TURKEY: Mideast Conflagration Spreads

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Hilmi Toros

FETHIYE, Turkey, Aug 30 2006 (IPS) - The bomb blasts in Turkey earlier this week did more than kill three and injure 20. They dealt another blow to Turkey’s tourism sector and its image as a rock of stability in an explosive Middle East.

The targets were carefully chosen for just that – Istanbul, and Marmaris and Antalya, two of Turkey’s main tourist resorts on the Mediterranean coast.

Together, the attacks may have plunged North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) member and European Union aspirant Turkey towards more active involvement – including militarily – in the regional quagmire.

Tourism was already down 10 percent on account of continuing violence in Iraq and the nuclear impasse in Iran, both neighbouring Turkey, and then the intense war in Lebanon. The bombing in Turkey has added to the sense of instability.

The bustling fish market in this sun-fun sea resort located between Marmaris and Antalya is now sedate. Security agents in plainclothes move about showing greater vigilance.

You can buy a kilo of fresh fish for as little as five dollars, and carry it to the Isa Girgin’s barbecue restaurant, who will cook it for three dollars and serve it with bread, salad, water and coffee.

“They want to destroy tourism, our bread and butter,” says Isa. By “they” he means, as most Turks do, Kurdish separatists.

By design or chance, the terrorist bombs came at a time of increasing turmoil not only in the Middle East but within Turkey itself.

Turkey has lost close to 20 soldiers in recent armed clashes with Kurdish separatists or in mine blasts, and demands have been raised for more effective anti-terror measures.

The Islamic-rooted government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan pressed the United States and Iraq to rein in some 5,000 Kurdish guerrillas holed up in the Kandil Mountains across the Turkish frontier in Iraq.

With no concrete offer of support from the United States, already preoccupied with increasing sectarian violence in all of Iraq, Turkey carried out a limited military operation on its own, reportedly bombing the insurgents in northern Iraq despite repeated U.S. warnings against unilateral action.

The Turkish sorties, coming on the heels of unilateral strikes by Iran against Kurdish targets in northern Iraq, showed a common objective more in tune with Iran than the United States, Turkey’s traditional “strategic partner” in the Middle East.

Both Turkey and Iran see Kurdish insurgents in northern Iraq as bent on destabilising their two countries. The United States, on the other hand, has cordial relations with the autonomous Kurdish administration in northern Iraq, after Kurdish backing for the U.S.-led military campaign in driving Saddam Hussein out of power.

Turkey launched its rapid strike in northern Iraq in response to public demands to do something in the face of mounting casualties at home in clashes with Kurdish insurgents.

Tougher Turkish moves against Kurdish militants may be in the offing. Turkey now has a new Chief of Staff, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, known to be uncompromising against the separatist Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), seen as a terrorist organisation by both the United States and the EU.

Gen. Buyukanit said while taking command that “democracy” and “cultural rights” – two issues pushed by the EU in Turkey’s approach to its Kurdish minority – cannot be used to undermine Turkey as a unitary nation state.

“The bombings in Turkey were a reaction by Kurdish terrorists against Turkish incursion into Northern Iraq and the tough new military policy,” analyst Unal Ozer told IPS..

With parliamentary elections due in 14 months, Turks are swept by a sudden burst of nationalism.

Gone is the optimism generated by the prospect of becoming a full EU member, as public support for EU membership has dropped from 85 percent to under 50 percent within two years.

Hardly anyone gets excited about talk of accession any more. Turks are in effect barely moving ahead. The Financial Times recently ran a headline ‘Where is Ali Babacan?’ in reference to Turkey’s chief negotiator, noting that he is seldom in Brussels.

It appears that, for the time being, concern over internal security and national pride override the 40-year dream of becoming the first Muslim nation to join the EU and to disprove the theory of ‘the clash of civilisations’.

Paradoxically, many Turks are now in tune with many Europeans: neither may want the other in the same club.