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Secular Turkey performs a finely tuned balancing act

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  • Secular Turkey performs a finely tuned balancing act

    Brisbane Times , Australia
    May 4 2009

    Secular Turkey performs a finely tuned balancing act

    May 4, 2009

    Washington needs Ankara's soft power in the Muslim world if Barack
    Obama's policy shift in the region is to prove successful. Kirsty
    Needham reports.

    BARACK OBAMA was welcomed like a rock star in Turkey on his symbolic
    first visit as President to a Muslim country last month, as he sent
    the message that the US was not at war with Islam.

    However, before the month was out, Ankara had summoned the US
    ambassador to complain about comments by Mr Obama on the
    hypersensitive anniversary of the mass killing of Christian Armenians
    by Ottoman Turks in 1915.

    Intense lobbying in Washington was not enough, as Ankara had hoped, to
    keep contentious language out of Mr Obama's Armenian speech on April
    24. Under pressure from a vocal lobby in the US, Mr Obama avoided the
    term genocide but described the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
    Armenians as "great atrocities". The Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip
    Erdogan, warned Turkey was not a country that could be "flattered and
    then fooled".

    The US President's "model partnership" for Western engagement with the
    Islamic world is already straining under the backwash of history.

    Seeking to leverage Turkey's soft power in Afghanistan, Iran and
    Pakistan, and needing co-operation in Iraq, including the use of
    Turkish soil for the exit of US troops, the Obama Administration has
    moved quickly to engage with Turkish interests.

    Mr Obama publicly backed Turkey's attempt to join the European
    Union. A week before elections in the Turkish north of Cyprus, the US
    Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, met the Turkish Cypriot leader
    and chief negotiator on the seemingly intractable Cyprus dispute,
    Mehmet Ali Talat, in Washington.

    In the event Mr Talat's CTP party lost the election, and the French
    President, Nicolas Sarkozy, snorted that Mr Obama should keep out of
    EU affairs. A brighter note was the breakthrough announcement, after
    prodding from Washington, that Turkey and Armenia had agreed on a road
    map to normalise relations that could include the reopening of their
    shared border.

    "Turkey is a very important country on every foreign policy issue that
    the US has to solve in the coming years," said Kadri Gursel, a
    columnist with the daily newspaper Milliyet.

    "The US needs Turkey. In some places Turkey can offer important
    advantages, and in Iraq will play a key role in stability. But with
    Afghanistan and Iran I don't think so.

    "The need in Afghanistan is a surge and combat troops; Turkey can't
    offer these, for domestic political reasons and because it cannot
    alienate itself from the Islamic world. It can't shed Muslim blood to
    defend pure Western interests."

    Burak Akcapar, head of policy planning in Turkey's Foreign Ministry
    and recently returned from several years in the embassy in Washington,
    said the Government had told Mr Obama during his visit that the crisis
    in Afghanistan could not be tackled solely by military means and had
    particularly sent the message that "it doesn't help when you misfire
    on civilian populations. You have to take maximum restraint."

    Turkey also bristled when Mrs Clinton said the Pakistani Government
    was "basically abdicating to the Taliban".

    "Pakistan needs to be appreciated for what it is trying to do in very
    difficult circumstances. We have to strengthen the government ¦ and
    avoid putting them on the spot publicly," Mr Akcapar said.

    Turkey has a large trading relationship with Iran, its second-largest
    supplier of gas, and sanctions aimed against Iran's nuclear program
    hurt Turkey more than most.

    Mensur Akgun, director of the Global Political Trends Centre at Kultur
    University in Istanbul, said Turkey recognised that confrontation with
    Iran did not work.

    "We don't perceive any threat from Iran. No one would like to see a
    nuclear Iran next to us, but we don't see them as irrational beings,"
    he said. "Iran saw the US as a great satan; it won't be easy to change
    ¦ The US is reading this properly and sending correct signals to
    them to boost their confidence ¦ but you shouldn't expect any
    immediate change in Iranian foreign policy."

    Mr Akcapar said early indications from Syria and the new Israeli
    government of Benjamin Netanyahu were that both sides were willing to
    resume Turkish-mediated negotiations over the Golan
    Heights. Similarly, Afghan and Pakistani leaders have met for dialogue
    in Turkey since 2007.

    "What the US wants and what Turkey can deliver flows from the fact
    that we are very networked in this area," he said.

    Dr Akgun agreed that Turkey's soft power in Afghanistan - brokering
    dialogue with tribal leaders and involvement in civilian construction
    projects - was more important than deploying its troops in combat
    roles.

    Australia's Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith, in Turkey for the
    Anzac Day service, said: "Turkey is emerging as a potentially
    significant influence, and the fact that Obama came here as one of his
    first trips reflects that. Having [large, moderate and secular Muslim]
    countries like that active regionally is a good thing. It helps break
    down the barriers, that everything is not black and white."

    Milliyet's Gursel said he was not confident that the government of Mr
    Erdogan's Islamic AKP party had the ability to "play the fine-tuned
    politics" this new role required for Turkey to avoid alienating either
    the West or the Middle East.

    Despite Turkey's secular constitution, Mr Erdogan's walkout at Davos
    in January after clashing with Israel's President, Shimon Peres, and
    an attempt to obstruct the former Danish prime minister Anders
    Rasmussen assuming the NATO secretary-general's post in March, showed
    he "took every opportunity to express himself as a speaker for the
    Muslim world". European leaders had lost confidence in Turkey as a
    result, Gursel said.

    The president of the Foreign Policy Institute at Bilkent University,
    Seyfi Tashan, said: "The US relationship is developing well. I can't
    say the same for Europe."

    Kirsty Needham was in Ankara on a Turkish Government media program.

    Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

    http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/secu lar-turkey-performs-a-finely-tuned-balancing-act-2 0090503-arfx.html?page=-1
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