Bill Park

Turkey's Deep State

DOI: 10.1080/03071840802521937 Turkey’s political history is littered with alarmingly numerous murders, ‘disappearances’ and unexplained deaths of investigative journalists, academics, officials, businessmen, and human rights and other activists of various kinds. A notable recent example was the murder of the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in January 2007. Death threats to prominent public figures such as the writer Orhan Pamuk, suspiciously-staged terrorist incidents, and unsolved violent attacks on the Alevi and other minorities can be added to this litany. Incidents such as these have convinced many Turks of the existence of a so-called ‘deep state’, assumed to be composed of an ultra-nationalistic, arch-Kemalist and

Turkey's ‘New’ Foreign Policy: Newly Influential or Just Over-active?

In various ways, this collection of articles seeks to capture the nature and meaning of Turkey’s ‘new’ foreign policy, associated with the election of the Justice and Development Party (JDP) government in 2002 and under the guidance of its Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Aspiring to achieve ‘zero problems’ with its neighbours, deploying ‘soft power’ as a means to intensify its regional relationships, reinforced and in large measure explained by Turkey’s emergence as an economically dynamic ‘trading state’, and sometimes dubbed ‘neo-Ottoman’ in its tone and ‘Gaullist’ in its drift, it is evident that Ankara has largely discarded the somewhat cautious, regionally aloof, occasionally ‘hard’, and one-dimensionally west-inclined foreign policy attributed to the Turkish Republic’s Kemalist past. Turkey is these days seen as more than just a ‘bridge’ between east and west, or as a ‘torn’ state. It is also characterized as a ‘pivotal’, a ‘swing’, and as one of the ‘MINT’ (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey) emerging states destined to jostle the BRICs for a place on the diplomatic and economic global top table. Davutoglu himself has described Turkey as a ‘central’ rather than peripheral state, and much of his diplomacy has been simultaneously based on this assumption and aimed at securing the truth of the proposition. A ‘central’ state is one that overlaps a number of regions, or regional security complexes, and, by virtue of geography, culture and relative capacity, is well placed to weave them together. Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT), as developed by Buzan, Weaver and Diez, has also characterized Turkey as an ‘insulator’ state, one that abuts but is not integral to its surrounding regions. It thus serves to limit, or to reflect the limited, interactions between these neighbouring regions – in Turkey’s case, Europe, the Middle East and the former Soviet space. Andre Barrinha’s contribution, ‘The ambitious insulator: revisiting Turkey’s position in Regional Security Complex Theory’, sets out to contest RSCT’s assertion that an insulator cannot be an international power owing to the absence of a secure regional status upon which it

Between Europe, the United States and the Middle East: Turkey and European security in the wake of the Iraq crisis

Abstract The crisis over Iraq has served as a reminder that Turkey is a Middle Eastern as well as a European state. From Washingtons perspective, Turkeys post‐cold war geo‐strategic utility has derived largely from its proximity to Iraq. From Ankaras perspective, Iraq is a neighbouring state, of interest to other regional powers and whose territorial integrity is threatened by Kurdish aspirations. Thus, Turkeys security is more directly affected by events in Iraq than is the case for other European states, and Ankaras regional diplomacy has been uncharacteristically active. Simultaneously, Turkeys AKP government has brought the country to the brink of EU accession negotiations. Turkeys European, regional and transatlantic relationships are bound together, and are dependent on events in Iraq.

US-Turkish Relations: Can the future resemble the past

President George W. Bush’s second term has witnessed an attempt to redress the “deferred maintenance” from which US–Turkish relations had been suffering since the mutual misunderstandings and the mishandling of policies (by both sides) that accompanied the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Since becoming Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice has twice visited Ankara, and there were approximately 40 official US trips to Turkey during 2005. In December, a new US Ambassador to Turkey, Ross Wilson, occupied the “empty chair” in Ankara vacated bitterly by Eric Edelman in March 2005. There have been numerous visits in the opposite direction too, including one by General Yasir Buyukanit, Commander of Turkey’s Land Forces and prospective Chief of the Turkish General Staff (TGS), in December 2005. Some leading “neo-conservatives” from the first Bush administration had invested considerably in Turkey’s value as an ally, and their emotional reaction to the March 2003 National Assembly vote soon turned into a more wide-ranging negativity towards Turkey and to the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma – AKP) government in particular. Their loss of influence and office in Bush’s second term administration has helped improve the atmosphere, but mutual antipathy lingers. The cooling of Ankara’s relationship with Israel, its overtures towards Iran and Syria, and the alleged domestic “Islamization” – or “Islamofascist” – program of the AKP government, have all been subjected to critical attention in the US. Indeed, ideologues on both sides (neo-conservatives in Washington, nationalists of all colors in Ankara) continue to undermine the relationship, and Turkish anti-Americanism has emerged in its own right as a threat to US goodwill. Efforts to factor differences over Iraq out of the relationship in an effort to compartmentalize issues have met with some success. The bureaucracies in both capitals focused on pragmatic co-operation and on rebuilding relationships that had been allowed to atrophy. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s tendency, and that of Defense & Security Analysis Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 41–54, March 2007

Populism and Islamism in Turkey

Both inside Turkey and beyond, many greeted the election of the newly formed Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) single party government in November 2002 with optimism. It promised a welcome element of stability in the wake of the succession of fractious and fragile coalitions that it replaced, and seemed to offer a fresh alternative to the discredited parties and politicians which the electorate had so emphatically rejected. Labeling itself as a conservative or Muslim democratic party akin to Europe’s Christian Democrats, it promised to reform a political and economic system that had brought the country to its knees during the national economic crisis of 2000–2001. The new government moved quickly to assure its European partners that it would prioritize EU accession, encouraged a settlement of the Cyprus dispute, and appeared ready to address Turkey’s Kurdish issue as a political rather than a security problem that required an inclusive and conciliatory approach. The AKP’s electoral success also encouraged those who believed that, if Turkish democracy was ever to be consolidated, a way would have to be found to bring the country’s devout masses in the more peripheral provinces more fully into the political system. In and of itself, the AKP’s electoral success suggested a challenge to the hold of the Kemalist, secular, and largely urban elite over the country’s economy, its institutions, and its intellectual and cultural life. A decade and a half later, the AKP’s political domination of Turkey’s political life seems complete. It has won a succession of national and local elections, referenda and, in 2014, its first direct presidential election, often managing to attract around 50% or more of the vote, compared with the 34% it achieved in 2002. The secular elite’s hold over the country’s bureaucracy, military, police, judiciary, universities andmedia has been severelyweakened, somuch so that it could be argued that the AKP has indeed succeeded in reconnecting the

Regional turmoil, the rise of Islamic State, and Turkey's multiple Kurdish dilemmas

This article traces the interrelationship of the roles played by Turkey and by various Kurdish non-state actors such as the Kurdistan Regional Government, the Kurdistan Workers Party, and the Democratic Union Party, in the current turmoil in Syria and Iraq. It considers their varying perspectives on Islamic State and other jihadi groups, the tensions between the regions Kurdish non-state actors, and the differences between them in their relationships with Turkey. The background to these differences is explored, as is their impact on relationships with other actors, most notably the US. The article concludes by noting that Turkey as a regionally powerful and coherent actor, and the Kurds as a distinct ethnic group with aspirations to self-determination, will continue to be powerful elements in the regions politics.

Turkey's isolated stance: an ally no more, or just the usual turbulence?

This article explores the policy choices and political stances that lie behind Turkeys growing isolation both from its western allies and its regional neighbours. It details Ankaras approach to a range of current issues in its region—particularly relating to Syria but also Iraq, Libya, Iran, Russia and Israel—and seeks to trace these approaches back to the world-view of the countrys ruling party and its leading figures, most notably President Erdogan and Prime Minister Davutoglu. It also assesses Turkeys reactions to the complex regional circumstances that have confronted Turkey in recent years. It considers the content and impact of some of the rhetoric emanating from Ankara, especially where it is directed towards the West. The article asks whether and why Turkish foreign policy has acquired an anti-western tone, and also looks at the extent to which its dealings with its neighbours can be explained by sectarian considerations or by pro-Muslim Brotherhood leanings. It then goes on to speculate about Turkeys future relationship with NATO and to a lesser degree the EU. It considers the prospects for an improvement in Ankaras relationship with its western allies, or whether Turkey–US relations in particular are now likely to be characterized by ‘strategic drift’ and a more transactional and contingent approach to alliance relationships.

The influence of the European Union on Turkish foreign policy

the liberal dogma for ideological reasons, as their American counterparts did, but more for instrumental purposes: to weaken national market forces, who in cooperation with their national governments were impeding the European integration process. Ironically, however, the EU’s convictions in the transformative Europeanisation powers of liberal policies have become almost articles of faith. Thus, there has been a ‘shift from the pessimistic German ordo-liberal view that capitalism is innately unstable to a more optimistic liberal view that understands markets to be essentially benign, self-correcting institutions, which should be left to function freely in all but the most exceptional circumstances’ (p. 67). This drive by the EU to liberalise the European market on Anglo-American lines has been especially pronounced in the realm of finance and corporate governance, and McCann goes at length to cover this process with two chapters dedicated to this field, which include the interesting case studies of Germany and Italy, two countries with institutional market structures very different from the Anglo-American model favoured by the EU. This is certainly the best part of the book. As mentioned, McCann shows accurately how far the EU has gone in changing these national structures, but at the same time, he demonstrates how national governments ‘evade the implications of measures they have accepted in the Council of Ministers by pursuing economically nationalist implementation strategies [. . .] carefully shaped to protect important established national relationships or favoured actors’ (p. 180). The book loses a bit of strength in the last two chapters when McCann tackles the political economy of social and labour policies and industrial relations in Europe. This is due to the fact that in these fields he does not present any particular case studies to underpin his arguments. Nonetheless, this part of the book offers a neat analysis of the tensions provoked by the asymmetry between monetary and financial processes and policies increasingly determined at supranational level and social and industrial disputes and negotiations dealt with within the national realm. In this regard, McCann shows and concludes that the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), based on discussions of best practices, often ‘fails in the face of substantial differences in the values and objectives of social policy across member states’ (p. 181). By way of criticism, one has to mention that McCann establishes perhaps a too clear-cut distinction between the EU, on one side, and member states, on the other. These are not always opposing actors. There is certainly much more overlap than McCann suggests. Readers who hope to find analyses about the Europeanisation of the political economies of smaller and peripheral EU member states will also be disappointed. As in other books, the focus is concentrated on the big four: Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy. The book also does not draw on quotes or insights of European and national policymakers. Therefore, the agential and inter-subjective dimensions are overlooked. Those expecting normative predications on possible alternative models for the EU will also not find much material. However, despite these shortcomings, the book is a very useful read for those interested in a short, balanced and well-documented account of how the political economy of the EU has evolved, and more importantly, why it has not evolved further, since its creation in 1957 until the ‘Great Recession’ of 2008–2009.

Concluding Remarks: Coercion and Regional Powers

Taylor and Francis FDEF_A_392324.sgm 10.1080/14702430902921528 Defence Studies 470-2436 (pr nt)/1743-969 (online) Original Article 2 09 & F ancis 90 00June 009 Wil iamPa k willi .h.p k@kcl.ac.uk This collection attempts to address the issues raised when regional powers resort to coercion. For the editors, this is of interest precisely because most of the extant case studies of the resort to coercion and much of the academic literature in the field, derive from the experiences of the world’s one superpower, the United States. Yet it is evident from each of the four case studies represented here that the US shadow is likely to be cast wherever there is a threat of or resort to military force in the international system. In some instances the US is a direct participant in a conflict, as in the triangular China–Taiwan–US relationship surveyed here by James R. Holmes. On other occasions the US might be an ally or adversary, or both, of the parties immediately confronting each other, as in Damla Aras’s contribution on the Turkish–Syrian crisis of 1998. Tracey German observes how Moscow’s threats to Georgia also had Washington in their sights, and formed part of a wider struggle to maintain Russian influence in former Soviet territory and counter the growing American presence. Of course, Russian threats were also aimed at other former Soviet states, notably Ukraine, which shared Georgia’s aspiration to align with the West and limit Russian influence. Srinath Raghavan’s analysis of the Indo-Pakistan crisis of 2001–02 draws attention to the fact that, in addition to the relationship Washington had with both parties to the dispute and to the US concern with developments in nearby Afghanistan, the US can also be expected to take the lead when threats to good order in the international system are in play. In the IndoPakistan case, the fact that both parties are nuclear armed undoubtedly intensified Washington’s determination to facilitate a peaceful outcome. Both India and Pakistan sought by their behaviour to manipulate US engagement in the crisis. In short, coercive strategies anywhere can serve to

Iraqi Futures, Turkish Options

Abstract This paper, completed as Ankara was considering extending its green light to cross-border military operations in northern Iraq, will explore a range of possible outcomes for Iraq, and Ankaras stakes in and policy preferences for Iraq and particularly northern Iraq. It will consider the aspirations of Iraqs Kurds, and the domestic, regional and international constraints on both Iraqs Kurds and Turkey. A range of alternative policy approaches available to Ankara will be discussed, and their implications assessed. The paper will argue that, whatever the outcome for Iraq overall, a high degree of Iraqi Kurdish independence will be an unavoidable feature of the regions political arrangements. Ankaras adjustment to this reality will be difficult.