Turkish Forum

Category: Europe

  • After five centuries, women finally step inside the Spanish Riding School

    After five centuries, women finally step inside the Spanish Riding School

    Sojurner Morell was named after a women’s rights campaigner. And, at 17, she has landed a blow of her own for equality after being accepted into Vienna’s famed equestrian centre. Tony Paterson met her

    Thursday, 11 December 2008

    Briton Sojurner Morell, left, and Austrian Hannah Zeitlhofer, right, are the first women to be admitted to the Spanish Riding School of Vienna

    Dressed up in the skintight breeches, knee-high leather boots, frock coat and 19th-century commissionaire-style cap worn by pupils at the world’s oldest riding school, Sojurner Morell, a 17-year-old British horsewoman, looks decidedly butch.

    Yet there are ancient and firmly entrenched reasons for the teenager’s masculine appearance. She and her 21-year-old Austrian colleague, Hannah Zeitlhofer have secured a sudden reputation for breaking one of Austria’s last and most enduring taboos. They have become the first women to be accepted to Vienna’s elite, internationally renowned and hitherto male-dominated Spanish Riding School – a 481-year-old institution as famous and peculiar to this Alpine nation as Mozart.

    But being the first women to enter one of the last men-only bastions in Europe has exacted its inevitable sartorial price: “I guess they haven’t got round to designing a uniform for women yet,” admitted Sojurner. “Let’s face it, it hasn’t exactly been an issue at the school for about four hundred years.”

    Sojurner, whose name derives from the black 19th-century American abolitionist and women’s rights campaigner Sojurner Truth, doesn’t come across as a militant feminist activist. She was besotted with horses as a child. She vividly remembers riding around on the back of ponies in the paddock behind the family home in Saratoga Springs, New York, aged two. Her father comes from Birmingham but the family moved to America when she was a child.

    “When you grow up with horses, you get to know about the Spanish Riding School almost automatically,” she said. “I can’t even remember how or when I first heard of it but for me it was always an ideal, the ultimate goal for anyone who loves horses.”

    She first visited the Riding School two years ago while on a tour of Europe with her mother. She was so taken by the place and its elaborate displays of dressage performed by the schools’ legendary Lipizzaner horses, that she sent a letter of application in September last year just to try her luck.

    She was delighted when she received a reply inviting her to attend an interview. She had to compete against eight other candidates by demonstrating her riding skills to a board of examiners and she was astounded when she learnt the result. Only four candidates were accepted and she, along with Ms Zeitlhofer, who recently obtained a degree in equestrian science, were among them and women to boot.

    Horse riding is an activity in which women have been involved for centuries. Dressage, showjumping competitions and even village gymkhanas would be unthinkable with no female riders. Without them Black Beauty would doubtless never have been written. It seems extraordinary, therefore, that an institution like the Spanish Riding School has sustained a ban on women for so long.

    The cliches about the Teutonic world lagging behind the Anglo-Saxons sometimes ring true. Laws guaranteeing women equal rights only came into force in Germany in 1957 and it took until 1972 for the Swiss to give women the vote.

    Austria can hardly claim the status of most emancipated nation in the world either; Vienna’s Philharmonic Orchestra only hired a full-time female musician in 1997, after being subjected to massive public pressure to do so. And when it comes to horses, the nation is radically out of step with the English-speaking world. Austria is famous for its horsemeat sausages.

    Vienna’s Spanish Riding School embodied such conservatism for centuries. Founded back in 1527, its roots are in the military traditions dating as far back as Xenophon in ancient Greece and the horsemanship of the post-medieval age. Then, knights attempted to retain a battlefield role by shedding armour and learning to outwit their opponents through manoeuvrability and riding skill.

    The school is described as Spanish because of the Spanish horses that Austria’s ruling Hapsburg family imported in the 16th century. The horses gave rise to the famous Lipizzaner breed, a symbol of the country’s prowess during the Austro-Hungarian empire. The school specialises in training Lipizzaner stallions. It takes 15 years to become one of its chief riders and the skills required are easily as demanding as those needed to master a Stradivarious violin or helm an America’s Cup-winning yacht.

    The school is a magnet for tourists who flock to see its displays of classical dressage in the early 18th-century, pillared Winter Riding School building. Uniformed riders, clad in bicorne hats, period uniforms and immaculately polished boots salute in front of a portrait of the Austrian emperor, Charles VI, before performing on their white Lipizzaner stallions.

    It has taken a female manager to break the school’s male exclusivity. Early last year Elisabeth Gürtler, a Viennese society hostess and owner of the Sacher hotel next door, was appointed general director. An experienced businesswoman, she took over when the school was facing bankruptcy. Last January it had to cancel a tour to the US to cut spending. Part of Ms Gürtler’s remit has been to modernise the school and “make it more open”. She sees the decision to admit women as an entirely natural process. “Both men and women have to earn their keep and prove themselves nowadays, nobody is against this,” she says. Nobody ever ruled that women should never be admitted, “it just sort of ended up that way”.

    For Ms Morell and Ms Zeitlhofer, being the only women in the Riding School’s entourage of 21 riders has not been as problematic as expected. Their main difficulty is trying to mount a horse when its stirrups are set high. Both say their upper arms have not yet developed sufficient muscle to enable them to always complete the process alone. “We sometimes have to ask our male colleagues for a lift up,” says Ms Zeitlhofer, “That can be pretty annoying, because then everyone looks at you.”

    As first-year pupils or élèves, as the school calls them, both women are paid €700 (£610) a month and work a demanding eight-hour day that begins at 6 m. Riding lessons follow and students have to learn how to maintain perfect posture and lead with the reins. The rest of the working day is spent mucking out stables and grooming the horses. Both women say they encounter absolutely no resentment from the male riders and most are “totally nice”. Andreas Hausberger, 43, a chief rider, says he is thrilled to have women at the school: “Thank God we are not living in the Middle Ages any more.”

    Yet the school has still to sort out the dress issues. The difficulties for women presented by the masculine uniform of frock coat and peaked cap are nothing compared to those presented by the uniform worn by its troupe of still exclusively male chief riders. Their parade dress is a coffee-coloured riding coat buttoned up to the neck, knee-high boots and an 18th-century Captain Hornblower-style bicorne hat. “There are a couple of questions about that,” admitted Ms Gürtler, “But we have a few years to think about it.”

    Source:  www.independent.co.uk, 11 December 2008

  • Chingiz Aitmatov’s Lifelong Journey Toward Eternity

    Chingiz Aitmatov’s Lifelong Journey Toward Eternity

    Chingiz Aitmatov

    December 12, 2008
    By Tyntchtykbek Tchoroev

     

    This week marks the culmination of a yearlong celebration in Kyrgyzstan of the writer and thinker Chingiz Aitmatov, who died on June 10, a few months short of his 80th birthday.

    Aitmatov is revered for building a bridge between the world of traditional Kyrgyz folklore and modern Eurasian literature. His writings illuminate the challenges that faced the peoples of the Soviet Union both before and after its demise, and his own life is an integral part of that broader turbulent pattern.

    He was born on December 12, 1928, and brought up in the village of Sheker in the Talas region of northern Kyrgyzstan. He studied in Jambul (in present-day Kazakhstan), Frunze (now Bishkek), and Moscow. He witnessed Josef Stalin’s purges of the 1930s firsthand: his father Torokul, a prominent political figure, was arrested in 1937 and executed the following year as an alleged enemy of the people and counterrevolutionary.

    It was only after Kyrgyzstan became independent that Torokul Aitmatov’s remains were found, together with those of other prominent intellectuals and politicians. He was given a state funeral in August 1992. Chyngyz Aitmatov named the new cemetery near Bishkek for victims of Stalinism “Ata Beyit,” or “The Graveyard Of Our Fathers.”

    Some superficial critics of Aitmatov argue that he was simply serving the communist system. They point to the numerous honors and awards — including the Order of Lenin and Hero of Socialist Labor — that he received for his work.

    But Aitmatov was equally respected outside the USSR: He received India’s Jawaharlal Nehru award, and was named a member of the World Academy of Science and Arts and the European Academy of Science, Arts, and Literature. His works were translated into more than 170 languages and sold more than 60 million copies worldwide, showing that their appeal transcends communist ideology.

    Changing From Within

    Aitmatov can be compared with Voltaire, the 18th-century French Enlightenment writer who revolted against the old system while enjoying all the benefits it had to offer. The intellectual war against authoritarianism found expression not only in the works of openly dissident writers such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, but in a milder and more sophisticated way in Aitmatov’s novels.

    As a student in the then-Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic, I could not find Solzhenitsyn’s main works in public libraries. But we could and did discuss Aitmatov’s easily available works relentlessly, deciphering the hidden meanings between the lines. How can anyone argue that the writings of exiled dissidents were the only effective weapon against totalitarianism when they remained unattainable to most readers?

    The Czech writer and playwright Karel Capek coined the word “robot” to describe a machine that resembles a human being; Aitmatov resurrected the old Kyrgyz word “mankurt,” meaning a robot-like human stripped of his intellect by a process of physical brainwashing imposed by a brutal, oriental tyranny.

    Aitmatov in 1963

    Defying the ideology of mature socialism that promoted and glorified the merger of the USSR’s smaller ethnic groups with the Russian people as their only path to a “bright future,” albeit one in which their sense of national identity was lost, Aitmatov wrote a novel about a Kazakh woman, Mother Naiman, who begs her “mankurt” son to remember his father’s name, his ancestors, and his personal identity.

    Aitmatov’s famous predecessor Makhmud Kashghari, born near Lake Issyk-Kul in the 11th century, wrote a famous monograph on the Turkic languages (in Arabic), challenging the acknowledged supremacy of the Arabic language by likening Arabic and the Turkic languages to two horses galloping neck-and-neck.
    Aitmatov repeated the same challenge in the 1980s, urging the Kirghiz Soviet authorities to treat the Kyrgyz language with dignity and to elevate its official position to that of Russian, which one communist leader in Kirghizia at the time described as “the second mother tongue” of the Kyrgyz people.

    At that time, because of the emphasis placed on the “leading role” of the Russian language, there were only a few schools in Frunze with instruction in Kyrgyz. But on September 23, 1989, at the height of Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s famous “perestroika,” the Kyrgyz language was declared the sole state language of the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic, with Russian downgraded to the status of the lingua franca in a multiethnic society.

    Hero To Kyrgyz Nation

    Some of Aitmatov’s early works from the 1950s, written in Kyrgyz, incurred harsh condemnation from his enemies. One of his critics lambasted his early love story “Jamiyla” — which the French poet Louis Aragon described as “the world’s most beautiful love story” — arguing that it was immoral to praise the heroine, who fell in love with someone else while her husband was courageously fighting Nazi Germany during World War II.

    Aitmatov’s subsequent decision to write in Russian undoubtedly furthered his career. So too did his willingness to promote the Soviet authorities’ slant on specific developments. In 1977, two years after the signing of the Helsinki Final Act, he published an article entitled “There Is No Alternate To Helsinki,” in which he affirmed: “We are changing the world, and the world is changing us.”

    In October 1986, Aitmatov founded the famous Issyk-Kul Forum, which brought intellectuals from the Soviet bloc and the West together at a lakeside resort to discuss major global challenges face to face. He served as an adviser to Gorbachev during the perestroika years, and after Kyrgyzstan became independent as Kyrgyz ambassador to UNESCO, EU, NATO, and the Benelux countries.

    In 1989, I was part of a group of young Kyrgyz historians that organized to challenge official Soviet historiography. We appealed to Aitmatov, at that time chairman of the Union of Writers of Kirghizia, and to his deputy, the poet Asan Jakshylykov, to allow us to hold the founding conference of our Young Kyrgyz Historians Association in the conference hall of the Union of Writers. And despite increasing pressure from the central authorities, they said yes, and thereby contributed to the emergence of a new generation of Kyrgyz historians.

    Throughout his life, Aitmatov preserved his love for his fellow men, and for nature and the animal world. His last novel, titled “When The Mountains Fall Down: The Eternal Bride,” was written in 2005 as a final appeal to his people to preserve the beauty of the Celestial Mountains (Tengir-Too in Kyrgyz, Tian-Shan in Chinese), which the Kyrgyz have traditionally regarded as sacred. The two heroes of the novel, a journalist named Arsen Samanchin and an indigenous snow leopard (Jaa Bars), both become victims of international poaching in a tale of the perils of the greedy and careless exploitation of the environment.

    Tyntchtykbek Tchoroev (Chorotegin) is the director of RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service. The views expressed in this commentary are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL

  • The Crisis in Georgia Is an Opening for the West: The Case for Tatarstan

    The Crisis in Georgia Is an Opening for the West: The Case for Tatarstan

    By Katherine E. Graney

    Besides sending shock waves through the international system and shaking up conventional wisdom about the post-Cold War European balance of power, the recent and brief Russo-Georgian war and Russia’s subsequent recognition of the “independent” states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia has also led to speculation about Russia’s own ethnic homelands and about its future as an ethno-federal state. In the wake of these events, independence-minded activists in the Russian national republics of Tatarstan and Ingushetia have made prominent claims that if Russia is willing to recognize the right of self-determination of Georgia’s former constituent ethno-federal units up to and including the right to independence, it must also logically do so for its own ethno-federal units. Such claims, while provocative, and useful as reminders that Russia is both in fact and by law and a multi-ethnic federation where fully one-fifth of the population is non-ethnic Russian and fully one-quarter of the over 80 federal constituent units in Russia has some form of designation as an ethnic homeland (as does Quebec in Canada), should not be taken as evidence that Russia is about to find itself ablaze in secessionist ferment. Rather, they should point us to look more closely at Russia’s ethno-federal situation, and in particular to realize that the quest for autonomy on the part of some of Russia’s constituent ethno-federal units, particularly Tatarstan, provides an opportunity for the United States and its Western allies to reaffirm and strengthen our ties with some of the most pro-Western, pro-federalist, pro-liberal democratic forces in Russia.

    Since declaring itself to be a “sovereign state” in August 1990, the Republic of Tatarstan, under the able leadership of its first and only president, Mintimer Shaimiyev, has embarked on a remarkably diverse yet consistent set of initiatives aimed at fulfilling that declaration with real meaning while simultaneously avoiding the type of destructive claims to independence and secessionism that helped lead to the two wars in Chechnya and to the civil wars in Georgia of the early 1990s. Taking as its model the successful drives for meaningful sovereignty within an ethno-federal framework negotiated by Quebec in Canada and Catalonia in Spain during the 1980s and 1990s, Tatarstan’s leadership has also sought to take on as many of the administrative, cultural and economic attributes of a modern nation-state as it can while staying within (if also attempting to expand) the legal boundaries of Russia’s post-Soviet ethnofederal system. These include innovative legal reforms and economic policies that have resulted in Tatarstan having one of the highest standards of living in the Russian Federation and recently led the Russian-language version of Forbes magazine to name Kazan, Tatarstan’s capital, as the third-best city in Russia for foreigners to do business. Tatarstan’s leadership has also pursued what is at once both the most ambitious program of ethnic revival for a non-Russian people in Russia (in terms of promoting the Tatar language and culture and Tatar history among Tatars both in the republic and in the rest of Russia and the CIS) and the most sincerely multi-cultural program of cultural revival for other non-Russian peoples living in Tatarstan (including Bashkirs, Mari, and Udmurts). Tatarstan’s leadership has claimed, rightly, that in the absence of a meaningful commitment by the federal government in Moscow to protect and promote the cultural and linguistic rights of non-Russian minorities in Russia (despite the presence of such protections in the Russian Constitution), it has a moral obligation to provide for these needs.

    The other significant aspect of Tatarstan’s quest for sovereignty over the past two decades is its extremely pro-Western and internationalist character. Since 1990, Tatarstan has taken the lead in establishing contacts between Russian ethno-federal units and their European counterparts, participating since 1990 in the activities of the Assembly of Regions of Europe and Committee of the Regions of the European Parliament. It has also sought closer ties with other all-European institutions, such as the EBRD, which held its annual meeting of shareholders in Kazan in May 2007, the first time it had been held anywhere in Russian since 1994. In its attempt to construct some sort of “international personality” that will help it to further its stated goal of “building a meaningful form of federalism in Russia,” Tatarstan has also instituted firm ties with the United States, Canada including Quebec), the United Nations and, as befitting a state where the 50% ethnic Tatar population is almost entirely self-declared Muslim, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, where the OIC’s 2001 invitation for Tatarstan to join the OIC as an observer state paved the way for Putin’s decision in August 2003 to pursue OIC membership for the Russian Federation. Indeed, another important part of Tatarstan’s attempt to institute its cultural, political and economic autonomy in the name of building a real and functional federalism in Russia is its self-promotion as a the home of “Euro-Islam”, an ecumenical, tolerant form of Islam, whose experience Tatarstan feels can be useful for the West in terms of both their domestic and international issues with Islam.

    While Tatarstan’s leadership is not the crystal clean beacon of democracy that it often claims to be, plagued as it is by the same types of nepotism, corruption and authoritarianism that characterize all post-Soviet leadership in Moscow and the rest of Russia, on the matter of the liberal democratic commitment to federalism as a way of increasing representation in general and ethno-federalism as a way of ensuring the protection of the cultural rights of ethnic minorities in particular, Tatarstan’s leadership is the most consistent and authentic, and quite nearly the only, voice left in Russia today. Tatarstan’s leaders have also consistently turned to the West for support in their quest to make Moscow live up to its constitutional commitments to protect and promote a democratic form of ethno-federalism in Russia. The Georgia crisis has given us the opportunity to remember these requests, and honor them.

    Katherine E. Graney is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Government at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. Her book, Of Khans and Kremlins: Tatarstan and the Future of Ethno-Federalism, was published by Lexington Books in November.

    This editorial was posted to the Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Blog at:

  • EU urges Turkey to ‘urgently’ normalise ties with Cyprus

    EU urges Turkey to ‘urgently’ normalise ties with Cyprus

    08 December 2008, 19:51 CET

    BRUSSELS – The European Union on Monday called on candidate nation Turkey to normalise relations with island member state Cyprus “as a matter of urgency.”

    The EU in 2006 froze eight of the 35 policy negotiating chapters that all candidates must complete before they join the bloc in response to Ankara’s refusal to open its ports and airports to Cypriot ships and planes.

    Turkey is the only nation to recognised the Turkish statelet in the north of the Mediterranean island.

    EU foreign ministers, meeting in Brussels Monday, voiced regret that Turkey had still not fulfilled its obligations regarding Cyprus, as contained in the so-called Ankara protocol, which it signed with the EU in 2004.

    “Progress is now awaited as a matter of urgency,” the ministers said in a joint text.

    The European Union could decide later to freeze more chapters, thereby slowing down Turkey’s membership bid even further.

    The EU ministers also noted “with regret” that Turkey was making “very limited progress” on political reform.

    However French officials, among those most hostile to Turkey’s EU accession, said that two new policy chapters were likely to be opened later this month.

    That would bring the total chapters opened to 10 out of the 35, with only one successfully closed.

    Cyprus has been divided along ethnic lines since 1974 when Turkey occupied the northern third of the island in response to an Athens-engineered Greek Cypriot coup seeking to unite the country with Greece.

    Source: www.eubusiness.com, 08 December 2008

  • Greek riots signal troubled future for Europe

    Greek riots signal troubled future for Europe

    By MARTIN SIEFF

    WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 (UPI) — Cleanup teams started work on repairing an estimated $300 million worth of damage in Athens Thursday, but as Greece still simmered from its worst riots in 40 years, fears grew around Europe that the violence may be a sign of the shape of things to come.

    For the first time since last Saturday, life seemed to be returning to normal in the capital, but there were reports of high school students joining the violence and demonstrating outside police stations across the country.

    Sympathy demonstrations in Madrid and Barcelona also turned violent.

    The riots centered on the central Athens district of Exarchia. They were set off last Saturday when two police officers dealing with a gang of youths shot a 15-year-old boy dead. A lawyer representing the two police officers Thursday said forensic examination showed the fatal bullet was badly deformed, indicating it had hit the teenager only after ricocheting off another surface.

    The government of Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis has responded to the riots with a textbook case of weakness, delays and appeasement.

    Karamanlis was badly discredited, to begin with, following major corruption scandals that forced the resignation of two senior ministers, and his party is hanging onto power in the Greek Parliament by a majority of only a single vote.

    The government failed to rush in sufficient police and troops to smother the protests in Athens after the first days of disturbances, and as a result scores of banks and department stores in Exarchia were rapidly reduced to burned-out hulks. The Athens Trade Association estimated the total cost to the national economy of the destructive attacks around the country to be as high as $1.3 billion.

    Greece is no stranger to fiery national protests, but the extent and fierceness of the rioting and the damage it has caused are unprecedented in the country for at least 40 years.

    As was the case in the U.S. inner-city riots of the 1960s, pundits, politicians and self-proclaimed “experts” have offered as many explanations, causes and even justifications for the riots as there are stars in the sky.

    Greek commentators have described the protests as an eruption of anger by the “600 euro a month” people — members of the Greek underclass who earn only that amount or less. Anti-immigration campaigners have even claimed that Islamic activists were involved in stirring up the violence, though the evidence for that seems almost non-existent at the moment.

    Students were certainly involved. One major question, therefore, is whether these riots were just sparked by anger at the economic downturn in Greece, or whether they set off a continent-wide fashionable season of protest leading to more widespread violence across other nations of the 27-nation European Union.

    Greece is one of 15 nations in the EU that have the euro as their common currency. Slovakia is scheduled to become the 16th nation to join the eurozone on Jan. 1.

    But the global economic crisis has hit the smaller, more vulnerable nations of the European Union like Greece, Ireland and Belgium very hard. And the common euro currency has deprived the national governments in Athens, Dublin and Brussels of their old economic safety valve of devaluing their local currencies.

    The euro, in fact, has become a trap for such smaller and more financially exposed European nations. To pull out of the common currency now would risk triggering a full-scale banking crisis and economic meltdown in any of them.

    The Greek riots are certainly not unprecedented in recent European affairs. France has suffered far more violent and widespread mob violence in widespread clashes with gangs of immigrant youths who for months at a time made vast poor neighborhoods around Paris and other cities virtual no-go areas for the police.

    But the Greek riots are noteworthy because they are the first widespread expression of urban anger in Europe since the global financial crisis erupted out of the Wall Street financial meltdown in September. The central role of the students also recalls the destabilizing role a large, overeducated but impractical and underemployed student population played in the fierce anti-American riots that swept Europe 40 years ago.

    American and European intelligence and senior police officers have privately expressed concern for many years that the combination of low economic growth and generous, perpetual welfare benefits in many European countries was creating an angry, alienated subclass that could turn resentful and hostile to public safety and responsibility, especially when economic times turned tough.

    The violence across Greece suggests those fears may be tested very soon.

  • THE FUTURE OF TURKEY?

    THE FUTURE OF TURKEY?

    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