Posted on 03/28/2002 12:04:02 PM PST by a_Turk
WASHINGTON, March 27 (UPI) -- It has been an article of faith in Europe for the past decade and more that the Turkish elites were clamoring to be allowed to join the great prosperity club of the European Union. But now four leading Turks, visibly impatient with Europe's foot-dragging and its constant demands for internal reform, are warning that Turkey has other options.
This is important, and not just because Turkey is a loyal NATO member, a linchpin of Western security in the Middle East and central Asia -- and in any operations against Iraq.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem, speaking in the EU capital of Brussels this week, warned the Europeans to guard against their own "colonial attitudes" and accused some European politicians of trying to teach Turkey how to behave and how to react, like "the colonial governors of the past centuries."
Back in Turkey over the weekend, the retired but influential Gen. Suat Ilhan warned that joining the European Union ran counter to Turkey's history, would change the character of the country and destroy the proud nation state established by Kemal Ataturk, the general who founded the modern Turkish Republic.
"And this Europe we are supposed to join is not the gorgeous Europe of the 19th and 20th centuries, but a land that is losing its strategic resources, slowing down economically and with a collapsing birthrate," Ilhan argued. "The building of the EU is an inadequate attempt to meet these challenges, and they want Turkey because they need a market, raw materials and a cheap labor force."
Both the foreign minister -- who really wants to join the European Union -- and the old general -- who clearly doesn't -- were speaking in the context of a new debate that has been launched by the most powerful man in the country -- Gen. Tuncer Kilinc.
Turkey's efforts to join the European Union "were doomed to fail," said Kilinc. Turkey had "not seen the slightest assistance from the EU and the EU has a negative view on the problems that concern Turkey." Turkey needed new allies and that it would be "useful if Turkey engages in a search that would involve Russia and Iran" while taking care not to disregard the United States.
Kilinc is the secretary-general of Turkey's National Security Council, the military-dominated body that considers itself the custodian of the national tradition, and has launched three military coups in living memory to prove it. The NSC is the forum through which the military exercises its self-appointed duty to save Turkey from itself. Just five years ago, it engineered the collapse of the first elected Islamic government.
Europeans like to say that this is Turkey's real problem. Turkey cannot join the European Union until it meets the European Union's democratic standards, which means keeping the military in their place -- under the orders of elected civilians. The European Union also insists that Turkey meet other standards, like abolishing the death penalty and allowing the Kurdish minority a measure of autonomy, which Turkish generals fear would undermine national security.
Even pro-European Union Turks suggest that the Europeans have darker motives. They fear that by the time Turkey joins the European Union, it would have the largest population -- and bring Islam into the European Union's Christian Club. Moreover, it would extend the European Union's frontiers to Iraq, Iran and Syria -- a worrying neighborhood that carries all sorts of ominous implications for the European Union.
It would find itself uncomfortably linked, through Turkey's own military alliance, with Israel. The European Union would find itself drawn into the vexed Kurdish problem, and into the tangled ethnic politics of the formerly Soviet Caucasus. And the Middle East is traditionally the region where Europeans and Americans have taken opposite sides, from the 1956 Suez crisis to the re-arming of Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur war, and currently from sanctions on Iran to the invasion of Iraq.
The Bush administration, which has continued the Clinton-era policy of steady pressure on the European Union to accept Turkey's application, should note that Turkish membership will force the European Union into geo-political roles and places it would fervently rather not go. Indeed, as foreign minister Cem noted in Brussels Monday, absorbing Turkey means "Europe will become more assertive -- economically, politically and militarily -- it will really become a power beyond the limits of the European continent."
For all of its complaints about European feebleness of political will and inability to speak with a single voice, and for all its complaints about European under-spending on defense, the United States finds it highly congenial to have the world's only other economic superpower acting as a political dwarf and military midget. Is it in American interests to keep on pushing Turkey and Europe into a marriage that makes both of them uneasy, and which could have such problematic offspring?
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(Walker's World -- an in-depth look at the people and events shaping global geopolitics -- is published every Sunday and Wednesday.)
an old fashioned covert opby the CIA is what laid the groundwork for them 30 years before the Ayatollah..
I don't see exactly the benefit to Turkey to join the EU, not on balance. Maybe short-term gains, but to do so seems to me to undermine Turkey's long-term national interests.
The history our great, great, great grandchildren read will determine who's right (the winners), but I wouldn't bet on the EU, though they might make a footnote on 21st century tourism (they have lots of ruins)
I would too.
"There are two streams of opinion concerning the origin of Iranian Turks. The first maintains that they are the descendants of the Turks who either migrated to Iran in the 7th and 11th centuries or invaded parts of Iran at various times. The second holds that they are original inhabitants of Iran on whom the invaders have imposed their languages throughout centuries of occupation. The Iranian Turks live mainly in the north west of Iran in the Eastern and Western Azarbaijan and Ardebil provinces (capitals Tabriz , Urumiyeh and Ardebil respectively), the Zanjan province up to Qazvin, in and around Hamedan, in Tehran, around Qom and Saveh, Khorasan province, and are scattered throughout many other parts of Iran. Some of the central and southern ethnic groups, the Qashqaie for example, are Turkish speaking .
The Turkish which is spoken in Iran is associated with the Turkish spoken in the Caucasus, but it has undergone varying developments in various regions. The Turkish dialect spoken in both the Azarbaijan province in Iran and in the Republic of Azarbaijan is Oghoz, which is the mother tongue of the Iranian Turks. The Oghoz have two accent groups: the northern and southern. The northern accent is spoken in the Azarbaijan Republic. The southern accent is prevalent in Iran, where the people have been influenced by Farsi. The differences in dialect, and in the culture and customs in particular, among the Turks in Iran has been largely ignored; the emphasis is generally placed on the Turkish language as a whole rather than other characteristics of the Turks in Iran. Several Turkish dynasties have ruled Iran in the past, including the Ghaznavid, Seljuk, Safavids, Qajars. The Turks are thought to be the largest non-Farsi speaking ethnic group in Iran. Back in 1944, a group of left wing nationalists organized the Azarbaijan Democratic Party and established an autonomous government in the Iranian Azarbaijan. They were provided this opportunity by the presence of the Soviet Red Army, who were then a part of the Allied Forces in Iran. During its one-year in office, the nationalist government made Turkish the official language of the region. Upon the withdrawal of the Red Army from Iran, the Iranian army moved in and crushed the rebellion in December 1946."
From: Extract from the Iran Yearbook 1993
In Japan I had a good Iranian friend whose mother tongue was Turkish.
Why would the U.S. want Turkey to be a 'political dwarf and military midget'?He's talking about the USA preferring to see the EU as such..
And if Turkey is considering an alliance with Iran, how does that affect its relations with the U.S. during this war?Not talking about any alliance, but working today while focusing on post-mullah Iran, which sooner or later will be here. Look at the map. Iran is sandwiched between Turkey and ther Central Asian Turks, while Russia also holds a large number of Turkic republics.
For that matter, how does a consideration of alliance with Iran affect Turkey's own concerns about Islamism?Again, not talking about an alliance with the mullahs. They will be gone soon.
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