 (Fall 2009): 11–17. ———. “Turkey’s Foreign Policy Vision: An Assessment of 2007.” Insight Turkey 10, no. 1 (2008): 77–96. ———. “Türkiye Merkez Ülke Olmalı.” Radikal, February 26, 2004. ———. Stratejik Derinlik: Türkiye’nin Uluslararası Konumu. İstanbul: Küre Yayınları, 2001. “Davutoğlu Devrede.” Milliyet, September 1, 2009. de Wilde, Jaap H. “Environmental Security Deconstructed.” Pp. 595–602 in Globalisation and Environmental Challenges, Vol. 1, edited by Hans Günter Brauch et al. Mosbach: AFES-Press, 2008. Deutsch, Karl. Political Community and the North Atlantic Area. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957. Dimitras, Panayote. “’People’s Diplomacy’ Spearhead of Greek-Turkish Rapprochement.” AIM Athens, October 13, 1999. Dodd, Clement H. The History and Politics of the Cyprus Conflict. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

314

Bibliography

Doğan, Erhan. “The Historical and Discursive Roots of the Justice and Development Party’s EU Stance.” Turkish Studies 6, no. 3 (September 2005): 421–37. Downs, Anthony. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper & Row, 1957. Drorian, Sevgi. “Turkey: Security, State and Society in Troubled Times.” European Security 14, no. 2 (June 2005): 255–75. Duman, Özkan, and Dimitris Tsarouhas. “‘Civilianization’ in Greece versus ‘Demilitarization’ in Turkey: A Comparative Study of Civil-Military Relations and the Impact of the European Union.” Armed Forces & Society 32, no. 4 (2006): 405–23. Duran, Burhanettin. “The Justice and Development Party’s ‘New Politics’: Steering toward Conservative Democracy, A Revised Islamic Agenda or Management of New Crises?” Pp. 80–107 in Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party, edited by Ümit Cizre. Oxon: Routledge, 2008. Dymond, Desmond. “Turkey Accuses Israel of Genocide.” BBC News, April 4, 2002. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1911609.stm (accessed October 15, 2009). Dyson, Kenneth, and Kevin Featherstone. The Road to Maastricht: Negotiating Economic and Monetary Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. ———. “Italy and EMU as a ‘Vincolo Esterno’: Empowering the Technocrats, Transforming the State.” South European Society and Politics 1, no. 2 (1996): 272–99. Ehteshami, Anoush. “Middle East’s New Power Dynamics.” Current History 108, no. 722 (2009): 395–401. Emerson, Michael, and Nathalie Tocci. Cyprus as the Lighthouse of the East Mediterranean: Shaping EU Accession and Reunification Together. Brussels: CEPS, 2002. Energy Information Administration. Annual Energy Outlook and International Energy Outlook 2005–2006. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 2006. Eralp, Atila. “Conclusion: Diverging or Converging Orientations in the Neighbourhood.” Pp. 201–14 in Turkey and the EU: The Process of Change and Neighbourhood, edited by Atila Eralp and Çiğdem Üstün. Ankara: Zeplin İletişim, 2009. “Erdoğan: Şengen de Var, Şamgen de Var,” Sabah, September 17, 2009. Ergan, Uğur. “Türkiye-Suriye arasında Üçlü Mekanizma Kurulacak,” Hürriyet, September 17, 2009. Erhan, Çağrı. Türk Dış Politikasının Güncel Sorunları. Imaj: Ankara, 2010. Erlanger, Steven. “Turkey-Iran Gas Deal–A Test of US Law on Terror?” New York Times. August 13, 1996. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/13/world/ turkey-iran-gas-deal-a-test-of-us-law-on-terror.html?pagewanted=all (accessed May 3, 2010).

Bibliography

315

Esposito, John L. “Retreat from the Secular Path: The Democracy–Secularism Debate in the Muslim World.” Le Religioni Nelle Relazioni Internazionali, no. 12 (March 2010): 50–69. European Commission European Security Strategy. A Secure Europe in a Better World, December 12, 2003, www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cmsupload/ 78367 (accessed June 25, 2010). Europol. The Threat from Organised Crime. Brussels: Europol, 2006. Falk, Richard. “Understanding the Gaza Catastrophe.” Today’s Zaman, January 4, 2009. Farrell, Theo. “General Introduction.” Pp. 1–14 in Security Studies: Critical Concepts in International Relations, edited by Theo Farrell. London: Routledge, 2010. Freedman, Lawrence. “International Security: Changing Targets.” Foreign Policy 110 (Spring 1998): 48–63. Friedman, Thomas. “Talking Turkey to Syria.” New York Times, July 26, 2006. Fuller, Graham E. The New Turkish Republic: Turkey as a Pivotal State in the Muslim World. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2008. ———. “The Future of Political Islam.” Foreign Affairs 81, no. 2 (March–April 2002): 48–60. Greenwood, David. “Turkish Civil-Military Relations and the EU: Preparation for Continuing Convergence. Final Expert Report of an International Task Force.” Pp. 21–69 in Governance and the Military: Perspectives for Change in Turkey, edited by Sami Faltas and Sander Jansen. Groningen: Center of European Security Studies, 2006. Gümüşçü, Şebnem, and Deniz Sert. “The Power of the Devout Bourgeiosie: The Case of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey.” Middle Eastern Studies 45, no. 6 (November 2009): 953–68. Gürcanlı, Zeynep. “Türkiye-Suriye için Fransız-Alman Modeli,” Hürriyet, October 13, 2009. Gallup Balkan Monitor. Insights and Perceptions: Voices of the Balkans. 2009. http://www.balkanmonitor.eu/index.php/dashboard (accessed May 3, 2011). Garnett, John. “Strategic Studies and its Assumptions.” Pp. 3–27 in Contemporary Strategy: Vol. 1 Theories and Concepts, edited by John Baylis, Ken Booth, John Garnett, and Phil Williams. London: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1987. “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World.” The National Intelligence Council. http://www.dni.gov/nic/PDF_2025/2025_Global_Trends_Final_Report. pdf (accessed October 11, 2008). Gordon, Philip H. “Post-Helsinki: Turkey, Greece and the European Union.” The Strategic Regional Report. Brooking Institution, February 2000. Göle, Nilüfer. “Secularism and Islamism in Turkey: The Making of Elites and Counter Elites.” Middle Eastern Journal 51, no. 1 (1997): 46–58. Gray, Colin S. Strategic Studies and Public Policy: The American Experience. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1982.

316

Bibliography

Greece and PKK Terrorism. Ankara: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, February 1999. Greenway, Michael. “It’s Getting Chilly between Turkey and Israel.” Global Post, October 21, 2009. Grigoriadis, Ioannis N. “The Changing Role of the EU Factor in Greek-Turkish Relations.” Paper presented at the First Ph.D. Symposium on Modern Greece Current Social Science Research on Greece, Hellenic Observatory, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, June 21, 2003. Gowan, Peter. “The New American Century?” Pp. 231–46 in The Spokesman: The New American Century, edited by Ken Coates. Nottingham, Spokesman Publisher: 2002. Grigoriadis, Ioannis N. “Friends No More? The Rise of Anti-American Nationalism in Turkey.” Middle East Journal 64, no. 1 (Winter 2010): 51–62. Gruen, George. “Turkey’s Regional Role in the Aftermath of September 11, 2001.” American Foreign Policy Interests 24 (2002): 3–29. Gülalp, Haldun. “Globalizing Postmodernism: Islamist and Western Social Theory.” Economy and Society 26, no. 3 (August 1997): 419–34. Gümüşçü, Şebnem, and Deniz Sert. “The Power of the Devout Bourgeoisie: The Case of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey.” Middle Eastern Studies 45, no. 6 (2009): 953–68. Gündoğdu, Ayten. “Identities in Question: Greek-Turkish Relations in a Period of Transformation?” Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) 5, no. 1 (March 2001): 106–17. Güney, Aylin, and Petek Karatekelioğlu. “Turkey’s EU Candidacy and CivilMilitary Relations: Challenges and Prospects.” Armed Forces & Society 31, no. 3 (2005): 439–62. Hale, William. “Turkey and the Middle East in the New Era.” Insight Turkey 11, no. 3 (2009): 143–59. ———. Turkish Foreign Policy: 1774-2000. London and Portland, Or.: Frank Cass Publishers, 2000. Hale, William, and Ergun Özbudun. Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism in Turkey: The Case of the AKP. London: Routledge, 2010. Hall, Stuart. “Authoritarian Populism: A Reply to Jessop et al.” New Left Review 151 (May–June 1985): 115–24. ———. “Popular-Democratic vs. Authoritarian Populism: Two Ways of ‘Taking Democracy Seriously.’” Pp. 157–85 in Marxism and Democracy, edited by Alan Hunt. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1980. Hamilton, Daniel, and Nikolas Foster. “The Obama Administration and Europe.” Pp. 39–57 in The Obama Moment: European and American Perspectives, edited by Alvaro de Vasconcelos and Marcin Zaborowski. Paris: European Union Institute for Security Studies, 2009. Han, Ahmet K. “From ‘Strategic Partnership’ to ‘Model Partnership’: AKP, Turkish-US Relations and the Prospects under Obama.” UNISCI Discussion Papers, no. 23 (May 2010): 77–112. ———. “The World of Business Now Spearheads Foreign Policy.” Turkish Time (April–May 2004).

Bibliography

317

Hannay, David. Cyprus: The Search for a Solution. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005. Heper, Metin. “The Justice and Development Party Government and the Military in Turkey.” Turkish Studies 6, no. 2 (2005): 215–31. ———. “The European Union, the Turkish Military and Democracy.” South European Society and Politics 10, no. 1 (2005): 33–44. ———. “The Ottoman Legacy and Turkish Politics.” Journal of International Affairs 54, no. 1 (2000): 63–82. Herz, John. “The Rise and Demise of the Territorial State.” World Politics 9 (1957): 473–93. Hettne, Bjorn, and Fredrik Soderbaum. “Theorising the Rise of Regionness.” Pp: 33–48 in New Regionalisms in the Global Political Economy, edited by Shaun Breslin et al. New York: Routledge, 2002. Holsti, Ole R. “Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: Challenges to the AlmondLippmann Consensus.” International Studies Quarterly 36, no. 4 (1992): 439–66. Holsti, Ole R., and James N Rosenau. American Leadership in World Affairs: Vietnam and the Breakdown of Consensus. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1984. Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. ———. “The Clash of Civilizations.” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 22–49. Huseynov, Tabib. “The EU and Azerbaijan: Destination Unclear.” The European Union and the South Caucasus, Three Perspectives on the Future of the European Projects from the Caucasus Europe in Dialogue 2009-01. Bertelsmann Foundation, 2009. http://ec.europa.eu/world/enp/pdf/action_plans/azerbaijan_enp_ap_final_en.pdf (accessed 7 July 2010). http://ec.europa.eu/world/enp/pdf/action_plans/georgia_enp_ap_final_en.pdf (accessed July 7, 2010). http://ec.europa.eu/world/enp/pdf/action_plans/ukraine_enp_ap_final_en.pdf (accessed July 7, 2010). http://qa.eubusiness.upfronthosting.co.za/europe/ukrarine/neighborhood-ukraine/ (accessed July 7, 2010). http://www.dni.gov/nic/PDF_2025/2025_Global_Trends_Final_Report.pdf (accessed October 11, 2008). https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tu.html (accessed February 29, 2012). Hveem, Helge. “Foreign Policy Thinking in the Elite and the General Population: A Norwegian Case Study.” Journal of Peace Research 5, no. 2 (1968): 146–70. Hyde-Price, Adrian. “Alternative Security Systems for Europe.” Pp. 124–40 in European Security: Towards 2000, edited by Michael C. Pugh. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. International Crisis Group. Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina—A Parallel Crisis. Europe Report n. 209, September 28, 2010, http://www.crisisgroup. org/~/media/Files/europe/209%20Federation%20of%20Bosnia%20and%20

318

Bibliography

Herzegovina%20---%20A%20Parallel%20Crisis.ashx (accessed May 2, 2011). International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2010, http://www.world energyoutlook.org/ (accessed July 4, 2010). İnsel, Ahmet, and Ali Bayramoğlu, eds. Bir Zümre, Bir Parti. Türkiye’de Ordu. İstanbul: Birikim Publications, 2004. İsmail, Sabahattin. 20th July Peace Operation: Reasons, Development and Consequences. Istanbul: Kastaş, 1989. Jacoby, Tim. “Semi-Authoritarian Incorporation and Autocratic Militarism in Turkey.” Development and Change 36, no. 4 (2005): 641–65. Joseph, Joseph S. Cyprus: Ethnic Conflict and International Politics: From Independence to the Threshold of the European Union. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999. Jung, Dietrich. “The Sevres Syndrome: Turkish Foreign Policy and its Historical Legacies.” American Diplomacy, 2003. www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/archi ves_roll/2003_07-09/jung_sevres/jung_sevres.html (accessed September 2, 2010). ———. “Secularism: A Key to Turkish Politics.” Intellectual Discourse 14, no. 2 (2006): 129–54. ———. “Turkey and the Arab World, Historical Narratives and New Political Realities.” Mediterranean Politics 10, no. 1 (2005): 1–17. Jung, Dietrich, and Wolfango Piccoli. Turkey at the Crossroads Ottoman Legacies and a Greater Middle East. London: Zed Books, 2001. Kaliber, Alper. “Securing the Ground through Securitized ‘Foreign’ Policy: The Cyprus Case.” Security Dialogue 36, no. 3 (September 2005): 319–37. ———. “Re-imagining Cyprus: The Rise of Regionalism in Turkey’s Security Lexicon.” Pp. 105–23 in Cyprus: A Conflict at the Crossroads, edited by Thomas Diez and Nathalie Tocci. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009. Kalyoncu, Mehmet. “The Assassination of Hrant Dink: Another Deadly Incident Destined to Remain Unsolved?” January 22, 2007. http://www.balkanaly sis.com/2007/01/22/the-assassination-of-hrant-dink-another-deadly-incident -destined-to-remain-unsolved/ (accessed October 20, 2010). Karacasulu, Nilüfer, and Elif Uzgören. “Explaining Social Constructivist Contributions to Security Studies.” Perceptions 12 (Summer–Autumn 2007): 27–48. Karakaya Polat, Rabia. “The 2007 Parliamentary Elections in Turkey: Between Securitisation and Desecuritisation.” Parliamentary Affairs 62, no. 1 (2009): 129–48. Karaosmanoğlu, Ali L. “The Evolution of National Security Culture and Military in Turkey.” Journal of International Affairs 54, no. 1 (2000): 199–216. ———. “Globalization and its Impact on Turkey’s Security.” Pp. 11–24 in The Europeanization of Turkey’s Security Policy: Prospects and Pitfalls, edited by Ali L. Karaosmanoğlu and Seyfi Taşhan. Ankara: Foreign Policy Institute, 2004.

Bibliography

319

Karayılanoğlu, Barış P. Yunanistan’ın Temel Ekonomik Göstergeleri ve TürkiyeYunanistan Ticari Ekonomik İlişkileri. İzmir: İzmir Ticaret Odası, 2007. Kardaş, Şaban. “A Reality Check on US-Turkish Relations.” Eurasia Daily Monitor 8, no. 223 (December 8, 2011). www.jamestown.org (accessed February 29, 2012). ———. “Turkey Prioritizes Independent Regional Policies in the Middle East and the South Caucasus.” Eurasia Daily Monitor 7, no. 107 (June 1, 2010), www.jamestown.org (accessed June 7, 2010). ———. “Turkey: Redrawing the Middle East Map or Building Sandcastles?” Middle East Policy 17, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 115–36. Katzenstein, Peter J., ed. The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. ———. “Regionalism in Asia.” New Political Economy 5, no. 3 (2000): 353–68. Kaya, Serdar. “The Rise and Decline of the Turkish ‘Deep State’: The Ergenekon Case.” Insight Turkey 114 (2009): 99–113. Keegan, John. The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme. New York: The Viking Press, 1976. Kelstrup, Morten, and Michael C. Williams. “Broadening the Agenda of Security Studies? Politics and Methods.” Mershon International Studies Review 40, no. 2 (1996): 229–54. Ker-Lindsay, James. Crisis and Conciliation: A Year of Rapprochement between Greece and Turkey. London: I. B. Tauris, 2007. Keridis, Dimitris. “Foreign Strategies and Domestic Choices: Balancing between Power Politics and Interdependence.” Pp. 321–32 in The Future of Turkish Foreign Policy, edited by Lenore Martin and Dimitris Keridis. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004. Keyman, Fuat. “Globalization, Modernity and Democracy: In Search of a Viable Domestic Polity for a Sustainable Turkish Foreign Policy.” New Perspectives on Turkey 40 (2009): 7–27. Keyman, Fuat, and Ziya Öniş. Turkish Politics in a Changing World: Global Dynamics and Domestic Transformations. İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi University, 2007. Khalilzad, Zalmay, Ian O. Lesser, and F. Stephen Larrabee. The Future of Turkish-Western Relations: Toward a Strategic Plan. Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2000. Khanna, Parag. The Second World: How Emerging Powers are Redefining Global Competition in the Twenty-first Century. London: Penguin Books, 2008. Kibaroğlu, Mustafa, and Barış Çağlar. “Implications of a Nuclear Iran for Turkey.” Middle East Policy 15, no. 4 (Winter 2008): 59–80. Kirchner, Emil J., and James Sperling. “The New Security Threats in Europe: Theory and Evidence.” European Foreign Affairs Review 7, no. 4 (2002): 423–52. Kirişçi, Kemal. “The Transformation of Turkish Foreign Policy: The Rise for the Trading State.” New Perspectives on Turkey 40 (2009): 29–56. ———. “Between Europe and the Middle East: The Transformation of Turkish

320

Bibliography

Foreign Policy.” MERIA 8, no. 1 (March 2004): pp. 1–32. ———. “ABD-Türkiye İlişkileri: Yenilenen Ortaklıklar Yeni Belirsizlikler.” Pp. 200–28 in Günümüzde Türkiye’nin Dış Politikası, edited by Barry Rubin and Kemal Kirişçi. İstanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınevi, 2002. ———. “The Future of Turkish Policy in the Middle East.” Pp. 93–114 in Turkey in World Politics: An Emerging Regional Power, edited by Barry Rubin and Kemal Kirişçi. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Reiner, 2001. ———. “Turkey and the Muslim Middle East.” Pp. 13–33 in Turkey’s New World, edited by Alan Makovsky and Sabri Sayarı. Washington, D.C.: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2000. Kirişçi, Kemal, Nathalie Tocci, and Joshua Walker. “A Neighborhood Rediscovered: Turkey’s Transatlantic Value in the Middle East.” Brussels Forum, GMF Paper Series, no. 10 (2010). Kitfield, James. “Who Lost Turkey?” National Journal.com, June 21, 2010. http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/ns_20100621_3616.php (accessed June 22, 2010). Knill, Christoph, and Wolfgang Wagner. The Europeanization of National Foreign Policy: The Domestic Impact of European Union Membership on the (Post)-Neutral Countries Ireland and Austria. Konstanz: Universität Konstanz, 2005. Kohen, Sami. “Türkiye için Tehdit mi?” Milliyet, August 25, 2004. Kolodziej, Edward A. “Whither Security Studies After the Cold War?” Pp. 15– 46 in South Asia after the Cold War: International Perspectives, edited by Kanti P. Bajpai and Stephen P. Cohen. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993. Konijnenbelt, Baastian. “The Role of the Military in Turkish Politics: An Analysis of Public Statements Made by the Turkish General Staff.” Pp. 155–93 in Governance and the Military: Perspectives for Change in Turkey, edited by Sami Faltas and Sander Jansen. Groningen: Center of European Security Studies, 2006. Kozyris, Phaedon J. “The Legal Dimensions of the Current Greek-Turkish Conflict: A Greek View.” Pp. 102–14 in Greek-Turkish Relations in the Era of Globalization, edited by Dimitris Keridis and Dimitrios Triantaphyllou. Dulles, Virginia: Brassey’s, 2001. Kösebalaban, Hasan. “The Crisis in Turkish-Israeli Relations: What is Its Strategic Significance?” Middle East Policy 17, no. 3 (Fall 2010): 36–50. ———. “The Impact of Globalization on Islamic Political Identity: The Case of Turkey.” World Affairs 168 (2005): 27–38. Kramer, Heinz. “Turkey’s Accession Process to the EU: The Agenda behind the Agenda.” SWP Comments (October 2009) Berlin, SWP. Kratochvil, Petr. “Discursive Constructions of the EU’s Identity in the Neighbourhood: An Equal among Equals or the Power Centre?” European Political Economy Review, no. 9 (Autumn 2009): 5–23. Krause, Keith, and Michael C. Williams. “Broadening the Agenda of Security Studies: Politics and Methods.” Mershon International Studies Review 40, no. 2 (October 1996): 229–54.

Bibliography

321

Kriesberg, Louis. “Regional Conflicts in the Post-Cold War Era: Causes, Dynamics, and Modes of Resolution.” Pp. 155–74 in World Security: Challenges for a New Century (2nd edition) edited by Michael T. Klare and Daniel C. Thomas. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Kristiansen, Wendy. “Turkey’s Soft Power Successes.” Middle East Online, February 11, 2010. http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/opinion/?id =37160 (accessed September 2, 2010). Kubicek, Paul. “Turkish-European Relations: At a New Crossroads?” Middle East Policy Journal 4 (1999): 157–73. Kut, Şule. Balkanlar’da Kimlik ve Egemenlik. İstanbul: Bilgi Universitesi Yayınları, 2005. Külahçı, Erol. “EU Political Conditionality and Parties in Government: Human Rights and the Quest for Turkish Transformation.” Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 7, no. 3 (2005): 387–402. Laclau, Ernesto. Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism-FascismPopulism. London: NLB, 1977. Larrabee, F. Stephen. Turkey as a US Security Partner. Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2008. ———. Turkish Foreign Policy in an Age of Uncertainty, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2002. ———. “Turkish Foreign and Security Policy: New Dimensions and New Challenges.” Pp. 21–52 in The Future of Turkish-Western Relations: Toward a Strategic Plan, edited by Zalmay Khalilzad, Ian O. Lesser, and F. Stephen Larrabee. Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2000. Larrabee, F. Stephen, and Ian O. Lesser. Turkish Foreign Policy in an Age of Uncertainty. Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2003. Layne, Christopher. The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present. New York: Cornell University Press, 2006. Leitner, Sebastian, and Mario Holzner. “Economic Inequality in Central, East and Southeast Europe.” Intervention: European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies 5, no. 1 (2008). http://www.wiiw.ac.at/balkan/files/wiiw _GDN_SEE_LeitnerHolzner08.pdf (accessed May 2, 2011). Lesser, Ian O. “Turkey and the United States: Anatomy of a Strategic Relationship.” Pp. 83–100 in The Future of Turkish Foreign Policy, edited by Lenore G. Martin and Dimitris Keridis. London: The MIT Press, 2004. Liddell Hart, Basil H. Strategy, 2nd edition. New York: Praeger, 1967. Lightfoot, Jeff. “Les Relations Transatlantiques à la Croisée des Chemins.” La Revue Internationale et Stratégique, no. 76 (Hiver 2009/2010): 180–86. Lizardo, Omar. “The Effect of Economic and Cultural Globalisation on Anti-US Transnational Terrorism 1971–2000.” Journal of World Systems Research 12, no. 1 (July 2006): 149–86. Lobe, Jim. “It’s Snowing on Rumsfeld’s Parade.” Asia Times, October 25, 2003. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EJ25Ak01.html (accessed July 21, 2010).

322

Bibliography

Lomperis, Timothy J. From People’s War to People’s Rule: Insurgency, Intervention, and the Lessons of Vietnam. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Luttwak, Edward N. Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1987. Lynn-Jones, Sean. “Realism and Security Studies.” Pp. 17–44 in Contemporary Security and Strategy, 3rd edition, edited by Craig A. Snyder. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Mabee, Bryan. The Globalization of Security: State Power, Security Provision and Legitimacy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Malka, Haim. “Turkey and the Middle East: Rebalancing Interests.” Pp. 37–61 in Turkey’s Evolving Dynamics: Strategic Choices for US-Turkey Relations. Washington: CSIS, March 2009. Makovsky, Alan. “The New Activism in Turkish Foreign Policy.” SAIS Review 19, no. 1 (January 1999): 92–113. Marcus, Aliza. “Troubles in Turkey’s Backyard.” Foreign Policy (July 9, 2010). Mardin, Şerif. “Center–Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?” Daedalus 102, no. 1 (1973): 169–90. Marquardt, Erich. “Turkey Back on Side with the US.” Asia Times, February 4, 2004. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FB04Ak02.html (accessed May 27, 2010). Martin, Lenore. “Turkey’s National Security in the Middle East.” Turkish Studies 1, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 83–106. Mastanduno, Michael. “Economics and Security in Scholarship and Statecraft.” International Organisation 52, no. 4 (1998): 825–54. Matlary, Janne Haaland. European Union Security Dynamics: In the New National Interest. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Mavioğlu, Ertuğrul, and Ahmet Şık. Kontrgerilla ve Ergenekon’u Anlama Kılavuzu. Kırk Katır Kırk Satır I. İstanbul: İthaki, 2010. McAlister, Melanie. Epic Encounters: Culture, Media and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. McGregor, Andrew. “Massoud Barzani Conducting Dangerous Games in Northern Iraq.” The Jamestown Foundation. July 17, 2007. http://www.james town.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=4312 (accessed January 8, 2008). Mearsheimer, John J. Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Ltd., 2002. ———. “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War.” International Security 15, no. 5 (1990): 5–56. ———. Conventional Deterrence. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983. Menon, Rajan, and S. Enders Winbush. Is the United States ‘Losing’ Turkey? Washington: The Hudson Institute, March 25, 2007. Mert, Nuray. Merkez Sağın Kısa Tarihi. İstanbul: Selis Kitapları, 2007. Michaud-Emin, Linda. “The Restructuring of the Military High Command in the Seventh Harmonization Package and its Ramifications for Civil-Military Relations in Turkey.” Turkish Studies 8, no. 1 (2007): 25–42.

Bibliography

323

Mirbagheri, Farid. Cyprus and International Peacemaking. London: Hurst, 1987. “Mme. Ciller Veut Eviter Une Confrontation avec la Russie dans le Caucase,” Le Monde, September 11, 1993. Moravscik, Andrew. “The Myth of Europe’s ‘Democratic Deficit.’” Intereconomics: Journal of European Economic Policy (November–December 2008): 331–40. ———. “Is There a ‘Democratic Deficit’ in World Politics? A Framework for Analysis.” Government and Opposition 39, no.2 (April 2004): 336–63. ———. The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998. Moreno, Juan Carlos Antunez. Foreign Influences in Islam in Bosnia and Hercegovina since 1995. Sarejevo: ISEEF, 2010. http://sim.ba/dokumenti/ Foreign_Influences_in_Islam_in_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina_since_1995.pdf (accessed May 3, 2011). Morgenthau, Hans J. Politics among Nations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. Mufti, Malik. “From Swamp to Backyard: The Middle East in Turkish Foreign Policy.” Pp. 80–110 in The Middle East Enters the Twenty First Century, edited by Robert O. Freedman. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002. Muller, Harald. “Security Cooperation.” Pp. 369–92 in Handbook of International Relations, edited by Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse and Beth A. Simmons. London: Sage Publications, 2002. Murinson, Alexander. “The Strategic Depth Doctrine of Turkish Foreign Policy.” Middle Eastern Studies 42, no. 6 (2006): 945–64. Mutimer, David. “Beyond Strategy: Critical Thinking on the New Security Studies.” Pp. 45–71 in Contemporary Security and Strategy, 3rd edition, edited by Craig A. Snyder. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Müftüler, Meltem. “Turkey’s Accession to the European Union: Institutional and Security Challenges.” Perceptions 9, no. 3 (2004): 29–44. Nafi, Basheer. “The Arabs and Modern Turkey: A Century of Changing Perceptions.” Insight Turkey 11, no. 1 (January 2009): 63–82. Narlı, Nilüfer. “Transparency Building in the Defence Sector and the EU Reforms in Turkey.” Pp. 129–55 in Governance and the Military: Perspectives for Change in Turkey, edited by Sami Faltas and Sander Jansen. Groningen: Center of European Security Studies, 2006. Nasr, Vali. The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future. New York: W.W. Norton Company, 2006. “National Security Dimension.” Working Group on Curriculum Development, Partnership for Peace Consortium on Defence Academies and Security Studies Institutes. www.isn.ethz.ch (accessed March 5, 2004). Newspot, no. 95, June 2009. http://www.byegm.gov.tr/db/dosyalar/sureliyayin grupkayitlar16.pdf (accessed September 1, 2009).

324

Bibliography

Nuriyev, Elkhan. “Azerbaijan and the European Union: New Landmarks of Strategic Partnership in the South Caucasus-Caspian Basin.” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 8, no. 2 (June 2008): 155–67. Nye, Joseph S. “Hard Power, Soft Power and the War on Terrorism.” Pp. 114– 33 in American Power in the Twenty-first Century, edited by David Held and Mathias Koenig-Archibugi. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004. Oğuzlu, Tarık. “The Changing Dynamics of Turkey–Israel Relations: A Structural Realist Account.” Mediterranean Politics 5, no. 2 (2010): 273–88. ———. “Soft Power in Turkish Foreign Policy.” Australian Journal of International Affairs 61, no. 1 (March 2007): 81–97. Oğuzlu, Tarık, and Mustafa Kibaroğlu. “Incompatibilities in Turkish and European Security Cultures Diminish Turkey’s Prospects for EU Membership.” Middle Eastern Studies 44, no. 6 (November 2008): 945–62. Oktav, Özden Zeynep. “The Limits of Change: Turkey, Iran, Syria.” Pp. 85–97 in Contentious Issues of Security and the Future of Turkey, edited by Nurşin Ateşoğlu Güney. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. ———. “Water Dispute and Kurdish Separatism in Turkish Syrian Relations.” The Turkish Year Book, no. 34 (2003): 91–117. Olgun, Mustafa E. “Turkey’s Tough Neighbourhood: Security Dimension of the Cyprus Conflict.” Pp. 231–60 in Cyprus: The Need for New Perspectives, edited by Clement H. Dodd. Cambridgeshire: Eothen, 1999. Overhaus, Marco. “In Search of a Post-Hegemonic Order: Germany, NATO and the European Security and Defence Policy.” German Politics 13 (2004): 551–68. Owen, Roger. State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East. London: Routledge, 2004. Öğütçü, Mehmet, and Damla Bocharev. “Rivals Become Partners.” September 21, 2009. http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2009/09/rivalsbecome-part ners/65924.aspx (accessed January 12, 2011). Öktem, Kerem. “Return of the Turkish ‘State of Exception.’” MERIP, June 3, 2006. http://www.merip.org/mero/mero060306.html (accessed October 21, 2010). Öniş, Ziya. “The Turkish Economy at the Turn of a New Century: Critical and Comparative Perspectives.” Pp. 95–115 in Turkey’s Transformation and American Policy, edited by Morton Abromowitz. New York: The Century Foundation Press, 2000. Öniş, Ziya, and Şuhnaz Yılmaz. “Between Europeanization and Euro-Asianism: Foreign Policy Activism in Turkey during the AKP Era.” Turkish Studies 10, no. 1 (March 2009): 7–24. ———. “The Turkey-EU-US Triangle in Perspective: Transformation or Continuity?” Middle East Journal 59, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 265–84. Öymen, Onur. Silahsız Savaş Bir Mücadele Sanatı Olarak Diplomasi. İstanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 2002. Özcan, Mesut. Harmonizing Foreign Policy: Turkey, EU and the Middle East. Ashgate: Hampshire, 2008.

Bibliography

325

Özel, Soli, and Mehmet Ali Tuğtan. “How will the United States Avoid Paralysis with Turkey?” GMF Analysis on Turkey, October 12, 2011. Özel, Soli, and Şuhnaz Yılmaz. Rebuilding a Partnership: Turkish-American Relations for a New Era. TÜSİAD: İstanbul, April 2009. Panico, Christopher. “Greece: The Turks of Western Thrace.” Human Rights Watch 11, no. 1 (January 1, 1999). Park, Bill. “Turkey’s Deep State.” The RUSI Journal 153, no. 5 (2008): 54–59. Parris, Mark. “Allergic Partners: Can the Relations be Saved?” Turkish Policy Quarterly 4, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 50–58. Patton, Marcie J. “AKP Reform Fatigue in Turkey: What Has Happened to the EU Process?” Mediterranean Politics 12, no. 3 (2007): 339–58. Peuch, Jean-Christophe. “Turkey: U.S. Hails Ankara’s Decision to Send Troops to Iraq, But Admits Deployment May Take Time.” Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, October 8, 2003. http://www.rferl.org/content/article/11045 94.html (accessed June 5, 2010). Pike, Douglas. Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1966. Political Reforms in Turkey. Ankara: Republic of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs Secretariat General for EU Affairs, 2007. Posen, Barry R. The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984. “President Obama: United States and Turkey Can Build a Model Partnership.” April 8, 2009. http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/71214/president-obamaunited-states-and-turkey-can-build-a-model-partnership.html (accessed May 30, 2010). Price, Philips. “Where Russia and Turkey Meet; Eastern Anatolia, Kars and Ardahan,” The Manchester Guardian, October 14, 1947. Race, Jeffrey. War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict in a Vietnamese Province. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972. Radaelli, Claudio M. “Europeanisation: Solution or Problem?” European Integration Online Papers 8, no. 16, 2004. http://europeanizationofturkey. wordpress.com/2011/02/15/claudio-m-radaelli-europeanisation-solution-orproblem-european-integration-online-papers-eiop-vol-8-no-16-2004/ (accessed June 14, 2009). Radu, Michael S. “The Rise and Fall of the PKK.” Pp. 143–64 in Dangerous Neighborhood: Contemporary Issues in Turkey’s Foreign Relations, edited by Michael S. Radu. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2003. Remarks of President Barak Obama–As Prepared For Delivery Address to TBMM. Ankara, Turkey, April 6, 2009. Report of the Secretary General’s Panel of Inquiry on the 31 May 2010 Flotilla Incident, September, 2011, www.un.org (accessed February 29, 2012). Resolution 661. Adopted by the Security Council at its 2933rd Meeting on August 6, 1990.

326

Bibliography

“Rice Pledges U.S. Support for Turkey against Kurdish Rebels.” CBC, November 2, 2007. http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/11/02/us-turkey.html (accessed July 2, 2010). Richmond, Oliver. Mediating in Cyprus. London: Frank Cass, 1998. Robins, Philip. Suits and Uniforms: Turkish Foreign Policy since the Cold War. London: Hurst and Company, 2003. Rosecrance, Richard. The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World. New York: Basic Books, 1986. Rosen, Stephen P. Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991. Rosenau, James N. Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: An Operational Formulation. New York: Random House, 1961. Roubinski, Youri. “Moscou et Ankara, Murailles ou Passerelles entre l’Europe et l’Asie?” Cahiers et Conférences. Paris: IFRI, 2002. Rouleau, Eric. “Turkey’s Dream of Democracy.” Foreign Affairs 79, no. 6 (November–December 2000): 100–114. Rubin, Michael. “Turkey, From Ally to Enemy.” Commentarymagazine.com. June 2010. http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/turkey-from-ally-toenemy-15464 (accessed June 20, 2010). Rucis, Andris. Latvia towards Europe: Internal Security Issues. Riga: NATO, 1999. Rumelili, Bahar. “The Talkers and the Silent Ones: The EU and Change in Greek Turkish Relations.” EU Border Conflicts Studies Working Paper no. 10 (October 2004). “Russian General Says Kremlin Deploys Air-Defense Missiles in Abkhazia.” RFE-RL, August 11, 2010. Saktanber, Ayşe, and Gül Çorbacıoğlu. “Veiling and Headscarf-Skepticism in Turkey.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 154 (2008): 514–38. Salmon, Trevor C., and Alistair J. K. Shepherd. Toward a European Army: A Military Power in the Making? London: Lynne Rienner, 2003. “Savaşın Eşiğinden Sınırsız Dostluğa.” Zaman, October 14, 2009. Sayarı, Sabri. “Turkish Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era: The Challenges of Multi-Regionalism.” Journal of International Affairs 54, no. 1, (Fall 2000): 169–82. Sayarı, Sabri, and Alim Hasanov. “The 2007 Elections and Parliamentary Elites in Turkey: The Emergence of a New Political Class?” Turkish Studies 9, no. 2 (2008): 345–61. Schenker, David. “A NATO without Turkey.” The Wall Street Journal, November 5, 2009. Schimmelfenning, Frank. “Europeanisation beyond Europe.” Living Reviews in European Governance 4, no. 3 (2009): 661–79. Schimmelfenning, Frank, and Ulrich Sedelmeier. “Governance by Conditionality: EU Rule Transfer to the Candidate Countries of Central and Eastern Europe.” Journal of European Public Policy 11, no. 4 (2004): 669–87.

Bibliography

327

———. “Theorising EU Enlargement: Research Focus, Hypotheses, and the State of Research.” Journal of European Public Policy 9, no. 4 (August 2002): 500–28. Schimmelfenning, Frank, Sandra Lavenex, Tina Freyburg, Tatiana Skripka, and Anne Wutzel. “EU Promotion of Democratic Governance in the Neighborhood.” Journal of European Public Policy 16, no. 6 (September 2009): 916–34. Scott, Jason W. “The EU and ‘Wider Europe’: Toward an Alternative Geopolitics of Regional Co-operation?” Geopolitics 10, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 429– 54. Senanayake, Sumedha. “Turkey Keeps Nervous Eye on Kirkuk.” Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, January 22, 2007. http://www.rferl.org/content/ article/1347483.html (accessed June 21, 2010). Shafer, D. Michael. Deadly Paradigms: The Failure of US Counterinsurgency Policy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988. Shakman Hurd, Elizabeth. The Politics of Secularism in International Relations. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. Skouroliakou, Melina. “The Theory That Never Turned into Practice: Case Study from Eastern Mediterranean.” Paper presented at the ISA-South Conference, Miami, November 3–5, 2005. Smith, Karen. “The Outsiders: The European Neighborhood Policy.” International Affairs 81, no. 4 (2005): 757–73. Smith, Steve. “The Contested Concept of Security.” Pp. 27–62 in Critical Security Studies and World Politics, edited by Ken Booth. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2005. Snyder, Craig A. “Regional Security and Regional Conflict.” Pp. 312–29 in Contemporary Security and Strategy, 3rd edition, edited by Craig A. Snyder. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. ———. “Emerging Regional Security Cooperation in Europe and the Asia Pacific.” The Pacific Review 9, no. 4 (1996): 553–76. Soysal, Mümtaz. “The Future of Turkish Foreign Policy.” Pp. 37–47 in The Future of Turkish Foreign Policy, edited by Lenore G. Martin and Dimitris Keridis. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004. Stefanova, Boyka. “The European Union as a Security Actor: Security Provision through Enlargement.” World Affairs 168, no. 2 (Fall 2005): 51–66. Stepan, Alfred. Arguing Comparative Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. “Stormy Debate in Davos over Gaza.” January 30, 2009. http://english.aljaze era.net/news/europe/2009/01/20091291976879610.html (accessed July 10, 2010). Sözen, Ahmet. “Heading Towards the Defining Moment in Cyprus: Public Opinion vs. Realities on the Ground.” Insight Turkey 14, no. 1 (January 2012): 109–29. ———. “A Paradigm Shift in Turkish Foreign Policy: Transition and Challenges.” Turkish Studies 11, no. 1 (March 2010): 103–23.

328

Bibliography

———.“A Paradigmatic Shift: New Principles of Turkish Foreign Policy Making.” Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the International Studies Association in San Francisco, March 26–29, 2008. ———. “Changing Fundamental Principles of Turkish Foreign Policy Making.” Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the International Studies Association in San Diego, March 22–25, 2006. ———. “Turkish Democratization in Light of its EU Candidate Status.” Pp. 279–305 in The Constitution for Europe and an Enlarging Union: Union in Diversity? edited by Kirstyn Inglis and Andrea Ott. Amsterdam: Europa Law Publishing, 2005. ———. The Cyprus Conflict and the Negotiations: A Political and International Law Perspective. Ankara: Can Reklam, 1998. “Sözün Bittiği Yerdeyiz.” Milliyet, July 6, 2010. http://www.milliyet.com.tr/ sozun-bittigi-yerdeyiz-/siyaset/haberdetay/06.07.2010/1259717/default.htm (accessed July 7, 2010). Strauss, Delphine, and David Gardner. “Turkey: The Sentinel Swivels.” July 20, 2010. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/50cdc5ea-942a-11df-3fe00144feab49a, dwp_uuid=03d100 (accessed July 21, 2010). Sunar, İlkay. “Populism and Patronage: The Democrat Party and Its Legacy in Turkey.” Pp. 121–31 in State, Society and Democracy in Turkey, edited by İlkay Sunar. İstanbul: Bahçeşehir University Publication, 2004. Tan, See Seng. Human Security: Discourse, Statecraft, Emancipation. Singapore: Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, 2001. Taşkın, Yüksel. “AKP’s Move to ‘Conquer’ the Center-Right: Its Prospects and Possible Impacts on the Democratization Process.” Turkish Studies 9, no. 1 (March 2008): 53–72. Taşpınar, Ömer. “Turkey’s Middle East Policies: Between Neo Ottomanism and Kemalism.” Carnegie Papers 10 (September 2008): 1–43. Terzi, Özlem. “What to Expect From a Europeanised Turkish Foreign Policy.” Istanbul University Research Fund Project “Turkish Foreign Policy in the Pre-accession Process to the European Union.” Project no 601/15122006. http://www.ikv.org.tr/images/upload/file/ozlemterzi-teblig.pdf (accessed May 24, 2009). ———. “New Capabilities, Old Relationships: Emergent ESDP and EU-Turkish Relations.” Southeastern European Politics 3, no. 1 (June 2002): 43–61. Teti, Andrea, and Andrea Mura. “Islam and Islamism.” Pp. 92–111 in Routledge Handbook of Religion and Politics, edited by Jeffrey Haynes. London: Routledge, 2009. “The Dangers of the Safe Route.” Economist, August 14, 2008. The Economist Pocket World in Figures 2011. London: Profile Books, 2010. Tibi, Bassam. “Europeanizing Islam or the Islamization of Europe: Political Democracy vs. Cultural Difference.” Pp. 204–25 in Religion in an Expanding Europe, edited by Timothy A. Byrnes and Peter J. Katzenstein. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Bibliography

329

———. Islam between Culture and Politics. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave in association with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 2001. Toktaş, Şule, and Ümit Kurt. “The Impact of EU Reform Process on CivilMilitary Relations in Turkey.” SETA Policy Brief 26 (2008). “Top Turkish Officers Charged over ‘Coup Plot.’” BBC News, January 25, 2010. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8531486.stm (November 15, 2010). Toprak, Binnaz. “Islam and the Secular State in Turkey.” Pp. 30–55 in Turkey: Political, Social and Economic Challenges in the 1990s, edited by Çiğdem Balım. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995. ———. “The State, Politics, and Religion in Turkey.” Pp. 119–35 in State, Democracy and the Military: Turkey in the 1980s, edited by Metin Heper and Ahmet Evin. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988. Treaty of Lisbon, Article 28 B, paragraph 1. Trimberger, Ellen Key. Revolution from Above: Military Bureaucrats and Development in Japan, Turkey, Egypt and Peru. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1978. Tugal, Cihan. Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009. Tully, Andrew F. “Turkey: Withholding of Troops Complicates US Mission in Iraq.” Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, November 10, 2003. http://www. rferl.org/content/Article/1104950.html (accessed June 5, 2010). “Turkey Asks Iraq, US to Hand Over Kurdish Rebels: Report.” France24, July 10, 2010. http://www.france24.com/en/20100710-turkey-asks-iraq-us-handover-kurdish-rebels-report (accessed August 1, 2010). “Turkey Eyes US Drones in PKK Fight.” Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, March 14, 2012. http://www.rferl.org/content/turkey_eyes_us_drones_pkk_ fight/24383897.html (accessed March 14, 2012). “Turkey Looking to Become Logistics Leader in Black Sea Basin.” Hürriyet Daily News, January 12, 2010. http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n= turkey-willing-to-be-logistics-leader-in-black-sea-basin-2010-01-12 (accessed August 3, 2012). “Turkey Rejects West’s Anti-Iran Energy Sanctions,” Tehran Times, February 17, 2012. “Turkey to Transfer Iran gas to Europe,” Press TV, www.presstv.com (accessed June 15, 2009). “Turkey’s Anti-Terror Laws: Threatening the Protection of Human Rights.” KHRP Briefing Paper, August 11, 2008. www.khrp.org/.../165-turkeys-antiterror-laws-threatening-the-protection-of-human-rights.html (accessed November 18, 2010). Tür, Özlem. “Turkish-Syrian Relations in the 2000s—Where are we Going?” UNISCI Discussion Papers no. 23 (May 2010): 163–75. ———. “Economic Relations with the Middle East under the AKP—Trade, Business Community and Reintegration with Neighboring Zones.” Turkish Studies 12, no. 4 (2011): 589–602.

330

Bibliography

Tür, Özlem, and Ahmet K. Han. “A Framework for Understanding the Changing Turkish Foreign Policy in the 2000s.” Pp. 7–29 in Turkey in the 21st Century: Quest for a New Foreign Policy? edited by Özden Zeynep Oktav. Surrey: Ashgate, 2011. “Türk Arapsız Yaşayamaz, Kim ki Yaşar Der, Delidir,” Radikal, June 10, 2010. Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi. Hakkâri Merkez, Yüksekova ve Şemdinli İlçelerinde Meydana Gelen Olayların Araştırılması Amacıyla Kurulan Meclis Araştırması Komisyonu Raporu 10. Ankara: TBMM, 2006. Türkmen, Füsun. “Turkish-American Relations: A Challenging Transition.” Turkish Studies 10, no. 1 (March 2009): 109–29. UNESCO. Global Education Digest 2011. New York: United Nations Publications, 2011. http://www.uis.unesco.org/Library/Documents/global_educati on_digest_2011_en.pdf (accessed January 17, 2012). United States Department of State, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. Volume I Drug and Chemical Control. Washington, D.C.: US Department of State. 2010. http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/138548.pdf (accessed May 2, 2011). UNODC. Crime and Its Impact on the Balkans and Affected Countries. Vienna: United Nations Publication. 2008. http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-an d-analysis/Balkan_study.pdf (accessed May 1, 2011). UNODC. World Drug Report 2010. New York: United Nations Publication. Sales No. E.10.XI.13, 2010. http://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR _2010/World_Drug_Report_2010_lo-res.pdf (accessed May 6, 2011). “US Critical of Turkey’s Partnership with Iran,” Turkish Daily News, April 7, 2007. “US Promises Action on PKK.” Daily Times, November 3, 2007. http://www. dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007%5C11%5C03%5Cstory_3-11-20 07_pg4_2 (accessed June 21, 2010). Uslu, Emrullah. “Turkey and Iran Sign Accord on Natural Gas Cooperation.” Eurasia Daily Monitor 5, no. 224. November 21, 2008. http://www.ja mestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=34159 (accessed May 11, 2010). Usul, Ali Resul. “The Justice and Development Party and the European Union: From Euro-skepticisim to Euro-enthusiasm and Euro-fatigue.” Pp. 175–97 in Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party, edited by Ümit Cizre. London and New York: Routledge, 2008. Uzgel, İlhan. “Dış Politikada AKP: Stratejik Konumdan Stratejik Modele.” Pp. 357–80 in AKP Kitabı—Bir Dönüşümün Bilançosu, edited by İlhan Uzgel and Bülent Duru. Ankara: Phoenix, 2009. “Üçlü Mekanizma Ekim Ayında Toplanıyor.” CNN Turk, September 28, 2010. http://www.cnnturk.com/2010/turkiye/09/28/uclu.mekanizma.ekim.ayinda.t oplaniyor/591221.0/index.html (accessed October 1, 2010). Üstün, Çiğdem. Turkey and European Security Defence Policy Compatibility and Security Cultures in a Globalised World. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010.

Bibliography

331

———. “Europeanization of Foreign Policy: The Case of Turkish Foreign Policy towards the Black Sea Region.” Southeast Europe and Black Sea Studies 10, no. 2 (2010): 225–42. van Crevald, Martin. Command in War. Cambridge, N.Y.: Harvard University Press, 1985. ———. Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Volkan, D. Vamık, and Norman Itzkowitz. Turks and Greeks, Neighbours in Conflict. London: The Eothen Press, 1994. Wallace, William. “Looking after the Neighborhood: Responsibilities for the EU-25.” Groupement D’etudes Et de Recherches Policy Papers, no. 4 (2003). Wæver, Ole. “The EU as a Security Actor: Reflections from a Pessimistic Constructivist on Post-Sovereign Security Orders.” Pp. 250–95 in International Relations and the Politics of European Integration, edited by Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams. New York: Routledge, 2000. ———. “Securitization and Desecurization.” Pp. 46–86 in On Security, edited by Ronnie D. Lipschutz. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. ———. “Identity, Integration and Security: Solving the Sovereignty Puzzle in EU Studies.” Journal of International Affairs 48, no. 2 (Winter 1995): 389– 431. Wæver, Ole, Barry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup, and Pierre Lemaitre, eds. Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe. London: Pinter, 1993. Wendt, Alexander. “Constructing International Politics.” International Security 20, no. 1 (Summer 1995): 71–81. ———. “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics.” International Organization 46, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 391–425. ———. “The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations.” International Organization 41, no. 3 (Summer 1987): 335–70. “West Sceptical over Iran Nuclear Deal,” BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/middle_east/8688467.stm (accessed October 2, 2011). Wilson, Dominic, and Roopa Purushothaman. “Dreaming with the BRICs: The Path to 2050.” Global Economic Paper, no. 99 (2003): 11–20. White, Jenny. Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002. Winrow, Gareth. “Geopolitics and Energy Security in the Wider Black Sea Region.” Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 7, no. 2 (June 2007): 220–31. Wolfers, Arnold. Discord and Collaboration. Rutherford, Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962. Womack, Helen. “Turkey and Russia United on Armenia.” The Independent, September 10, 1993. WRR (Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy). The European Union, Turkey and Islam. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004. www.euractiv.com/en/energy/geopolitics-eu-energy-supply/article-142665 (accessed July 11, 2010).

332

Bibliography

www.rferl.org/articleprintview/1608374.html (accessed July 11, 2010). Yavuz, M. Hakan. “Islam and Europeanization in Turkish–Muslim Socio– Political Movements.” Pp. 225–56 in Religion in an Expanding Europe, edited by Timothy A. Byrnes and Peter J. Katzenstein. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ———. Islamic Political Identity in Turkey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. “Cleansing Islam from the Public Sphere.” Journal of International Affairs 54, no. 1 (Fall 2000): 21–42. ———. “Turkish-Israeli Relations through the Lens of the Turkish Identity Debate.” Journal of Palestine Studies 27, no. 1 (January 1997): 22–37. Yetkin, Murat. Tezkere. Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 2004. Zakaria, Fareed. The Post-American World. London: Allan Lane, 2008. Zanotti, Jim. Turkey-U.S. Defense Cooperation: Prospects and Challenges. Congressional Research Service. April 8, 2011. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/ mideast/R41761.pdf (accessed March 10, 2012). Zurcher, Erik J. Turkey: A Modern History. London: I.B. Tauris, 2004.

Index

Action Plans (APs), 191–96, 199 Adana Accords, 124–25 adaptation, 249, 255, 257, 260–62 Aegean disputes, 115, 242 AKP. See Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) al-Asad, Bashar, 133, 135, 146, 149 al-Asad, Hafiz, 125, 149 al-Qaeda, 133, 210 Albania, 219–20, 222–27, 229, 231, 232n15, 233n20, 234n33, 300 Alliance of Civilization, 65, 229 alliance management, 36 Almond-Lippmann consensus, 272 anarchy, 33–34 Annan Plan, 50, 67, 81, 115 Anti-Terror Law, 83 APs. See Action Plan Arab–Israeli conflict, 14, 141–45, 150– 51, 296. See also Israeli–Palestinian conflict Arab League, 147, 149, Arab spring, 205, 211, 299 arms control, 36 armed, conflict, 14; forces, 8–9, 31, 34, 61, 66–67, 84, 86, 169n10, 169n12 Armenia, 16–17, 49, 51, 67–69, 147, 150–51, 154n41, 175–77, 179–81, 183–89, 196, 275–76, 287n49, 297– 98 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal, 26n23, 94–95, 110, 237, 273 Atatürkist Thought Association, 84 August 2008 war, 173, 179, 181, 184

authoritarian populism, 78, 83, 87 axis shift. See shift of axis Ayışığı (Moonlight), 81 Azerbaijan, 16–17, 51, 175–76, 179– 81, 183, 189–94, 196–98, 200n11, 200n16, 201n18, 201n22, 201n24, 275–76, 287n49, 297–98 Baathist regime, 157, 160 Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline (BTC), 45, 180, 192–93, 197–98, 201n22 Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline (BTE), 180, 192–93, 197–98 balance of power, 7, 12–13, 61, 79, 214, 292, 296 Balbay, Mustafa, 81 Balkans, 1–2, 18–21, 49, 62–63, 94, 111, 178, 208, 219–231, 232n6, 233n28, 234n33, 234n43, 243, 271, 289, 298–300 ballistic missiles, 35 Balyoz. 86, 293. See also Sledgehammer Barzani, Massoud, 166, 168 Başbuğ, İlker, 86, 166 Betts, Richard, 34 Black Sea, 17, 63, 173–74, 178, 182– 83, 279–80 Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC), 176 Blue Stream, 45, 178, 184n13 Bosnia, 219–20, 222, 224–229, 231, 232n1, 232n6, 232n19, 233n23,

333

334 233nn25–27, 233nn29–30, 233n32, 234n33, 234n38, 234n44, 234n47, 235n50 Britain, 35, 273 Brzezinski, Zbigniev, 275 BSEC. See Black Sea Economic Cooperation Bull, Hedley, 33 bureaucratic-military elite, 66, 109, 112–13, 118. See also military– bureaucratic elite Bush, George W. 19, 205, 207, 211; post-Bush era, 19, 206, 214, 299; administration, 158, 160–62, 182, 207, 209, 215n1 Buzan, Barry, 5–6, 40, 46–48, 51–52, 60, 137n4 Büyükanıt, Yaşar, 82–84, 86, 164 BTC. See Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline BTE. See Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline Caspian, 11, 15–18, 62–63, 189–199, 212, 294, 297–98 Caucasus, 1, 11, 15–17, 24, 62–63, 69, 111, 154n41, 173, 175, 177, 178, 180–182, 200n11, 201n22, 201n24, 271, 275, 280, 284, 294, 297–98; Transcaucasus, 2, 174, 182, 289, 297, 303; South, 15–16 173–74, 177, 179, 182–83, 185n18, 185n20, 297 Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform (CSCP), 173, 181–183, 275–76, 297 Cem, İsmail, 13, 124, 241, 243, 274 center-periphery, 96, 101 Central Asia, 2, 6, 16, 24, 47–49, 62, 112, 180, 271, 275, 289, 291, 303, CFSP. See Common Foreign and Security Policy China, 16, 35 CHP. See Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi) Christian Democratic Union, 82 Christian Social Union, 82 civil liberties, 35, 38 civil–military relations, 8–9, 26n26, 77–80, 85, 87–89, 118, 293. See also military–civilian relations

Index civilianization agenda, 79, 88, 293 CIS. See Commonwealth of Independent States climate change, 22, 37, 249–51, 253– 55, 257–63, 267n39, 269n76, 301, Cold War, 1, 4, 6, 10, 12, 18, 20, 32, 34–40, 45–47, 52, 59, 61–62, 78, 109–111, 115, 118, 121n30, 123– 24, 128–30, 147–48, 154n45, 176– 77, 181, 206–208, 214, 215n6, 231, 242, 271–75, 283, 289–91, 299; Post-, 3–4, 6–7, 11, 18, 32, 37, 39, 45, 60–62, 78, 111, 114, 147, 173, 175–76, 205–6, 208, 214, 252, 275, 290, 299 Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), 19–21 Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP), 220–21, 231, 281 Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), 49, 177–78 conditionality, 78, 88, 293 confidence-building measures 182–84, conflict, 5, 11, 13, 16–17, 32, 35, 40, 50–51, 53, 62-63, 69, 78–79, 83, 109–10, 173, 176–83, 265n9; management, 16, 64; prevention, 20; resolution 2, 49, 52, 63, 119 conservative democracy, 10, 98–99, 103, 293 Constitutional Court, 84–85 constructivism, 33. See also, constructivist approach constructivist, approach, 33, 40, 60–61, 187–189; paradigm, 4. See also, constructivism continental shelf, 238, 274–75 Continental Shelf Delimitation Agreement, 117 Copenhagen Criteria, 62, 66, 68, 80, 99, Copenhagen School, 4, 46, 53, 55n27, 60, 137n4, 290 corruption, 223–24, 230 Corruption Perception Index (CPI), 224, 232n18 Council of Europe, 110, 70n6, 223 counter-elite, 100–101 counterinsurgency, 36 coup, 9, 77, 81–83, 86, 112–13 CPI. See Corruption Perception Index

Index critical, security, 3–4, 33–34, 38; theory, 34 Croatia, 219–20, 222–224, 228–29 CSCP. See Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform CSDP. See Common Security and Defense Policy Cyprus, 11–13, 20, 39, 49–50, 55n28, 63, 66–68, 81, 109–119, 121n33, 121n35, 122nn40–42, 147, 150, 154n41, 178–79, 237–38, 240, 242, 245, 245n1, 273–74, 286n28, 294– 95, 299–300 Davos, crisis, 63, 144, 150, 286n28; World Economic Forum, 51, 144, 295 Davutoğlu, Ahmet, 7, 12–13, 16, 52, 63–64, 109, 114–117, 119, 121n25, 121n31, 122n37, 122n38, 123, 127– 130, 132–35, 137, 146–47, 167, 292, 294–296 democracy, 8–11, 15, 22, 35, 79, 93– 94, 96, 98–100, 102, 111, 125, 132, 190, 196, 209 Democrat Party, 79 democratic overture, 87 Demirel, Süleyman, 155n46, 176, 274– 75 desecuritization, 49–50, 61, 66–68, 137n4 deterrence, 11, 31, 36, 109, 118 Deutsch, Karl, 187–88 DGRA. See Directorate General of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı) diplomacy, 2, 7, 12, 34, 51, 62–64, 66, 69, 115, 118, 137, 144, 149, 176, 292; earthquake. See earthquake diplomacy; football. See football diplomacy; rhythmic. See rhythmic diplomacy; shuttle. See shuttle diplomacy Directorate General of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı— DGRA), 95–96, 105n19, 230 drug trafficking, 222, 252 e-memorandum, 79, 84 earthquake diplomacy, 67, 241 Eastern crisis, 14

335 Ecevit, Bülent, 144, 150, 242, 246n16 ecological security, 253, 257 economic security, 60, 250, 252, 262 EEC. See European Economic Community EIA. See Energy Information Administration Eldiven (Glove), 81 energy, 2, 7, 17, 21, 62, 65, 69, 111, 116, 178, 184n13; 188–199, 244; cooperation, 192–93; corridor, 2, 62, 180, 208, 289, 298; dependence, 15, 189–90, 193; need, 190, 198; policy, 190, 192–93; resource, 17, 116, 190–94, 197, 199; security, 17, 46, 51, 178, 187, 188–99, 298; supply, 17, 45 Energy Information Administration (EIA), 190–91 Enosis, 112 ENP. See European Neighborhood Policy environmental, challenge, 39, 249–50, 253, 262; degradation, 3, 22, 39, 250–53, 255; policy, 249, 256–57, 261, 263, 301; refugee, 254, 267n31; security, 22, 46, 250–54, 256–57, 262, 266n24, 301 Environmental Performance Index, 258, 268n61 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip, 10, 15–16, 51, 65, 83, 86, 88, 98–99, 114, 116, 123, 127, 134–35, 137, 139n38, 143–44, 146, 149–50, 159–60, 162, 179, 209–11, 213, 242 Ergenekon, 79, 85–86, 88, 92n52, 118, 122n45, 293 ESDI. See European Security and Defense Identity ESDP. See European Security and Defense Policy ethnic conflict, 2, 219 EU environmental legislation, 22, 249– 50, 261 EU Force Althea (EUFOR/ALTHEA), 228, 234n47 EU Police Mission (EUPM), 228, 232n6, 234n47 Eurasia, 2, 16–17, 63, 179, 182, 271, 289, 303

336 Europe: 10, 17, 36, 46, 48–51, 53, 65, 69, 70n6, 177, 180, 219, 221, 223, 230, 240, 244–45, 272, 275, 277, 279, 282, 291, 296, 298, 301, 303; Central, 35, 39; Eastern, 35, 39, 180; Southeast, 40, 219–221, 230, 243; Western, 9, 32, 34, 37, 39, 219–20, 223, 226, 229–30 European Army, 12, 23, 281–82, 302 European Commission, 105n32, 147, 188–89, 192, 195–96, 287n49 European Community, 10, 14, 142, 147 European Economic Community (EEC) 65, 70n6 European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), 50, 187–189, 191–199, 202n33, 278–79, 287n49, 298 See also Neighborhood Policy European Rapid Reaction Force, 20 European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI), 19 European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP), 19–21, 281 European Union (EU), 2, 5, 9–14, 17, 19–25, 45–47, 49–50, 53, 55n23, 55n25, 59–61, 63, 65–69, 70n6, 70n20, 71n43, 77–83, 97–99, 103, 109, 112, 114–16, 118, 130, 141, 145–49, 158, 167, 169n5, 177–78, 187–99, 201n18, 201n24, 202n33, 205–08, 211, 213, 216n20, 220–24, 228–31, 232nn6–7, 232n16, 232n19, 237–38, 240–43, 245, 249– 50, 257–59, 261–63, 269n68, 270n78, 271–72, 277–84, 289, 292– 93, 295, 298–303 Europeanisation, 10, 60, 62–63, 65–68, 70n6, 284 Euroskepticism, 231, 300 existential threat, 12, 46, 53, 60,63, 271 February 28 process, 83, 86, 91n38 Flag Crisis, 16 Flotilla crisis, 49, 51, 144, 150, 152, 210. See also Mavi Marmara incident football diplomacy, 67 force: armed. See armed forces; defense, 38; military, 32–33, 36, 38; use of, 33, 37, 39, 60

Index foreign policy, 1–2, 4, 6–7, 10, 12–13, 15, 18–20, 22–24, 32, 37, 39, 45, 47–48, 51–53, 54n14, 59–69, 82, 109, 111–12, 114–16, 118–19, 120n4, 124, 126–34, 136–37, 138n5, 138nn21–22, 139n45, 142– 43, 148, 151–52, 157, 159, 164, 187, 196, 198–200, 205–7, 214, 227, 262, 289–90, 294–96, 298–99, 301–4 France, 35, 49, 82, 94–95, 104n7, 147, 158, 169n11, 273–74, 277 Gaza blockade, 49, 51, 69, 136, 144, 213 Gazprom, 178, 180 Gendarmerie Intelligence and Fight against Terrorism (JİTEM), 82 General Command of the Armed Forces, 82 geographical depth, 63, 114 Georgia, 16, 173–77, 179–81, 183, 184n2, 184n4, 185n21, 189, 191– 94, 196–97, 287n50, 298 Germany, 21, 26n39, 34–35, 49, 95, 158, 232n15, 271, 274 GINI index, 221 global broker, 19, 205–6 global warming, 255 GME. See Greater Middle East Grand National Assembly of Turkey (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi) (TBMM), 18, 126, 143, 150, 157, 159–60, 165, 169n10, 209–10, 239, 259, 272, 276–78 Gray, Colin S., 33 Greater Middle East (GME), 206–08, 214, 299 Greece, 11–12, 21, 49, 53, 60, 67–69, 110, 112–17, 119, 237–45, 246n14, 247n26, 273–75, 286nn27–28, 286n33, 300 Grey Zones, 239 Gulf War, 1, 18, 62, 157, 161, 163, 208, 286n28 Gül, Abdullah, 51, 67, 84–86, 144, 154n29, 159, 160, 169n7, 179 Halki, 239, 246n16 Hamas, 14, 64, 131–32, 136, 137, 141, 145–47, 150–51, 210, 213, 295

Index hard security, 1–2, 16, 18, 23, 61, 109, 114, 116, 219, 230, 252, 255, 289– 90, 300–302, 304 hegemony: 52, 78, 83, 215n5, 205; extra-regional, 19, 205; American, 19, 205 Hellenic-Turkish Disaster Response Unit, 243 Helsinki Summit, 12, 60, 62, 65–66, 78, 109, 114–15, 118, 148, 241, 278 Hezbollah, 127, 146 high politics, 22, 49, 111 Higher Education Council, 80 historical depth, 63, 114, 296 Hobbesian, approach, 292; assertivism, 61; foreign policy, 7 HSYK. See Supreme Board of Prosecutors and Judges (Hakim ve Savcılar Yüksek Kurulu) Human, rights, 10, 31, 66, 99, 111, 113; security, 37, 46, 301; trafficking, 222, 224 humanitarian aid, 181 Hussein, Saddam, 18, 157, 216n20, 299 ICJ. See International Court of Justice IEA. See International Energy Agency. IGC. See Iraqi Governing Council illicit arms trade, 222 Imia (Kardak), 239, 274 immigration, 21, 188, 222, 238, 243, INOGATE. See Interstate Oil and Gas Transport to Europe Programme insecurity, 8, 23, 38, 59, 124, 157–58, 168, 251, 254, 296–97 insulator, 6, 45–51, 53, 291–92 interdependence, 4, 5, 15, 17–18, 36, 40, 64, 69, 173, 176–77, 301 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 255, 258, 260, 264n5 International Court of Justice (ICJ), 241–42 International Energy Agency (IEA), 189 International Monetary Fund, 35, 78, 163 international political economy, 35–36 Interstate Oil and Gas Transport to Europe Programme (INOGATE), 193, 197

337 IPCC. See Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Iran, 13, 16–18, 46, 51, 64–65, 68–69, 115, 124, 126–27, 131–33, 135, 142, 146, 148, 152, 155n48, 184n13, 200n11, 206–08, 210–14, 273, 276–77, 283 Iraq, 13–15, 18–19, 32, 46, 64, 66, 68, 87, 115, 123, 124, 126–27, 132–34, 142, 150, 153n14, 155n49, 157–68, 168n1, 169n11, 170n18, 170nn2223, 170n25, 206–11, 214, 295–97, 299 Iraqi, war, 13–15, 18, 126, 159, 162, 299; invasion, 168; operation, 163; post-, 160, 162, 168. See also war in Iraq Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), 158, 160 Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF), 162, 170n18 Islamic fundamentalism, 21, 38–39, 225 Islamic law (sharia), 94–95, 102 Islamism, 45, 78, 91n38, 94, 98, Islamization, 9, 91n38, 93, 98–99, 293; de-islamization, 10; re-Islamization, 95 Israel, 13–14, 18, 51, 62, 64, 69, 71n43, 117, 124, 127, 131–34, 136, 140n58, 141–52, 152n4, 153n7, 153nn14–15, 153n22, 153n24, 153n26, 154n30, 154n44, 155n46, 155n48, 206–7, 210, 213–14, 277, 287n49, 295–96, 299 Israeli–Palestinian conflict, 14, 64. See also Arab–Israeli conflict ITF. See Iraqi Turkmen Front İntifada, 14, 141, 143, 150, 213 İrtica ile Mücadele Eylem Planı (Action Plan to Fight Religious Fundamentalism), 86 JİTEM. See Gendarmerie Intelligence and Fight against Terrorism Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) (AKP), 2, 7– 13, 15–16, 26n39, 48, 53, 60–68, 77–88, 90n19, 91n44, 93–99, 97 – 103, 105n27, 106n57, 109–10, 114–

338

Index 19, 121n35, 122n41, 122n47, 139n32, 139n45, 150, 154n29, 157, 159, 168, 178, 183, 189, 198, 207, 213, 227, 278, 289–90, 292–95, 304

Kafes Eylem Planı (Cage Action Plan), 86 Kantian, approach, 7, 61–62, 292; optimism, 61; perspective, 62 Kemalism, 8, 79, 101, 105n23 Kemalist, establishment, 94–95, 97, 102; ideology, 8, 26n23, 95; state, 8, 99 Kerkuk, 14–15, 161–62, 168, 170n22, 209, 211, 297 KFOR. See Kosovo Force. Kosovo, 119, 219–20, 222–25, 227–29, 231, 232nn19–20, 233n23, 234n33, 234n47, 300; conflict, 240 Kosovo Force (KFOR), 229, 232n7, 235n47 Koşaner, Işık, 88, 293 KRG. See Kurdish Regional Government Kurdish, forces, 9; issue, 8, 14–15, 61, 66, 78, 161, 166, 274; minority, 32; nationalism, 8, 14–15, 161; overture (opening). See also democratic overture, 15, 81, 87–88, 166, 168; problem, 80–81, 83, 87–88; question, 14–15, 78, 82–83, 85, 87; separatism, 60 Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), 165–68, 211, 297 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), 13– 15, 61, 64–68, 70n20, 78, 80, 82, 87–88, 111, 124–25, 127, 133, 148– 49, 153n14, 154n41, 158, 160–68, 170n16, 209–11, 216n27, 240, 273– 74, 277, 286n27, 296–97 Kyoto Protocol, 22, 249, 260 laïcité, 8, 11, 292 laicism, 95–97, 103, 104n7, 104n14 Lebanon war, 143, 146 Liddell Hart, Basil H., 33 Maastricht Treaty, 19 Macedonia, 219–25, 227–29, 231, 234n33, 234n43, 300 Makarios, Archbishop, 238, 247n31

March 1 Motion, 126, 139n38 Mashal, Khaled, 131, 145, 147 Mavi Marmara incident, 134, 136, 213, 295. See also Flotilla Crisis Mearsheimer, John, 205, 215n5 MHP. See Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi) Middle East, 1–2, 6–7, 11, 13–14, 17– 19, 24, 32, 38, 45–46, 48–49, 60, 62–65, 68, 99, 112, 123–37, 138n12, 138n26, 139n33, 139n38, 139n47, 140n57, 141–43, 145–52, 159, 171n41, 205–07, 210, 212–14, 225, 227, 230, 274–75, 279–80, 284, 289, 291, 294–99, 303 military–bureaucratic, elite, 23, 109, 112–13, 79, 118–19, 121n29, 123, 295, 301. See also bureaucratic– military elite; establishment, 110– 113, 116 military–civilian, divide, 8, 85, 292; relations, 109, 119, 295. See also civil–military relations military-industrial complex, 77 militarization, 8, 78, 83, 292 military, coup, 81, 86. See also coup; operation, 112, 1157–58, 165, 180 mitigation, 249–50, 257–62, 269n62 model partnership, 19, 210 Montenegro 219–20, 222–24, 227–29, 233n23, 234n33 Montreux Convention, 181, 185n18 moral geography, 48, 52 multilateral cooperation, 37 Nabucco, 180, 194, 198, Nagorno-Karabakh, 16–17, 154n41, 175–76, 181, 183, 276, 297; conflict, 17, 67 National Climate Change Action Plan, 22, 249, 260 national interest, 2, 4, 6, 11, 21, 37, 39, 47, 291 National Outlook Movement (Milli Görüş—NOM), 26n39, 97–98, 100, 103 national security, 1, 2, 4–5, 8, 12, 24n1, 32, 34–38, 59, 63, 65–66, 77, 86, 272–73, 276, 284, 289, 302

Index National Security Council (NSC), 66– 67, 70n4, 80, 90nn14–15, 91n38, 97, 105n23 Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi) (MHP), 278 NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty Organization Neighborhood Policy, 17, 278 Neo-Ottomanism, 68 no-fly zone, 124 Nokta, 81 NOM. See National Outlook Movement (Milli Görüş) North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 5–6, 11–13, 16, 19–20, 23, 36, 39–40, 45, 59, 70n20, 71n43, 97, 103, 110, 125, 134–35, 157–59, 169n11, 173–74, 177, 18– 82, 206, 208, 213, 220–21, 228–29, 232n7, 242, 252, 266n19, 280, 295, 302 NPT. See Treaty on the NonProliferation of Nuclear Weapons NSC. See National Security Council nuclear, 65, 68–69; deterrence, 36; proliferation, 37; states, 16; war, 35–36; weapons, 35–37 Obama, Barack, 19, 164–65, 205–06, 299; presidency, 18, 214, 299; administration, 19, 68, 162, 165, 181, 205–07, 214 Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), 141, 144–45, 287n49 off-shore balancer, 19, 205, 215n5 OIC. See Organization of the Islamic Conference. Oil Embargo (1973), 36 Operation Cast Lead, 133–34 Operation Enduring Freedom, 16 Operation Iraqi Freedom, 157 OPT. See Occupied Palestinian Territory Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), 5–6, 63, 142, 155n46, 235n50, 283 organized crime, 2, 22, 39, 188, 199, 219–25, 227, 229–31, 238, 243, 289, 300 Oslo process, 14, 141, 144, 149

339 Ottoman Empire, 7, 10, 69, 94–95, 102–3, 112, 158, 173–74, 179, 238 Öcalan, Abdullah, 64, 78, 124, 149, 166, 170n16, 240, 274, 276, 286n27 Örnek, Özden, 81 Özal, Turgut, 111, 142, 274 Özel, Necdet, 88 Özkök, Hilmi, 81–83, 159, 169n9 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 14, 142 Papandreou, George, 241, 243, 245, 274 parliamentary elite, 272, 282 Patriarch of Constantinople, 239 peace studies, 36 Peres, Shimon, 143–44 pivotal, country, 19; state, 208, 216n17 PKK. See Kurdistan Workers’ Party PLO. See Palestine Liberation Organization political, Islam, 8, 10–11, 77, 79, 84, 86, 93–94, 97–103, 106n47, 106n52, 126, 292–93; reformism, 78–79, 81 power: balance of. See balance of power; hard, 12, 16, 22, 24, 59, 61– 63, 109, 113, 115; military, 1, 4, 11, 32–33, 35, 37–38, 289–90; regional, 16, 40, 51, 64; soft, 2, 7, 12, 16, 20, 22, 24, 61–63, 69, 82, 109–10, 114–15, 117, 119, 140n57, 206, 250, 289–90, 294–95 proxy war, 36 public opinion, 27nn49–50, 68, 272 Putin, Vladimir, 178–79 rapprochement, 115, 154n44, 173–74, 182–83, 237, 240, 242–44, 246nn8– 9, 297, 299–300 RCC. See Regional Cooperation Council reconciliation, 2, 16, 87, 173, 177, 183 referent object, 38, 46, 55n24, 60 regime security, 8, 292 regional conflict 13, 36 Regional Cooperation Council (RCC), 229 regional security, 5, 12, 18–19, 39–40, 46–49, 64, 209, 297, 299–300;

340 complex (RSC), 4–5, 45, 48–50, 53–54, 301; complex theory (RSCT), 5–6, 40, 46–49, 51–53, 301 regionally-based foreign policy, 124 religious extremism, 66, 110, 219, 221, 225, 229–30, 300 remilitarization, 82, 88 Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi) (CHP), 84, 90n12, 278 Republic Protests, 84 resource depletion, 39 rhythmic diplomacy, 63–64, 115, 128, Rice, Condoleezza, 164, 167 RSC. See regional security complex RSCT. See regional security complex theory Russia, 1, 10, 16–17, 51, 69, 115, 173– 83, 189–93, 198–99, 200n11, 277, 283, 297–98 Sarıkız (Blondie), 81, Sarıkaya, Ferhat, 82–83 SECI. See Southeast European Cooperative Initiative secular, 8–11, 13, 18–19, 21, 77–78, 80, 84, 93–103, 124, 132; secularism, 8, 10, 84–85, 93–96, 98– 103, 104n7, 104n13, 125, 292–93; secularity, 9, 293; secularization, 13, 93–95, 101–3 securitization, 38, 46–47, 52–53, 60, 66, 124, 137n4; macro-, 54, 57n51, 60, 66, 291 security: collective, 4, 33–34, 40, 301; cooperative, 33, 69; critical. See critical security; ecological. See ecological security; economic. See economic security; energy. See energy security; environmental. See environmental security; external, 1, 7–9, 11, 14, 60, 292, 294; hard. See hard security; human. See human security; internal, 1, 7–9, 11, 14, 32, 91n30, 292–93, 296; military, 4, 7, 13, 16, 19, 31–40, 252; national. See national security; non-military, 21–22, 31, 299, 301; regime. See regime security; soft. See soft security

Index security community, 2, 49, 187–88, 199 security dilemma, 1, 35, 289 security interaction, 46, 48–50, 52–54, 55n24 security perception, 12, 23, 109, 272– 73, 275–77, 280–81, 284, 301–2 security sector, 21, 48 security studies, 3–4, 6, 31–34, 37–38, 46–47, 51, 60, 290 September 11 attacks, 4, 32, 40, 45, 125, 127, 208, 275, 283; post-, 38, 66, 182, 208, 301 Serbia, 219–20, 222, 224, 226, 228–30 Sevres syndrome, 112 Sezer, Ahmet Necdet, 125, 131, 149, 158 Shah Deniz field, 180, 192–93, 197, 201n22 shift of axis, 60, 68, 295 shuttle diplomacy, 146 Sledgehammer, 86. See also Balyoz Smith, Steve, 32 soft coup, 95, 97 soft security, 1–2, 12, 18, 22, 60, 109, 114, 187, 198, 219, 221–22, 225– 26, 230, 238, 250, 252, 260, 262– 63, 289–90, 294, 298–301, 304 Southeast European Cooperative Initiative (SECI), 229 Soviet Union, 1, 35, 38–39, 45, 62, 110, 124, 142, 147, 175, 184n6: USSR, 174–76, 184n3, 208, 230, 271 speech-act, 52, 60–61 state-Islam, 95–96, 103, 293 Strategic Depth, 7, 12, 52, 63–64, 68, 109, 128, 130, 207, 292, 294 strategic partnership, 16, 18, 206, 208– 9, 214–15, 298–99 strategic studies, 32–38, 290 Supreme Board of Prosecutors and Judges (Hakim ve Savcılar Yüksek Kurulu) (HSYK), 83 Supreme Military Council, 86, 88, 118, 122n46 Syria, 13, 18, 60, 64, 71n43, 124–25, 127, 129–37, 139n49, 142–43, 145– 52, 152n2, 154nn30–31, 155n49, 206–07, 213–14, 273, 276–77, 283, 287n49 Şemdinli, 82–83, 91n30

Index TAF. See Turkish Armed Forces Talabani, 161, 211 Tanzimat, 94 TBMM. See Grand National Assembly of Turkey (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi) territorial, airspace, 239; integrity, 14– 15, 112, 273; water, 238–39, 242, 274–75 terror, 14, 19; War on, 15, 32, 38, 125, 139n38, 205–6, 208 terrorism, 2, 15, 18, 37, 59, 61, 64, 66, 83, 106n47, 165–66, 241, 243, 289; counter-, 18 Third World conflict, 36 Thrace, 239 transatlantic, actor, 13, 295; agenda, 17; connection, 2, 290; partner, 11; partnership, 20, pillar, 18, 299; relations, 24, 303, 304; security, 19 Treaty of Lausanne, 238–39 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), 212 Turco-skepticism, 27n49 Turkish Armed Forces (TAF), 8–9, 12, 15, 80, 83–84, 86, 88, 159, 169n10, 170n12, 228–29, 292 Turkish General Staff, 83–84 Ukraine, 17, 189–94, 196, 199, 201n18, 298 Ulema, 94–95, 104n1 UN. See United Nations UNFCCC. See United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change United Nations (UN), 11, 20, 35, 63–65 70n20, 115–17, 119, 144, 146, 158– 59, 162, 213, 223, 228–29, 238, 283, 294; Security Council, 19, 51, 65, 71n38, 131, 157, 161, 168n1, 179, 212, 213, 255, 277; General Assembly, 65, 71n38, 182 United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, 238 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 253, 258–60, 262–63 United States (U.S.), 13–14, 16, 18–21, 32, 35–39, 51, 64–65, 68–69, 70n20, 81, 97, 110, 112, 126–27,

341 131–32, 141–42, 145–48, 150–51, 153n20, 154n31, 154n41, 157–60, 162–68, 169n4, 170n23, 171n25, 205–14, 215n5, 216n20, 216n27, 223, 226, 230, 239, 241, 255, 277, 280–81, 283, 295–96, 298–99 U.S. See United States Venizelos, Eleftherios, 237 Wæver, Ole, 6, 46–49, 51–52, 60, 137n4 war in Bosnia, 225, 228–29, 233n29, 300 war in Iraq, 18, 126–27, 134, 158, 160, 168. See also Iraqi War weapons of mass destruction (WMD), 36, 65, 157–59, 208 Welfare Party, 86, 91n38, 97 Western European Union (WEU), 5–6 Westernization, 10, 13, 81, 101 WEU. See Western European Union win-lose approach, 7, 61, 115, 292 win-win, approach, 292; discourse, 63, 66, 207; philosophy, 116; policy, 119 WMD. See weapons of mass destruction World Bank, 35, 78, 163, 252, World Trade Organization, 179, World War I, 34, 273, 154n45, World War II, 34, 18, 34, 97, 102, 112– 13, 174, 187, 205, 219, 262, 298 Wright, Quincy, 34–35 Yakamoz (Bioluminescence), 81 Young Turk revolution, 94 Zero problem policy, 7, 63–64, 67, 114–15, 129, 132, 135, 207, 292, 295

About the Contributors İsmet Akça is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Yıldız Technical University, İstanbul. He studies political sociology, militarism, the modern capitalist state, and neoliberalism. Some of his published works include “The Turkish Armed Forces as a Collective Capitalist” in A Community, A Party: The Military in Turkey, edited by Ahmet İnsel and Ali Bayramoğlu (İstanbul: Birikim Publications, 2004); Articles on Economics, Politics, and the State: A Tribute to Prof. Kemali Sayıbaşılı (Istanbul: Bağlam Publications, 2006); Military-Economic Structure in Turkey: Present Situation, Problems and Solutions (TESEV Publications, 2010); Politics of Military, State and Security Politics in Turkey (Istanbul Bilgi University Publications, 2010) (co-edited with Evren Balta), and an article in the same volume entitled “Military, State and Class: An Attempt to Offer an Alternative Analysis of the March 27, 1960 Coup.” Adam Balcer is “The EU and the New Global Contract” Program Director at demosEUROPA Centre for European Strategy. He graduated from the Centre for East European Studies (MA) and the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw. He is presently a Ph.D. candidate and lecturer at the Centre for East European Studies, University of Warsaw. He was an expert at the Department of Central Europe (Balkan section) and Project Leader on “Turkey after the launch of EU accession negotiations—foreign policy and internal affairs” at the Centre for Eastern Studies, Warsaw. He published numerous articles and reports on the Balkans, Turkey, the CIS, the European Neighborhood, and the Black Sea. Evren Balta-Paker is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Yıldız Technical University, İstanbul. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from CUNY-Graduate Center in 2007. Teaching primarily in the areas of comparative politics, she has special research interests in conflict studies, civil– military relations, and territorial politics. In addition to her several book chapters and articles, she is the co-editor (with İsmet Akça) of Politics of Military, State, and Security Politics in Turkey (İstanbul Bilgi University Publications, 2010) and author of Global Security Complex (İletişim Publications, 2012).

343

344

About the Contributors

Ebru Canan-Sokullu (Ph.D. University of Siena) is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Sciences and International Relations at Bahçesehir University, Istanbul. She completed her post-doctoral research at University of Siena as a European Foreign and Security Policy Studies fellow of Compagnia di San Paolo, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond and VolkswagenStiftung. She was a visiting scholar at University of Cambridge (2006) and Ohio State University (2005). She received the Alexander George Paper Award (2005) by ISA. She worked for Transatlantic Trends and European Elite Surveys. Her research focuses on security and defense politics, public and elite opinion on foreign policy, military operations, and transatlantic relations. She has published numerous articles in Uluslararası Iliskiler, Armed Forces & Society, Perceptions: Journal of International Affairs, and South European Society and Politics. She has also published chapters in several edited books on European public opinion on Turkey, Islamophobia and Turcosceptism, war, climate change, and human security. Thomas Diez is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Tübingen, Germany. He has previously held positions in Mannheim, Copenhagen, and Birmingham (UK). Among his publications are The European Union and Border Conflicts (co-editor, Cambridge University Press, 2008), European Integration Theory (co-editor, Oxford University Press, second edition 2009), Cyprus: A Conflict at the Crossroads (co-editor, Manchester University Press, 2009), and Key Concepts in International Relations (co-author, Sage, 2011). Armağan Gözkaman (Ph.D. Strasbourg University and Marmara University) is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Istanbul Aydın University. His research interests include European and international security studies. His Ph.D. thesis on Turkey’s reaction to international crises will be published by LAP Lambert Academic Publishing. He is currently working on a book entitled “Public Diplomacy” and editing a book on Turkey’s relations with the EU. Burcu Gültekin-Punsmann (Ph.D. Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris Sciences-Po Paris) works at Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV) on confidence-building and track two diplomacy initiatives with the Southern Caucasus and the Middle East. She is the author of The Stakes of the Opening of the Turkish-Armenian Border, Cross-Border Relations between Turkey and Armenia. She worked as a policy consultant for various institutions on regional cooperation, peace building, and governance reforms in Turkey, South Caucasus, Russia, and the Middle East. She also worked with the London-based international peacebuilding NGO—International Alert (2003– 2009), collaborated as a policy consultant with the European Parliament Directorate General External Policies of the Union (2007–2008), the NATO-Public Diplomacy Division as the Manfred Wörner Research Fellow (2004–2005), and in the Contemporary Turkey, Black Sea, Caucasus research program of the Istanbul-based French Institute for Anatolian Studies (2000–2002). She was a post-doctoral research fellow on the European Neighborhood Policy at the Center for European Studies at the Middle East Technical University. Emre İşeri (Ph.D. Keele University) is Assistant Professor at the Department of International Relations at Kadir Has University. His Ph.D. dissertation was on “The US Grand

About the Contributors

345

Strategy and the Eurasian Heartland in the 21st Century: With Special Reference to the Main Caspian Oil Export Pipeline BTC.” Dr. İşeri conducted research at the Silk Road Studies Institute at Uppsala University. His current research interests include international security, Eurasian politics, and Turkey’s foreign policy. He has published academic articles in numerous books and journals including Geopolitics, Uluslararası İlişkiler, Ortadoğu Etütleri, JBNES, Energy Policy, and Turkish Studies. Rana İzci (Ph.D. Marmara University) is Assistant Professor at the European Union Institute, Marmara University. She has written on a number of topics in environmental politics, including climate change policies of Turkey and environmental security. She has conducted a TÜBİTAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) Project on the Impact of Pre-accession Financial Assistance on Institutional Structures of Universities and NGOs in Turkey since October 2010. Her recent publications include (co-authored with Z. İnce, S. Zengin, and Z. Tüzen) “The Impact of Turkey-EU Relations on Academic Research Agendas in Turkey: New Research Areas in European Studies, in Changing Europe and Turkey: Current Debates, edited by Çiğdem Nas and Rana İzci (Marmara University European Union Institute, 2010). James Ker-Lindsay is Eurobank EFG Senior Research Fellow on the Politics of South East Europe at the European Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science. Amongst his previous appointments, he served as the coordinator of the GreekTurkish Forum, a peace support initiative run by the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) and the Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO). His books include EU Accession and UN Peacemaking in Cyprus (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), Crisis and Conciliation: A Year of Rapprochement between Greece and Turkey (I. B. Tauris, 2007), and The Cyprus Problem: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2011). Selcen Öner (MA and Ph.D. Marmara University) is Assistant Professor at the Department of EU Relations at Bahçeşehir University. Her research interests include Turkey– EU relations, European identity, EU politics, Turkish foreign policy, civil society in Turkey, and Europeanization. She has recently published Turkey and the European Union: The Question of European Identity (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Publications, 2011). Selin Özoğuz-Bolgi (Ph.D. Marmara University) is Assistant Professor at the Department of European Union Studies at Bahçeşehir University. She received her LL.M. degree from the University of Kent and she took MA courses in International Relations and Political Science from Boğaziçi University. She has specialized in European Union and Turkey relations, European integration and European Union competition law and intellectual property rights. Her further research areas include the issue of religion within international relations and especially in the European Union and Turkey. Craig A. Snyder is senior lecturer in international relations at Deakin University in Australia. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Queensland. His research interests include regional approaches to security in Europe and the Asia Pacific and maritime securi-

346

About the Contributors

ty issues. He has published numerous journal articles and is the editor of Contemporary Security and Strategy, now in its 3rd edition. Ahmet Sözen is a professor of International Relations and the Chair of the Department of International Relations at Eastern Mediterranean University (North Cyprus). Sözen is the Founding Director of Cyprus Policy Center—www.cypruspolicycenter.org. He is the Turkish Cypriot Co-Director of the UNDP-funded program Cyprus 2015 (www.cyprus2015.org), and conducts island-wide research and polling in Cyprus. Sözen has published extensively on the Cyprus conflict and Turkish foreign policy. His experience includes peace-building and democratization processes, including participation in peace-negotiations from the first-track in Cyprus, active involvement in second-track peace and democratization initiatives, training and education in the areas of conflict resolution, mediation, and peace-building, and the designing of policy recommendations based on objective participatory research with the societal stakeholders and polling. Özgehan Şenyuva (Ph.D. University of Siena) is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, and affiliated researcher in the Centre for European Studies. His research interests include public and elite opinion, particularly in relation to the European Union, Turkey–EU relations, European youth policies, and European football. Dr. Şenyuva has published articles in Electoral Studies, Perceptions, and South European Society and Politics. He is also author and co-author of several books, working papers, and book chapters. Dr. Şenyuva is on the steering committee and a work package leader of the European Commission FP7 research project, FREE: Football Research in Enlarged Europe 2012–2015. Nathalie Tocci is Deputy Director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali and Associate Editor of The International Spectator. She held previous research posts at the Centre for European Policy Studies, the European University Institute, Florence, and the Transatlantic Academy in Washington. Dr. Tocci is the winner of the 2008 Anna Lindh award for the study of European foreign policy. Her recent publications include Turkey's European Future: Behind the Scenes of America's Influence on EU-Turkey Relations (New York University Press, 2011), Civil Society, Conflicts and the Politicization of Human Rights, (co-edited with Raffaele Marchetti) (United Nations University Press, 2011), (edited) The European Union, Civil Society and Conflict (Routledge, 2011), Cyprus: A Conflict at the Crossroads (co-edited with Thomas Diez) (Manchester University Press, 2009), The EU and Conflict Resolution: Promoting Peace in the Backyard (Routledge, 2008), and EU Accession Dynamics and Conflict Resolution: Catalyzing Peace or Consolidating Partition in Cyprus? (Ashgate, 2004). Özlem Tür is Associate Professor of International Relations at Middle East Technical University, Ankara. Her main expertise includes the political economy of the Middle East, Arab–Israeli Relations and Turkish–Middle Eastern relations (especially Syria, Israel, and Lebanon). Dr. Tür’s publications include Turkey: Challenges of Continuity and Change (Routledge, 2005, with Meliha Altunışık), “Civil Society in the Middle East and the Mediterranean” (CIVICUS, 2008 with Mahi Khallaf), “Turkish-Syrian Relations in the 2000s—Where are we Going?” (UNISCI, 2010), Political Economy of Turkey’s Relations with the Middle East (Turkish Studies, 2011) and “Turkey and Israel in the

About the Contributors

347

2000s (forthcoming in Israel Studies). She is a Schusterman Fellow of Israel Studies at Brandeis University, Fellow of the Center for Syrian Studies at St. Andrews University, and editor-in-chief of the journal Ortadoğu Etütleri. Özgür Ünal Eriş (MA University of Exeter and Ph.D. University of Essex) is interested in German foreign policy, new security threats such as energy security and illegal migration and EU external policy, specifically European neighborhood policy, Eastern Partnership Initiative, and European security and defence policy. Eriş currently teaches Institutions, Founding Treaties of the European Union, and Theories of European Integration in the Department of European Union Relations in University of Bahçeşehir, İstanbul. Çiğdem Üstün (Ph.D. University of Limerick) is Assistant Professor in the Political Science and Public Administration Department at Gediz University, İzmir. Her current research interests include Turkish foreign policy, European neighborhood policy, CFSP, energy security, and geo-strategy in the Black Sea. She is the author of Turkey and European Security Defence Policy: Compatibility and Security Cultures in a Globalised World (I. B. Tauris, 2010). Her articles appeared in Journal of Southeast Europe and Black Sea Studies, Insight Turkey, and Perceptions: Journal of International Affairs.