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European Council decided to open accession negotiations with Turkey on 17 Dec. 2004

Turkey: Bridging the divide
Editorial
Tuesday 7 April 2009

It is an inconvenient truth that the two most influential countries in the Middle East are both non-Arab – Iran and Turkey. But some hope must lie in the fact that Barack Obama yesterday chose to make Turkey the focus of an attempt to bridge the gulf between Islam and the west. Alighting on Turkey as an example of the deal that can be struck between the US and the Muslim world is as bold in foreign policy terms as it is risky in domestic ones. There are plenty on the right who would seize on Mr Obama’s self-identification as an American who has Muslims in his family. But to choose the Turkish parliament as the venue to say that his country is not and never will be at war with Islam is the mark of a man who is showing increasing confidence on the world stage.

The French president and the German chancellor, who have bolted the door to Europe, have dropped the ball on Turkey. They have yet to see what Mr Obama has already understood. Turkey’s biggest asset is its geopolitical role, and it is using it intelligently. The president, Abdullah Gul, has gone to Armenia on the first visit by a Turkish leader in the two nations’ bitter history. Ankara is also trying to transform its relationship with Iraqi Kurds. Turkey mediated indirect talks between Syria and Israel, and when the prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed off the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, telling the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, that he was killing people in Gaza, Turkish flags went up all over Palestine.

At a time when Washington is reviewing its policy on the stalled Israeli-Arab peace process, Mr Erdogan’s message that Hamas must be represented at the peace table carries weight. Not least it gives Israel, which maintains close ties with Ankara, cause for concern. If any country can reinforce the message to Mr Obama that the current status quo is untenable it is Turkey.

Mr Erdogan is not without his domestic problems. His Justice and Development party won about 39% of the vote at recent local elections, well down on the 47% it got two years ago. It was 36% in Istanbul and the coastal cities, a clear sign that he must listen to the progressive areas of his country. He has relaunched moves to widen ethnic and religious freedoms, and promised to work on a new and less authoritarian civilian constitution. Turkey is always reforming and never reformed, and Mr Erdogan may have personally lost faith in the ultimate goal of seeking accession to the EU, no thanks to Mr Sarkozy. Turkey is not a model country, any more than any other is. But it is a telling example. It undermines the western notion that Islam and modernity are somehow fundamentally incompatible, and it does have useful regional contacts. Next stop Iran.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/apr/07/barack-obama-turkey-east-west

US not at war with Islam

Obama reaches out to Muslim world

President says US ‘will never be at war with Islam’

By Patrick Cockburn in Istanbul

President Obama praised Turkey for moving towards an accord with Armenia during a press conference with Abdullah Gul in Ankara yesterday

“I like Obama because he is half-Muslim and everybody here hated Bush because of what he did in Iraq,” said Kassim, a Turkish driver, as he sped past the ornate Ottoman palace on the Bosphorus where Barack Obama is due to speak today.

Mr Obama has already gone a long way towards restoring Turkey to its former position as a crucial American ally in the region. Relations soured after the Turks refused to join the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Yesterday, in a speech to the Turkish parliament, Mr Obama reached out to Turkey as an ally and to the rest of the Muslim world with the assurance that the US “is not and will never be at war with Islam”.

Kassim had already decided that it did not matter what Mr Obama’s religion was. What mattered was that many of his policies “seem to show that he wants the same things that we do”. This attitude is a radical change from a few years ago when an opinion poll showed only 9 per cent of Turks had a favourable opinion of the US.

In his address to the Ankara parliament before travelling on to Istanbul, Mr Obama also called on the EU to admit Turkey as a member. France has strongly opposed its inclusion and enthusiasm for EU entry has fallen among Turks. Nevertheless the long-term aim of joining is important in making Turkey less autocratic and reducing the role of the Turkish army in taking crucial decisions.

Mr Obama danced around contentious issues such as the 1915 Armenian genocide and the rights of Turkey’s Kurdish minority. “My views are on the record and I have not changed those views,” he said during a press conference with President Abdullah Gul, referring to his pledge during the US presidential election campaign to describe the killing of Armenians during the First World War as genocide.

The word Mr Obama did not use yesterday was “genocide” and he went on to praise Turkey for moving towards an accord with Armenia and a reopening of the border which has been closed since Armenia’s war with Azerbaijan in 1993.

Mr Obama showed similar delicacy in referring to Turkish Kurds, praising signs of greater official tolerance towards them such as a Kurdish-language TV channel. But he then swiftly denounced the PKK Kurdish guerrillas, against whom the Turkish army has fought a long war, as “terrorists.”

Turkish leaders were surprised that Mr Obama, who had shown little interest in Turkey previously, should have chosen to visit their country at the end of his European tour.

The decisive factor was probably Turkey’s geographical position, since it has common borders with Iraq, Iran, Syria and Georgia. About 70 per cent of US supplies to Iraq go through Turkish ports or airspace, or travel via Turkish roads. With the American military’s supply routes to Afghanistan through Pakistan increasingly under threat, the use of Turkish airspace and airbases is again important.

The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had already shown his eagerness to get along with the incoming US administration by withdrawing Turkey’s veto of the appointment of the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as Nato’s secretary general.

Turkey objected to his appointment because of his failure to apologise for the cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed published in a Danish magazine in 2005. Mr Rasmussen has since promised to be more sensitive to Muslim sensibilities, a promise which, since Turkey has the largest army in Nato after the US, he will probably have to keep.

Mr Obama went through the ritual yesterday of visiting the tomb of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish secular state, while today he will visit Hagia Sophia, the great Byzantine church in Istanbul and the nearby Blue Mosque, as well as speaking at a UN-sponsored conference on reducing religious and ethnic divisions.

Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) is clearly revelling in Mr Obama’s praise of Turkey and of the AKP’s cautiously progressive and Islamic policies. No other Turkish party is a serious political rival to the AKP, which won power in 2002. It lost some ground in municipal elections on 29 March but this setback was largely in terms of its inflated expectations.

The army’s ability to manipulate the state from behind the scenes has not disappeared but is not as strong as it was. And although the international financial crisis is having an effect on the Turkish economy it has not yet had a devastating impact.

One of George Bush’s key failures when he invaded Iraq was not persuading Turkey to allow him to base an American invasion force in the country. Over the proceeding five years, Turkey increasingly pursued friendlier policies towards Iran, Russia, Sudan and Hamas.

The Turks are now delighted to discover that their policies are very similar to those adopted by Mr Obama.

Source: www.independent.co.uk, 7 April 2009

EU must not shut the door

Ankara is not yet ready, but the benefits of such a union would be great

[Leading Article]

Tuesday, 7 April 2009

Barack Obama yesterday wrote in the visitors’ book at the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of his hope to strengthen relations between Turkey and America. But, judging by Mr Obama’s speech the previous day, what the US President wants just as much is a strengthening of relations between Turkey and the European Union. The second wish is, by some distance, the more controversial.

Mr Obama’s unambiguous expression of support for Turkey’s bid for EU membership in Prague on Sunday did not go down well in Paris or Berlin. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, were quick to pour cold water on the idea that this predominantly Muslim nation of some 80 million citizens is destined to enter the European family.

It was unwise for President Obama, as an outsider, to wade into such rough waters. And Washington cannot easily gloss over the fact that Turkey has made little progress towards fulfilling the criteria of entry since the EU agreed to open accession talks with Ankara five years ago.

It is true that Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has tried to inject some life into the process in recent months, travelling to Brussels for talks with the EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso and appointing a close aide to be full-time negotiator on accession.

But the reforms Ankara needs to enact to prepare Turkey for EU membership remain on the shelf. The influence of the military within Turkey’s political institutions is still strong. Prosecutions against those deemed to have “insulted Turkishness” continue to be brought. And Ankara refuses to open Turkey’s ports and airports to traffic from Cyprus.

There are doubts about the ruling AKP party too. The Turkish prime minister’s objections in recent days to the appointment of Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the next secretary general of Nato send an unsettling message about Ankara’s willingness to play politics with religion. The Danish prime minister’s fault in the eyes of Mr Erdogan was his failure to be suitably condemnatory of the offensive cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published by some of his country’s newspapers in 2006. Turkey’s need to fall back on funding from the International Monetary Fund raises concerns about the ability of the EU to absorb such a potentially unstable new economic partner too.

And yet Mr Obama was right to emphasise the desirability, in principle, of Turkey entering the European family. Turkish membership would be a tremendous boost for relations between Europe and the Muslim world. At a stroke, the EU would be transformed from looking like a white, Christian club, to an alliance of free-trading democracies.

And the influence of the mostly moderate Muslims of Turkey might even help to counteract the spread of separatist Islamism in the likes of Britain and the Netherlands. Nor should we forget that the lure of membership gives Europe great scope to push for reform within Turkey, even if the results so far have been less than many hoped for. The process is almost as valuable as the result.

President Obama might have been a little indelicate in throwing Washington’s full backing behind Ankara’s EU bid, but we should be in no doubt about one thing: it is not in the interests of a single European to see the door slammed in Turkey’s face.

Source: www.independent.co.uk, 7 April 2009

NATO talks on Rasmussen impact EU-Turkey relations

Summit chamber: Turkish President Abdullah Gul was not happy with the EU being brought up in NATO discussions (Photo: nato.org)

VALENTINA POP

04.04.2009 @ 21:52 CET

EUOBSERVER / STRASBOURG – NATO on Saturday (4 April) named Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as its new secretary general, overcoming Turkish opposition during difficult talks which caused fresh tension in EU-Turkey relations.

Turkish resistance to the Rasmussen nomination centered around his support for Danish media after newspapers published cartoons of Mohammed in 2006.

The stalemate saw EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn suggest to Finnish state broadcaster YLE that Ankara may be unfit to join the EU because it does not respect freedom of speech.

“This will surely raise questions amongst EU member states and citizens on how well Turkey has internalised such European values as freedom of expression,” Mr Rehn said.

Politicians in the circle of German Chancellor Angela Merkel also attacked Turkey.

“Whoever puts Islamic propaganda above the future of NATO and our European system of values, has nothing to look for in the EU,” Alexander Dobrint, the secretary general of Ms Merkel’s sister party, the Christian-Social Union, told German press.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul did not take kindly to the remarks, calling the EU commissioner’s intervention “unfortunate” and “unpleasant” and warning that it woud increase anti-EU sentiment in Turkey.

“This was a NATO, not an EU meeting and I shared this with European heads of state,” Mr Gul said at a press conference after the NATO summit in Strasbourg. “Although there are several European members of NATO, you can’t take a decision in the EU and impose it on NATO, these two can’t be linked.”

The Turkish president explained that promises made by US President Barack Obama, rather than the veiled threats on EU accession, finally secured Ankara’s approval for the Danish appointment.

Obama-brokered deal

“I had a long bilateral meeting with Mr Obama which was very fruitful and our concerns were overcome and wishes respected. We then had a trilateral meeting with Mr Rasmussen,” he said.

In return for backing down, Turkey is to get a newly-created post of deputy secretary general of NATO and several Turkish officers inside the alliance’s military command.

For his part, the Danish PM took a conciliatory approach.

“I made it clear I will reach out to the Muslim world and I will make sure we will co-operate closely with Turkey,” he told press in Strasbourg.

Mr Rasmussen also pledged to look into Danish-based Kurdish TV station Roj TV, which Ankara wants off the air.

“If Roj TV is involved in any terrorist activities, we will do everything to shut it down,” he said.

Mr Rasmussen will go with Mr Obama to Ankara on Monday, where the pair will take place in a UN “Alliance of Civilisations” symposium on promoting inter-faith diaogue.

Forty five-year old liberal finance minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen is to take over as the new Danish PM at home.

Italian intermezzo

Turkey’s hard bargaining saw some European leaders break wih protocol at the largely ceremonial 60th anniversary NATO summit.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi spent 40 minutes talking on his cell phone with his Turkish counterpart in Ankara about the Rasmussen problem, causing him to miss the family photo and a minute’s silence for fallen NATO soldiers.

The Italian leader was so absorbed on the phone he forgot to walk up the red carpet to his waiting co-hostess Angela Merkel, who eventually shrugged her shoulders and carried on with the ceremony.

Asked later if the phone conversation had helped in any way, Turkish president Gul smiled and said that “[Mr Berlusconi] really wanted to get the result and worked very hard for it.”

https://euobserver.com/news/27915

Israel pleased with new NATO chief

By Amir Oren, Haaretz Correspondent and AP

STRASBOURG, France – NATO leaders appointed Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as NATO’s new secretary general yesterday after overcoming Turkish objections to a leader who angered Muslims around the world by supporting the right to caricature the Prophet Muhammad.

Israeli officials here expressed their satisfaction at Rasmussen’s appointment, noting that he has taken a very friendly approach to Israel in the past few years. NATO’s outgoing head, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said NATO’s 28 member nations reached unanimity after a series of Turkish concerns were addressed.

“Every head of state and government is fully convinced that Anders Fogh Rasmussen is the best choice for NATO,” de Hoop Scheffer told reporters at the end of the alliance’s two-day, 60th-anniversary summit. “A solution has been found also for the concerns expressed by Turkey and we are unanimous in this.”

“There were important efforts to make sure that everyone felt included,” U.S. President Barack Obama said after the meeting.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters that his government’s requests had included the closure of a Kurdish satellite television broadcaster based in Denmark; the establishment of contacts between NATO and Islamic countries; appointment of a Turk as an aide to Fogh Rasmussen and senior NATO command positions for Turkish generals.

Fogh Rasmussen infuriated many Muslims by defending freedom of speech during an uproar over a Danish newspaper’s publication of the cartoons in 2005.

He has also angered Turkey by opposing its membership in the European Union.

Turkish leaders argued against Fogh Rasmussen on the grounds that he would be a bad choice at a time when NATO was trying to win support from Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to a diplomat from a member country who asked not to be identified.

Fogh Rasmussen, who stood next to de Hoop Scheffer during the announcement, said he was honored by the decision.

“I have total understanding for the issues raised by Turkey,” Fogh Rasmussen said, adding that he viewed Turkey as a bridge to the Islamic world.

“A dialogue with the Muslim world is important,” he said.

De Hoop Scheffer’s term runs out August 1.

Source: www.haaretz.com, April 05, 2009

Erdogan to Challenge Merkel on NATO Dispute

4 April 2009

Nato

The election of the new Chief of NATO has opened a new rift between Turkey and the Western Alliance. Turkey shows resistance to the election of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the new Chief of the NATO due to Danish politician’s attitudes regarding the latest caricature crisis. Moreover, Turkey shows resistance to Rasmussen on the ground that Danish Prime Minister has not suspended a television channel’s activities in Denmark that is associated with PKK, a terrorist organization in Turkey.

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan¸ said that “we do not want NATO to lose power. The media organ of the terrorist organization in my country broadcasts from Denmark. We submitted documents four years ago, but he still could not or did not stop them. We had a cartoon crisis as well. We asked them how to overcome the situation, but they still did not approach positively. Indeed, I take a dim view of his candidacy.”

These statements create new tensions between Germany and Turkey. Since German Prime Minister Angela Merkel strongly supports the candidacy of Rasmussen, objects Turkey by saying that “it would be wrong for a candidate country to try to block the candidacy of an EU member state’s Prime Minister.” Ms. Merkel also implies that this would create new obstacles in front of Turkey for her full membership.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his recent statement challenged Chancellor Merkel and dismissed her statements as being “unacceptable.”

Prof. Dr. Mehmet Ozcan, the Head of USAK Center for EU Studies commented o the issue by saying that “carrying international problems under the umbrella of EU integration is not compatible with the EU’s policies up to now. The latest attempt, in this regard, is the Cyprus question and the EU members understand their mistake. Making international problems an integral part of the EU integration process, does not yield good results. In this sense, Merkel is playing with the fire by using Turkey’s EU membership bid as an instrument to convince Erdogan on Rasmussen’s candidacy.”

The German newspapers write that “if Ms. Merkel can not succeed to convince the other leaders on Rasmussen, it would be a clear embarrassment for her.” Ozcan underlined this point by saying that “due to the incoming elections in Germany, Ms. Merkel tries to politically benefit from NATO summit. Yet, it is obvious that it would not be good trade-off for the future of European enlargement.”

By JTW and news agencies

Journal of Turkish Weekly