TURKEY: Erbakan’s Balancing Act Has Deep Roots in History

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Dilip Hiro

LONDON, Aug 27 1996 (IPS) - The recent 10-day tour of Asia by Turkish prime minister Necmettin Erbakan, was as dramatic in the signal it conveyed of Turkey’s new foreign policy course as the geographic range covered.

Five countries were traversed, from the neighbouring Iran to distant Indonesia, in a trip marking the opening of a new foreign policy orientation. The message was clear: henceforth, Turkey will attempt to balance the stridently pro-Western posture it has followed since the Second World War by opening doors to the East.

Erbakan left behind foreign minister Tansu Ciller. Head of the secular True Path Party, junior partner in the governing coalition headed by Erbakan’s Islamist Refah (meaning Welfare) Party, Ciller had reinforced Turkey’s post-war path during her tortuous term as prime minister.

Her non-involvement in in the ground-breaking trip (which ended on Aug. 21) reflected the tensions it has aroused within the government — and in Tuirkey’s external relations.

Four of the five countries Erbakan visited – Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia – are Muslim-majority states. Aside from Iran, none of these is run strictly according to the Sharia, Islamic Law.

Despite its official name of Islamic Republic of Pakistan, that country’s laws are not based exclusively on the Sharia. And in Malaysia, the ruling party of Premier Mahatiya Muhammed, soundly defeated its Muslim fundamentalist rival in the last parliamentary elections. The regime in Indonesia is secular.

A three-day visit to Tehran was highlighted by the signing of a 23-year, 23 billion dollar deal with Iran to buy annually 10 billion cubic meters of Iranian natural gas. Though the trade agreement had been in the making for several months, and had been initiated by the secular Turkish government which preceded Erbakan’s, he got the credit – and blame – for its conclusion.

More ominously in the eyes of the United States and the European Union, Erbakan and his Iranian counterpart, President Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, jointly backed the idea of an Islamic Common Market, a concept which hitherto had been frowned upon in Ankara.

In this ‘opening to the East’, Erbakan stressed the importance he attaches to Muslim-majority states, irrespective of their political hues.

That explains the signing of a wide-ranging economic protocol with Iraq last month. It envisions another natural gas pipeline which would carry 10 billion cubic meters a year.

Thriving cross-border trade is also contemplated through a food- for-oil deal to Baghdad. Turkey has appealed to the U.N. Security Council sanctions committee to accord it special dispensation, along the lines already enjoyed by Jordan, since the Turkish economy has suffered heavily due to six-year old UN embargo against Iraq.

Apparently the economic factor weighs heavily in Erbakan’s policy- making towards Iran and Iraq. The importance of Turkey as a trading partner rose sharply during the eight-Year Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, when Iraq lost its outlets to the Persian Gulf. Turkey has also been the third most important trading partner of Iran since the mid-1980s.

But, inspired by Islamism, Erbakan has raised his horizons much further afield. Indonesia and Malaysia are part of the thriving economies of south-east Asia and east-Asia. He wants Turkey to find a foothold in the prospering markets of the Asia-Pacific rim.

If nothing else, visits to these countries impressed upon Turkish businesspersons accompanying Erbakan the fact that high technology is no longer the prerogative of the West.

However, a Muslim-majority country does not have to be economically vibrant to be included in Erbakan’s plans. Indeed, even Syria, a state with which Turkey has had strained relations, is not being ignored by the new Islamist prime minister.

Relations between Ankara and Damascus have been cool because of the dispute over sharing of the waters of the Euphrates River which originates in Turkey and passes through Syria. Matters have also been complicated by the covert support that Syrian President Hafiz Assas provides Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdish Workers Party, which is engaged in an armed struggle against Ankara.

Aware of the ill will that exists against Syria in the foreign ministry of Turkey, Erbakan despatched emissaries from his Refah Party to Damascus to open channels of communication with President Assad.

In short, it appears Erbakan is prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to any Muslim state he decides to deal with. And this list so far has included not only Iran, Iraq and Syria but also Libya.

All this is very unsettling for Turkey’s European and North American partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), of which Ankara has been a member since 1952.

Western governments are so used to Turkey knocking at the doors of the European Union for full membership (having achieved associate membership in 1963) that they are puzzled and dismayed by Erbakan’s lurch to the East.

The root of the west’s problem lies in refusing to come to grips with an unbiased overall assessment of Turkish state and society. Ever since the ascendancy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923, the country’s elite – in the military, business, politics, academia and media – has slavishly tried to remould itself on a European model.

Whereas the Turkish elite habitually harps on the ‘identity crisis’ of Turks – European or Asian? – the common folk inhabiting the Anatolian plateau, occupying 97 per cent of Turkey, have never been in doubt about their own identity. They regard themselves Anatolian Turk, Muslim and Asian – in that order.

It is this deeply rooted feeling among the Turkish masses that Erbakan has adroitly tapped into, a strategy that resulted in his Refah Party emerging as the single largest group in the Turkish parliament last December.

When the history of the 73-year old Republic of Turkey is perceived in this context, the successul, whirlwind tour of five Asian capitals by Erbakan falls logically in place.

In a sense Erbakan has done nothing more than take a long overdue step to rectify the tendentious foreign policy of Ankara which has courted the West slavishly while neglecting the East.