In a move to contribute to Turkish-Armenian ties, Turkey’s Higher Board of Education, or YÖK, will open Armenian language and literature departments at Turkish universities, the Anatolia News Agency reported Friday.
Trakya and Nevşehir universities will accept a total of 40 students in the department. Boğaziçi University has been teaching Armenian language since last year.
A group of Turkish filmmakers visited The Civilitas foundation on December 4. Ten young filmmakers, visiting Armenia to participate in the Second Turkish- Armenian Workshop on “Cinema as Means of Cross-Border Dialogue and Mutual Understanding”.
The workshop, initiated by the Golden Apricot International Film Festival, was a partnership between the Yerevan festival and the Anadolu Kültür Association of Turkey, as well as the Armenian Writers Union.
The Turkish filmmakers and the organizers met with Civilitas founder Vartan Oskanian, and members of the Civilitas staff.
Mr. Oskanian welcomed the initiative and spoke of the importance of such initiatives.
He noted that the purpose of the workshop is to promote civil and cultural dialogue between Armenia and Turkey via means of cinema, encouraging cooperation and mutual recognition among Armenian and Turkish professionals.
“There is a great deal of misunderstanding and mistrust between Turkey and Armenia. And if the governments of both countries are seriously thinking of normalization of relations, the civil societies in both countries should push the process forward.What better medium than cinema to bring people together,” Mr. Oskanian said.
The Turkish filmmakers, many of whom already have working ties with their Armenian colleagues, said that one of their main goals of the cooperation is a possibility to work together on a joint project.
“You, the filmmakers, should be able to explain to your government by means of cinema, that for the development of the region, for the normalization of the relations between the two people, opening the border is vital” Mr. Oskanian explained.
Baku. Ramil Mammadli – APA. Iranian court accused Azerbaijani student of Peyami-Nur University of Erdebil Esger Ekberzadeh of Pan-Turkist activity and national discrimination and sentenced him to five years. World Azerbaijanis Congress told APA that under another decision of the court Ekberzadeh had been sent to Zahidan jail in the east of Iran. The hearing was closed. Ekberzadeh’s lawyer, human rights defenders and family members were not allowed to attend the hearing.
Esger Ekberzadeh was imprisoned for four months in 2006 for participation in the pickets against publication of caricatures insulting Azerbaijanis in the “Iran” newspaper. He was fined of 600,000 tomans for spreading leaflets calling to pickets.
A democratic Turkey that has respect in Muslim capitals is exactly what the West needs.
Published Dec 6, 2008
From the magazine issue dated Dec 15, 2008
For years Ankara’s foreign policy was fixated on a few narrow topics—how to handle the Greeks, the Kurds and Armenians—and Turkish policymakers seemed unable to solve even these chronic problems, let alone the problems of others. But these days Turkey has tackled such regional concerns with a new gusto—making the first real headway on the Cyprus issue in decades, for instance—while playing a far larger role in global affairs. In May Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government mediated indirect peace talks between Syrian and Israeli officials in Istanbul. The talks are now ongoing, and further meetings have reportedly been scheduled. Erdogan also recently stepped forward to offer help to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to deal with Iran, which Turkey’s prime minister and many others expect to be Obama’s biggest foreign-policy challenge. On November 11 Erdogan told The New York Times his government was willing to be the mediator between the new U.S. administration and Tehran. “We are the only capital that is trusted by both sides,” he reiterated later in Washington. “We are the ideal negotiator.”
This surge of interest in becoming something of a global peacemaker is in part the result of the ongoing process of Turkish democratization. The nation’s old elite consisted of the more isolationist Kemalists, the dedicated followers of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who established a republic without democracy in 1923 to westernize and secularize the nation. For many decades to come, society remained divided between the dominant Kemalist center and the more traditional periphery it kept under its thumb. But things fundamentally changed after the election victories of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002 and 2007. The “other Turkey” was now out of the periphery and into power, and while it proved to be more religious than the old elite, it also proved to be more pro-Western, and more committed to the European Union accession bid than its growingly xenophobic secular rivals.
This was not simply a convenient tactic, as some have argued. Turkey’s conservative Muslims had been undergoing a silent reformation since the 1980s, as evidenced by the country’s growing “Islamic bourgeoisie,” which sees its future in global markets, not Sharia courts. Ideas about the compatibility of Islam and liberal democracy flourished, as recently evidenced by headscarved women rallying in the streets for civil liberties for all.
Meanwhile, Ahmet Davutoglu, an erudite scholar who became Erdogan’s chief adviser, outlined a new foreign-policy vision. Turkey had unwisely denied its cultural links with the Middle East for decades, he argued, but the time had come to turn Turkey into a “soft power” that exports peace, stability and growth in its region. Hence came the rapprochement in recent years and months with Greece, Lebanon, Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan and most recently Armenia, where President Abdullah Gül paid an ice-breaking visit in September.
Kemalist Turks dislike this “neo-Ottoman” approach, which prescribes closer relations with other Muslim nations. When Erdogan greets his Arab counterparts “in the name of God,” they are horrified and argue that the country’s secular principles are under threat. And to garner support from Westerners who are concerned about political Islam, for good reasons, they try to depict the AKP as Taliban in sheep’s clothing. But, in fact, a democratic Turkey that has respect in Muslim capitals, that can speak their language and that is willing to use this leverage for peace and reconciliation is exactly what the West needs.
Some in the West fear this approach as well, taking notice of AKP’s interests in Islam and the rampant anti-Americanism in Turkey, and sometimes conflating and confusing the two. Yet that anti-American wave is a reaction to the Iraq War and its aftermath. By empowering the Kurds in the north, the post-Saddam era unleashed the deepest of all Turkish fears: the emergence of a Greater Kurdistan. In other words, anti-Americanism is almost a derivative of anti-Kurdism, and, not too surprisingly, is strongest in the nationalist circles, which include the Kemalists. These groups, represented by the two main opposition parties, deride the AKP as American puppets and Kurdish collaborators. A 2007 bestselling book, whose Kemalist author was covertly financed by the military intelligence, even argues that both Erdogan and former AKP member President Gül are actually covert Jews who serve “the elders of Zion” by undermining Atatürk’s republic.
Turkey’s new elites are not covert Jews as some fringe Kemalists fantasize, of course. But neither are they creeping Islamists as smarter Kemalists portray. In fact they are Muslim democrats, who can both take Turkey closer to becoming a true capitalist democracy and inspire other Muslim nations to follow a similar route. For sure, they need to combat ugly nationalism inside their borders and take continued steps toward deepening liberal reforms. With such a combination of sound domestic leadership and visionary foreign policy, they would be ideal partners for the Obama administration in its own effort to reach out to the troublesome actors in the Middle East.
Akyol is a columnist for Istanbul-based Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.
© 2008
Source: Newsweek, 6 December 2008
Ramday Javed Iqbal (lead)
Alistair Corbett
October 2008
The Royal College of Defence Studies
RCDS 2008 – CONTEMPORARY STRATEGIC ISSUES
Key Judgements
• Turkey is likely to internally consolidate its democracy, resolve conflict between secularism and political Islam and sustain economic growth. Some tension between democratic forces and secular elite will remain.
• The Kurdish problem will slightly ease up due to mitigating internal political developments but essentially stay frozen due to external regional situation.
• While Turkey-EU dialogue will continue, Turkey is likely to face continuous hurdles in securing full membership of the EU, in the foreseeable future.
• Turkey’s position as a hub of energy pipelines linking Caspian Sea with Europe will increase its importance to EU for its energy security.
• In view of the efforts at resolution of Cyprus issue the likelihood of its settlement has increased.
• The EU attitude towards Turkish membership, Russian reassertiveness in her “near abroad”, the stability and orientation of the Persian Gulf region, Chinese influence in Central and West Asia and the orientation of the future Iraq will determine Turkey’s role as regional power.
Discussion
• Having lost an empire Turkey has been trying to find its soul for a century. Internally, it decided to make a break with the imperial past by opting for a harsh form of western secularism. Economy remained on the rocks. Turkish nationalism was brittle and paranoid. Externally, problems with Greece persisted even as both had membership of NATO. The twenty first century has begun with changes in the internal and external scene for Turkey. How Turkey perceives threats and opportunities in the new environment will dictate the future of Turkey. This paper essentially follows and examines dominant factors to draw relevant conclusions and reach key judgments.
• Secularism vs Political Islam. In recent years the long drawn battle between secularism and political Islam has come to the fore. Although Justice and Development Party (AKP) is not yet clearly out of the woods the tide of political legitimacy seems to be turning in favor of democratic forces. The military and judiciary seem to have realized that, political space will have to be conceded to democratic forces particularly when it brings along economic prosperity, keeps Turkey on track for EU membership and safeguards the security interests. Slowly, and due to EU membership requirements, the democratic culture will mature in the mid-term.
• Economy. After the shock of 2001, Turkey embarked upon macro institutional reforms opening up the economy, within the framework of an IMF programme. As a result, Turkish economy has witnessed sustained and robust growth. The current global financial crises will impact Turkey less than others. Having received the dividends it is unlikely that any government will reverse course.
• Kurds. No other security issue has engaged the Turkish mind and energies as the Kurdish problem. The broader issue is not the PKK but Kurdish independence. The US invasion of Iraq and resultant autonomy for the Kurds in the north has raised the spectre of an independent or autonomous Kurd region with Kirkuk oil wealth. This could further create a pull on the Turkish Kurds. In the past, Turkish response to the challenge has been brutal suppression of any Kurdish cultural or political expression. Recently, in addition to military operations the AKP government has slightly eased the political environment. While this may work, the external regional linkages are likely to strain the Turkish restraint in the foreseeable future. The issue will continue to dog Turkish governments for at least another generation.
• EU. The AKP government has undertaken several political, legal and economic reforms to prepare itself for EU membership. It has also maintained a steady political course for securing membership. Meanwhile, it has made reasonable economic progress, remains important to European energy security and made moves to reduce the baggage of its Cyprus issue. On the EU side however, still there are significant historical, religious and psychological barriers to Turkish entry in to the club. In the mid-term this could change. However, this is not, and will not be a settled issue till at least 2015. Eventually, Turkey may choose to be a beneficiary of EU “variable geometry” (ie not a full member but economically integrated while independently sovereign). Turkey will certainly continue to seek markets and allies to the east also.
• US and NATO. Increasingly, Turkey’s anchors to the west are drifting or are under strain. NATO, for decades the bedrock of Turkey’s western identity, particularly for its influential military, has lost lustre. Despite laudable garden-tending by senior officials on both sides, US-Turkish relations have not recovered the depth and breadth they had in the 1990’s. This is happening at a time when Middle East, West Asia, Central Asia and Caucasus are transforming and Turkey’s relevance to the US is increasingly going to come to the fore. Recently, in the wake of August war in Georgia, Turkey has opposed introduction of NATO forces in to the Black Sea. While a dramatic NATO split is not envisaged, in the future the alliance will come under strain.
• Greece and Cyprus. Turkey – Greece rivalry goes back several centuries. However, starting in 1999, the earthquake diplomacy has helped thaw the relations and Greece has supported Turkey’s candidacy for EU membership. Meanwhile, Greek Cyprus has joined the EU – granting Nicosia a veto over all things Turkish. There are efforts at hand to resolve the Cyprus issue. Should they succeed, they will free Turkey from a significant burden and improve her chances for the EU membership as well.
Conclusions
•Turkey is the heir to the Ottoman Empire, which at various points dominated the eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, the Balkans, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Black Sea region until it met the expanding Russian empire. Its collapse after WW-I created an oddity – an inward looking state in Asia Minor. It sat out 20th century or allowed its strategic space to be used. The situation has changed dramatically.
• Turkey is at a critical stage in its quest for a democratic political dispensation and economic upswing. The road ahead remains rocky. However, the signs indicate that Turkey will most likely stay the course and internal stability will lead to its increased potential for playing a regional role.
• Turkey has quietly emerged as the prize in a new great game over who will develop and bring to the EU / world markets the vast oil and gas resources of the Central Asian states. Turkey will in the years ahead become one of the world’s major energy hubs, supplied by the pipelines which will crisscross Anatolia. It will depend on US and EU as to where those lines run and whose products pass through those lines.
• Turkey’s EU project faces a hopeful but uncertain future. The relevance of NATO has dimmed. The US nexus has fallen victim to the US invasion of Iraq and support for the Iraqi Kurds. Yet, all this happens at a time when Turkey is rising and in the future the West’s need for Turkey will increase. The strategic spaces around Turkey are all in turmoil. They have also been traditional areas of Turkish influence. Turkey will inevitably attempt to influence these spaces. How and to whose advantage this happens will depend as much on US / EU, as on Turkey.
Ramday Javed Iqbal (lead)
Alistair Corbett
Baku. Elnur Mammadli – APA. “Turkish government’s recent discussions with Armenian leadership are very doubtful,” MP Elman Mammadov told APA. He said that Turkey had its own interests in the world policy, wants to cooperate with the European Union, Armenia in terms of the relations with the United States.
“Finally it will turn out that the position of Turkish ruling Justice and Development Party is betrayal. Armenians have never been and will never be friends of Turks. It is impossible to make somebody forget something, or compromise with Armenians. Some men even apologized to Armenians for 1915 events. This is a betrayal,” he said.
