Turkey Shut Out Over Its Stance on War, Cyprus

For decades, Turkey has touted itself as a reliable Muslim ally of the West -- a secular, democratic buffer between Europe and the Middle East. But as two recent landmark events heralded a reshaping of both regions, the Turks found themselves in the painful role of distant spectators.

In the Iraqi city of Ur, American, British and Polish diplomats gathered under a tent with Iraqi notables April 15 to begin the task of forming a government to replace Saddam Hussein’s ousted regime. The following day, European leaders met in Athens to sign treaties that will enlarge the European Union next year from 15 members to 25.

Without a voice under the Iraqi tent or a place in Europe’s expanding club, Turkey has emerged from the war next door feeling rejected and powerless, divided and uncertain about its place in the world.

In a matter of weeks, Turkey has lost a special bond with the United States by denying the Pentagon a base from which to attack Iraq; refrained, under strong U.S. pressure, from sending troops to defend its own interests in Iraq; and missed a United Nations deadline to end the ethnic partition of Cyprus, hampering Turkey’s bid to join the European Union.

The setbacks have shaken the nation’s pro-Western government and bolstered nationalist forces. While trying to mend fences with the West, Turkey has also made overtures to Syria and Iran, seeking common ground to limit the autonomy of ethnic Kurds in northern Iraq.

“The danger is real that Turkey will eventually alienate itself from Europe and the United States and blame both for forcing it into isolation,” a European diplomat said.

The risks for the Bush administration are high.

Until now, Turkey had supported nearly every U.S. military venture since the Korean War. The only Muslim member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Turkey has peacekeeping missions in the Balkans and Afghanistan and a military alliance with Israel. As the U.S. faces new levels of resentment in the Islamic world, including inside Iraq, Turkey is still a valued ally.

“There is a deep American interest in a stable, secular democracy in the Muslim world, so the United States will make every effort to maintain a responsive relationship with Turkey,” said Morton I. Abramowitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey. “But until the future of Iraq is established in a way the Turks are relaxed about, there’s going to be major tension here.”

Just four months ago, President Bush and European leaders were applauding Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan as he jetted among their capitals with reassurances of his country’s westward course. Erdogan, whose Justice and Development Party had swept to power in elections last November, needed the display of Western support to allay doubts in the Turkish military about his Islamist roots.

But the prime minister and his government have been weakened by their initial backing for a deployment of U.S. troops in Turkey to attack Iraq. With more than 90% of Turks against a war, the proposal died in parliament last month, defeated by lawmakers distrustful of Western designs.

“It is not easy to have an equal partnership with a superpower,” said Cengiz Aktar, who teaches international relations at Galatasaray University in Istanbul. “After 50 years of siding with the United States, we are in a deplorable situation of dependency.”

Turkey’s 67 million people have an economic stake in this struggle. The country was crawling out of its worst recession in half a century when the war brought its economy to a halt. U.S. support is essential to sustain a $16-billion recovery package managed by the International Monetary Fund, and Turkey’s drive for increased investment and trade depends heavily on its long-term prospects for EU membership.

Tuncay Ozilhan, chairman of the Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Assn., says the nation is blinded to these realities by isolationist impulses that threaten to turn it into “another Middle Eastern country afflicted with authoritarian rule and low income levels.”

“Could it be that Turkey is being pulled away from the West deliberately in order to justify what some claim -- that we Turks can be befriended by no one?” he asked recently. “Perhaps there is a calculated effort to turn Turkey into a degraded and inward-looking state.”

In a way, Turkey is wrestling with the ambivalent legacy of its nationalist military hero, Kemal Ataturk, who founded the republic on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. Ataturk defeated an effort by Western powers to carve up Turkey but then championed a secular state aligned with Europe until his death in 1938.

For decades, the Turkish armed forces have upheld that vision. But since the end of the Cold War, an influential group of officers has begun to favor closer ties with Russia and China and to question the EU’s demand that the military withdraw from politics as a condition of Turkey’s membership.

Suspicion that the West wants to weaken Turkey weighs heavily in debates over Iraq and Cyprus. The view is shared by these officers, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, both minority parties in parliament and nearly a third of the ruling party’s legislators, including the speaker.

They argue that the U.S. will allow Iraq to fragment, producing a breakaway Kurdish state supportive of the Turkish Kurds who fought and lost a separatist war in the 1980s and ‘90s. Ethnic Kurds make up about 20% of Turkey’s population.

In the debate over Cyprus, Erdogan failed to persuade the Turkish military and Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf R. Denktash to accept a settlement offered by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan before this month’s step toward EU expansion.

Turkish commentators fumed as the EU welcomed the Greek Cypriot government, excluding the island’s Turkish Cypriot sector. EU leaders warned that Turkey could not join the bloc until Cyprus is reunited.

Erdogan has reacted to these setbacks with mixed messages, reaffirming both Turkey’s alliance with the U.S. and ambition to join the EU but also asserting the country’s independence.

Ignoring the fact that he lobbied for a U.S. troop deployment, Erdogan now sounds pleased that parliament voted no. Turkey endured the war “without compromising itself,” he said recently, and chose to “stand on its own feet” rather than accept $6 billion in conditional U.S. aid.

Tensions with the U.S. have eased since an April 2 visit here by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. The Bush administration’s disappointment with Turkey “is real, but it now is also history,” Powell said last week, “and we’re moving forward.”

But Powell, Turks noticed, did not mention the term “strategic partner” that President Clinton used in 1999 to describe Turkey, and they worry that the Pentagon already has demoted its longtime ally.

Romania and Bulgaria, which opened bases to American warplanes striking Iraq, are now likely to rival Turkey in importance to the U.S., Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, the Turkish military’s chief of staff, told a recent parliamentary hearing. Already, the U.S. has withdrawn nearly all of its 50 attack and support aircraft from Turkey’s Incirlik air base, from which they flew patrols over northern Iraq for 12 years.

A Turkey with less strategic value might have a harder time winning congressional approval for U.S. arms sales and administration backing for further IMF bailouts, legislative officials in both countries say.

But senior U.S. and Turkish officials, speaking in recent interviews on condition of anonymity, said the two countries are cooperating and Turkey could play a big role in Iraq’s reconstruction. “There will be commercial contracts,” a U.S. official said. “They will benefit.”

Having backed away from a threat to send troops to northern Iraq, the Turks now entrust their security interests there to the U.S. forces.

Many Turks, however, believe that the U.S. has at least a tacit obligation to strengthen Iraq’s Kurds at Turkey’s expense.

Western diplomats, Turkish analysts and other specialists say Turkey is at a crossroads.

If it feels threatened by the Iraqi Kurds, some believe, the Turkish government could align with neighbors Syria and Iran, which also have restive Kurdish minorities and would welcome an ally against America. But many analysts say this would provoke opposition from the U.S. and Turkey’s military.

Others say Turkey should go all out for EU membership and downgrade its U.S. ties.

But many Turks believe that the Europeans are stringing them along, perpetually throwing up new obstacles to EU membership.

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Times staff writer Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.