by Michael Rubin
2nd part of 2
A decade ago, Turks saw themselves in a camp with the United States, Western Europe, and Israel; today Turkish self-identity places the country firmly in a camp led by Iran, Syria, Sudan, and Hamas. Turkey may be a NATO member, but polls nevertheless show it to be the world’s most anti-American country (although, to be fair, the Pew Global Attitudes Project did not conduct surveys in Libya or North Korea). Nor do Turks differentiate between the U.S. government and the American people: they hate Americans almost as much as they hate Washington. This is no accident. From almost day one, Erdogan has encouraged, and his allies have financed, a steady stream of anti-American and anti-Semitic incitement. Certainly, many Turks opposed the liberation of Iraq in 2003, but this was largely because Erdogan bombarded them with anti-American incitement before Parliament’s vote, which withdrew the support promised to the operation. Much of Erdogan’s incitement, however, cannot be dismissed as a dispute over the Iraq war.
In 2004, Yeni Safak, a newspaper Erdogan endorsed, published an enemies list of prominent Jews. In 2006, not only did Turkish theaters headline Valley of the Wolves, a fiercely anti-American and anti-Semitic movie that featured a Jewish doctor harvesting the organs of dead Iraqis, but the prime minister’s wife also publicly endorsed the film and urged all Turks to see it. Turkish newspapers reported that prominent AKP supporters and Erdogan aides financed its production. While much of the Western world boycotted Hamas in the wake of the 2006 Palestinian elections in order to force it to renounce violence, Erdogan not only extended a hand to the group but also welcomed Khaled Mashaal, leader of its most extreme and recalcitrant faction, as his personal guest.
The question for policymakers, however, should not be whether Turkey is lost but rather how Erdogan could lead a slow-motion Islamic revolution below the West’s radar. This is both a testament to Erdogan’s skill and a reflection of Western delusion. Before taking power, Erdogan and his advisers cultivated Western opinion makers. He concentrated not on American pundits who found U.S. policy insufficiently leftist and sympathetic to the Islamic world but rather on natural critics, hawkish American supporters of Turkey and Israel who helped introduce Erdogan confidantes to Washington policymakers.
After consolidating power, however, the AKP did not cultivate Jewish and pro-Israel groups, but they did little to sever the relationships. Turks traditionally looked kindly on Israel and Jews; of all the peoples of the Ottoman Empire, the Jews in Palestine were one of the few who had not revolted against the Ottoman Sultan. In the 1980s and 1990s, Turkey and Israel had much in common: both were democracies amid a sea of autocracy. They enjoyed close diplomatic, economic, and military relations. So many Israeli tourists visited Turkey that Hebrew signs became ubiquitous in Turkish cities. It was not uncommon to hear Hebrew in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar or in restaurants along the Bosporus.
Against such a backdrop, many Jewish groups turned a blind eye to warning signs of Erdogan’s antipathy and rationalized Turkey’s outreach to Hamas and Hezbollah, Syria, Sudan, and Iran. It was not until Erdogan exploded at the 2009 Davos World Forum, telling Israeli President Shimon Peres “you know well how to kill,” storming off the stage, and subsequently accusing Israel of genocide, that Jewish groups awakened to the change that had come over Turkey.
Much of the blame for failing to recognize Erdogan’s agenda also lies in the West’s intellectual approach to radical Islam. For too many, the headscarf was the only metric by which to judge Islamist encroachment. For Erdogan, however, the scarf was a symbol; the state was the goal.
Even after Erdogan began to eviscerate the checks and balances of Turkish society, European officials and American diplomats remained in denial. Certainly moral equivalency played a role: as Erdogan asked last October, why should Turkey accept the Western definition of secularism? For too many Western officials, however, to acknowledge Turkey’s turn would be to admit the failure of moderate Islamism. To criticize Erdogan’s motivations would be racist.
Many diplomats and journalists inserted into this situation their own disdain for any military, let alone Turkey’s, and embraced a facile dichotomy in which Islamism and democracy represented one pole, while the military, secularism, and fascism represented the other. Hence, they saw the AKP as democratic reformers, while the military became defenders of an anti-democratic order. Certainly, the healthiest democracies have no room for the military in domestic politics, but by cheering the AKP as it unraveled the military’s role in upholding the constitution without simultaneously constructing another check on unconstitutional behavior, the European Union and Western diplomats paved the way for Erdogan’s soft dictatorship.
Alas, when intellectual smoke and mirrors were not enough to deceive the West, Erdogan and the AKP used more-devious tactics. Just as many American diplomats retired from Saudi Arabia to serve commercially their former charges, since the AKP’s accession every retired U.S. ambassador to Turkey—Eric Edelman being the exception—has entered into lucrative business relationships with AKP companies. While running the Turkish program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, for example, Mark Parris, who led the U.S. Embassy from 1997 to 2000, just prior to the AKP’s rise, cultivated a business relationship with the AKP and helped with stories in Turkey’s anti-Semitic press about neoconservatives and coup plots. Throughout the first four years of AKP rule, Yeni Safak columnist Fehmi Koru, an outspoken Erdogan supporter, published more than a dozen columns accusing American Jewish policymakers, led by Richard Perle—who was not then a government official—of both manipulating the press and plotting a coup in Turkey. Both charges were not only false but also consistent with anti-Semitic refrains about Jewish control of the press and Protocols of the Elders of Zion–like plots. And, indeed, they served their purpose: the AKP used the columns to rally both nationalist and anti-Semitic feelings. Koru would often refer to a well-placed Washington diplomatic source. In a November 2006 column, he revealed Parris to be his source, a charge Parris has neither explained nor denied.
Turkish Islamists also cultivated academics. After Georgetown University’s John Esposito received donations from the Gulen movement, he sponsored a conference in the Islamist cult leader’s honor, whitewashing both Fethullah Gulen’s Islamism and his anti-Semitism. The University of North Texas similarly received Gulen’s largesse, as does Washington, D.C.’s Brookings Institution, which has long peddled a soft line toward Erdogan and his agenda.
Turkey today is an Islamic republic in all but name. Washington, its European allies, and Jerusalem must now come to terms with Turkey as a potential enemy. Alas, even if the AKP were to exit the Turkish stage tomorrow, the changes Erdogan’s party have made appear irreversible. While Turkey was for more than half a century a buffer between Middle Eastern extremism and European liberalism, today it has become an enabler of extremism and an enemy of liberalism. Rather than fight terrorists, Turkey embraces them. Today’s rhetorical support may become tomorrow’s material support. On the world stage, too, Turkey is a problem. Rather than help diffuse Iran’s nuclear program, Erdogan encourages it.
Turkey’s anti-Americanism, its dictatorship, and the inability of Western officials to acknowledge reality endanger security. Hard choices lay ahead: as a NATO member, Turkey is privy to U.S. weaponry, tactics, and intelligence. Any provision of assistance to Turkey today, however, could be akin to transferring it to Hamas, Sudan, or Iran. Does President Obama really want to deliver the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to a hostile Turkey, Iran’s chief regional defender, as promised in 2014? Should Turkey even remain in NATO? After all, half a century ago, NATO learned to live without France.
Losing Turkey is tragic, but failing to recognize its loss can only compound the tragedy. The worst outcome, however, would be to let strategic denial block assessment of lessons learned. As mayor of Istanbul, Erdogan quipped, “‘Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off.” Perhaps, in hindsight, the West’s mistake was to ignore the danger of Erdogan’s ascendance into the driver’s seat.
Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School.
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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