Burak Bekdil

Oxford Professor Avi Shlaim’s commentary in The Guardian on Jan. 7 was one of the inspirations for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s outburst in Davos. The angry Mr. Erdogan was trying to quote that article while David Ignatius, the moderator, was trying to remind him of the time limitations. Naturally, Today’s Zaman interviewed the anti-Israeli Jewish professor (on Feb. 7).

In that interview, Mr. Shlaim declared that his sympathy was with Mr. Erdogan. He also said that Israeli President Shimon Peres made a very strong defense of a controversial subject. Quite naturally, Mr. Shlaim further commented, Mr. Erdogan wanted to respond to the defense of "what isÉ indefensible."

Interestingly, in response to Zaman’s preceding question as to how would he assess Mr. Peres’s speech, Mr. Shlaim said: "I am afraid I have not seen Mr. Peres’s speech. I was told that his tone was very aggressive, offensive and uncompromising."

That was very interesting indeed. The Oxford professor commented first on a speech, then admitted he had not seen that speech but had heard that it was bad enough to justify his criticism. How scientific that is can always be debated. But Professor Shlaim made other interesting remarks too.

For example, he argued that it was high time for Western governments to engage with Hamas although he admitted that Hamas is described as a terrorist organization. But it is much more than that, he said. "It is a political partyÉ it has a military wing which does practice terrorÉ

Killing civilians is wrongÉ But the important thing is that Hamas, despite all its faults, has been democratically elected. Hamas represents the Palestinian people."

What should we make of all that? Rephrasing Mr. Shlaim’s words, we can conclude that: Hamas is a terrorist organization, the Palestinians democratically elected a terrorist organization, the important thing is not if an organization does practice terror but if it is democratically elected, a terrorist organization represents the Palestinian people, Western governments should engage with terrorists if terrorists are democratically elected.

Very well. Mr. Erdogan could probably not agree with Mr. Shlaim more. These days the House of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, looks like "Hamas-occupied territory" anyway. 

But let’s suppose for a moment Mr. Shlaim’s argumentation is "defensible" unlike Mr. Peres’s speech at Davos which Mr. Shlaim did not see but thinks was "indefensible."

What if the Israeli people’s democratic choice at the ballot box resulted in a government that practices even more disproportionate use of force than the latest offensive on Gaza? A government whose actions could earn it the tag "terrorist" by many including Professor Shlaim?

What if the Israelis democratically elected leaders who would give orders for 20 more Gaza offensives with 20 times more civilian deaths? Will Messrs. Erdogan and Shlaim defend that too on the grounds that "the important thing is that the Israeli government which does practice atrocities is democratically elected?"

There are already clear signs that Arabs were following the Israeli exit polls with concern, fearing a rise in power of the right. They fear a hawkish government in Israel that includes Likud and other right wing parties will "derail the peace process."

But what peace process? Now listen to the "democratically-elected" Hamas about the peace process. It was Hamas’s spokesman, Fawzi Barhum speaking on the exit polls: "We don’t differentiate between Zionist leaders as they all committed crimes against our people during many years and are competing to commit more."

And by the way, why does Mr. Erdogan categorically refuse to talk to the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party whose members of parliament too are democratically elected politicians?

Mr. Erdogan’s explanation is that "he won’t speak to them until they denounced the [Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or] PKK as a terrorist organization."

And meanwhile, he suggests Western governments should unconditionally speak to Hamas, which itself is a terrorist organization. Oh, how very marvelous!

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is inarguably right when he declares that both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are crimes against humanity. He is equally and inarguably deceptive when he claims he treats both crimes equally. He is playing a dangerous game that may be costly to his political ambitions as well as to the country he says he loves. After Mr Erdoğan’s AKP rose to power in 2002, a noble impulse seized Turkish (and Western) liberals that "one could sit down and do business with these moderate Islamists." They all united to defend the oxymoronic hope that someone who comes from various ranks of Islamic militancy could evolve into a liberal democrat who won’t see conflicts through a holy book. They may have been surprised when Mr Erdoğan declared during the early days of Operation Cast Lead that "he approaches Gaza with a Muslim’s approach." This columnist was not.

Operation Cast Lead has unmasked the open secret that various degrees of anti-Semitism Islamist politicians try hard to conceal for fear of losing the American support they fetish can go out of control each time innocent Palestinians die somewhere. It just does not change the bitter truth that hate is there carved deep into their hearts and minds.

Fortunately, the Jewish minority in Turkey is too tiny, about 25,000. Otherwise the Turks as conservative and angry as their prime minister would go out and start looking for who to blame and who to hate. Instead, they make public protests full of rhetoric, which in any decent country would count for racist offense.

A couple of weeks ago, I went out of a cafe, walked to my car when another car screeched just by my side, a window opened, and one of the awfully excited men in the car, asked me to describe the shortest way to the Israeli embassy. I looked at the men, then at the bizarre parcels they were carrying and said, "I am sorry, I really don’t know." As they sped off I saw the sticker on the rear window that said "Allah is great," then I noted down the number plate and made a call to the police. The park valet had witnessed the incident. He came toward me and said, "I don’t believe you don’t know where the embassy is. You should have told them." Why, I asked. And he answered with all his honesty: "Because I hope they blow up the Zionists." When I said: "I don’t hope so," he looked at me with so generous of hate in his eyes. 

It was probably the same hate in the eyes of a stadium full of football fans at a recent game as they chanted: "Death to Israel," because a Jewish player had scored a goal. A week after, a Turkish player, the Jew’s teammate, planted a Palestinian flag in the middle of the pitch, after which spectators chanted: "Down with Israel."

But is the anti-Israeli/Jewish/Semitic mood exclusive to conservative/devout Turks? Certainly not. Only the nature is different. Secular Turks try Ñ probably unsuccessfully Ñ to distinguish between good and bad Jews and are programmed to think that anti-Semitism is a bad thing "even at times like this." They can be accused of sin of omission, but that’s it.

For the Islamist/mildly Islamist/conservative Turk this is a case of "guilt by association." They won’t even try to find a dividing line between "good and bad Jews." But even if they did, what would be the use? I do not think the demonstrators would first contact the Turkish Jewish community and ask them whether they support Cast Lead before holding out a placard that reads: "Hitler was right!" For them Jews are all right unless they are Jews.

That view finds echoes in Turkey’s courtrooms too. Last week, a prosecutor’s office in Ankara launched a probe into whether Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip counts as genocide, torture and crimes against humanity. The probe was launched after an Islamic human rights association, Mazlum-Der, filed a complaint against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni as well as Israel’s army and military intelligence chiefs.

Now let’s make a simulation. Take all the anti-Israeli publicity that has been all too visible anywhere in Turkey for over a month now. Replace the words "Israel" and "Jew" with anything of your choice, like "Kurd," "Muslim," "Alevi" or "Armenian." We can safely guess that we would now be talking about a few hundred prosecutions at least had that been the case. Racism, blasphemy and hate-speech are crimes under the Turkish penal code. But we must be honest and admit that they are just not applicable when the target is the Jews.

It is bizarre, there is all sorts of optimism in the public domain, even as officially expressed by Israeli officials, that Turkey can safely continue on with its role as a major peace-broker in the Middle East. In reality that’s merely material for humor magazines. On Feb. 2, the Associated Press quoted an Israeli official as saying: "(Erdoğan) won’t mediate anything any more. His stint as mediator between Israelis and Arabs is over, that’s for sure. He won’t be accepted as an honest broker by Israel at all." These days it looks better to read "unnamed sources" in news rather than "public speeches" in order to touch down with the reality and not fairy tales.

The mullahs in Tehran have nominated Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for the Nobel Peace Prize. One Lebanese newspaper has nominated the prime minister for the caliph. With a little bit more effort Ğsuppose Mr Erdoğan next time slapped an Israeli bigwig in faceÑsomeone would nominate him for the Twelfth Imam since our religion rules out the possibility of Prophet Mohammed’s reincarnation. Ah, that, too, would have been none other than Mr Erdoğan! Ironically, all that is happening during a time of increasing talk of ’neo-Ottomanism.’ And it makes sense! With one step forward and at least two back, the great Turkish march into Europe looks very much like that of the Ottoman military band. Four centuries ago "the march" was hostile and military, but honest. Today it is political and demographic but full of deception. Recently we all cheered at the news that a prosecutor had overturned an appeal that the signatories of the "we-apologize-to-the-Armenians" campaign humiliated Turkishness and should be penalized under Article 301. The prosecutor did the right thing and ruled that "it was a democratic right to express views other than those of the majority." Good.

There were more "forward steps too. For example, Mr Erdoğan’s Cabinet restored the citizenship of the great poet Nazım Hikmet, a move which only deserves praise. In the meantime, the state broadcaster launched a Kurdish channel, another move "forward." But where, from a macro perspective rather than micro, do we stand in terms of civil liberties and European democratic values?

Ironically, Mr Erdoğan’s party passed new internet laws that eventually banned YouTube, making Turkey the only European country to deny access to this popular Web site, although Mr Erdoğan himself told reporters recently that he had access to it and advised everyone to do so Ğ implying the use of proxy Web sites.

Also banned in the virtual world is the Web site of the British ethologist and popular science author Richard Dawkins, whose "The God Delusion" is probably the most widely-known atheist manifesto of our times. How can we associate a court ban on an atheist scientist’s popular Web site with civil liberties? But that’s only too normal under the rule of a prime minister who has become a nominee for the caliph. Or is atheism banned in Turkey? Legally not. Then why is the court ban allowed? Because any judge can at any time cite the article on "inciting hatred along religious lines" to ban an unwanted belief. The question is, how "European" would that be?

The Ergenekon investigation is full of procedural and substantial legal breaches, but a couple of recent examples have made it look more absurd. In one of them, the prosecutor has indicted one of the suspects with "provoking the public against the government." If that charge does not verify any violent activity for the purpose, what’s wrong if someone provoked the public opinion against the government? Is this not what the opposition is supposed to do?

In the other example, the chief prosecutor has indicted another Ergenekon suspect under Article 301 (humiliating Turkishness and Turkey’s institutions) and the presiding judge accepted to hear the case. Are the reforms not for everyone? Are the Ergenekon suspects exempt from the liberties Turkey’s European friends favor? And, what about gender equality? According to Soner Çağaptay from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, "The position of women in Turkey is also problematic." Mr Çağaptay forcefully reminds us of the U.N. Development Programme's gender empowerment index, in which Turkey, which was ranked 63 in 2002, has dropped to 90 today, falling behind even Saudi Arabia. The World Economic Forum's gender gap report shows a similarly startling slip, from 105 in 2002 to 123 in 2008 out of 130 countries ranked.

Today in Turkey there is "selective" free speech. You can at any time gather anywhere with fellow Muslims, make the ugliest hate-speech against Jews (including holding out that recent placard which read "Hitler was right") and get away with it. Since the beginning of the Israeli incursion into Gaza, Turkey has never been short of such demonstrations, and has been full of such placards and slogans and incidents. Has anyone been prosecuted for hate speech? No. No one will ever be.

Now think of it the other way round. If a group of atheists had made similar demonstrations with similar placards targeting, for example, all monotheistic religions, would they be prosecuted or not Ğ or course if they escaped lynching in the first place. Are we sure we are all equal before law? Mr Dawkins’s Web site is a breach of Turkish laws; but the slogan "Hitler was right" is not. How very European!

Mr Erdoğan argues that Turkey’s Jews are fully protected by laws and law enforcement. Here is a proposal for a little sociological experiment which can help us understand if he is right. I volunteer to go to public places and make anti-Semitic hate speeches and see what social/legal consequences, if any, I shall face.

In return, we shall ask to send our chief negotiator, Egemen Bağiş, deep into the Anatolian heartland, have him disguised as a Turkish Jew and speak to the locals at coffee shops, denounce Hamas as a terrorist organization and defend Israel’s right to retaliate. That way we can see how safely our Jewish citizens can freely express themselves in public. Free and democratic Turkey? Yes, as long as freedoms and democracy are for the Islamic cause. Ironically, that’s even more "Islamic" than how the Ottoman Military Band marched into Europe four centuries before.

The thundering Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was a near thing for Israeli President Shimon Peres. I do not want to think about the possible consequences if the two had met privately in a room instead of a panel discussion venue. If I were an Israeli politician I would never meet with Mr Erdoğan in person without a few bodyguards around. Mr Erdoğan may have pocketed an extra 5-10 percent of the vote for the municipal elections in March. But his rhetoric on the Arab-Israeli conflict is becoming more and more inflammatory and damaging for a number of reasons. First, Mr Erdoğan, now the darling of the Palestinians, Syrians and Iranians, has provoked radicals in the region as he showed "even Israel is touchable." Hence the cheers and joy in Gaza, Tehran and Damascus.

Second, Mr Erdoğan’s outburst in Davos further unmasked the public secret that this is a war of religions, not just a political conflict. Mr Erdoğan has claimed that his solidarity with the Palestinians was merely a humane act and had nothing to do with anti-Semitism. He also said that his reaction was to the moderator than to Mr Peres. Is that so?

We can always ignore the fact that Mr Erdoğan "condemned the audience which applauded Mr Peres" and said that the applause was a crime against humanity. But take just one line Mr Erdoğan chose to address to Mr Peres: "When it comes to killing, you know it too well!" NowÉ Who is the "you" in that sentence? Mr Peres personally? A man decorated with the Nobel Peace Prize? The Israelis? The Jews? Or David Ignatius, the moderator?

If Mr Erdoğan’s reaction was directed, as he claimed, to the moderator then he must have meant that "when it comes to killing, Mr Ignatius knows it too well." My friend’s six-year-old son was not convinced. "He meant the Jews!" he enlightened us.

Mr Erdoğan’s rhetoric is no different than someone saying that "Turks are murderers (or genocide committers) but he is not anti-Turkish." There is more evidence that Mr Erdoğan tells us one thing and thinks another.

If, as he claimed, his Davos tirade was merely a humane act he should then explain why did he not act in the same way when Muslim Chechens killed hundreds of Christian school children in Beslan five years ago. Or why did he visit Khartoum in 2006 and declare that no genocide had been committed in Darfur, or why was Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir has twice been cordially received in Ankara?

Why, really, was Mr Erdoğan all too silent and did not "merely humanely act" when the Iraqi death toll counter was reaching six-digit figures? First, in Iraq the "target" would be America and too big for him to bite. Second, there were no elections in sight at the time of "daily tragic news from Iraq." And third, the "Palestinian cause" has always been something different than any other "cause" for the ideology which in the 1970s indoctrinated Mr Erdoğan and his Islamist comrades. For everyone who belonged to Islamic militancy of the 1970s Palestine is a symbol for an eventual victory of Islam.

It was not a coincidence that demonstrators in Gaza at the weekend were carrying Palestinian and Turkish flags (and burning Israeli flags). It was not a coincidence that the crowds who gathered in Istanbul to welcome the "hero of Davos" were chanting "Death to Israel," or "We’re ready to die." Nor was it a coincidence that a stadium full of football fans shouted "Down with Israel" after the only Jewish player in Turkey had scored a goal. Poor chap had publicly condemned the Israeli incursion into Gaza but could not escape the anti-Semitic ire now visible all around Turkey. But there is more.

At the Gaza demonstrations a Turk spoke to the crowds along with his Palestinian comrades. The man, Bülent Yıldırım, is the head of an Islamic, pro-AKP charity organization, IHH in its Turkish acronym. Now listen to what Mr Yıldırım had to tell the crowds: "I have brought you greetings from (the Ottoman Sultan) AbdulhamitÉ(long applause)É Last night (when Mr Erdoğan was polite enough not to give Mr Peres a sinking python) everything was reversed in favour of Islam!" Then Mr Yıldırım wished the Palestinians all the best in their Holy War.

With all this publicly happening we are expected to believe that religion is nowhere in this conflict. Anyone can, but I am not going to subscribe to the naivety that not even my friend’s six-year-old kid believes.

During the Cold War, Turkish conservatism was anti-communist. Today it is xenophobic. The West would hate to see it, but religion as a pillar of foreign policy risks pushing Turkey into radicalism "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth." That was a line from President Barack Obama’s inaugural speech. Take out two words, Hindus and nonbelievers, it could well have been a speech by an Ottoman sultan embracing all too diverse religions and ethnicities of the empire. Today, with an increasingly sharp "neo-Ottomanism" shaping Turkey’s foreign policy, things are different. Neo-Ottomanism, or call it the Turkish-Islamic synthesis in foreign policy, is actually Ottomanism minus multiculturalism since at the heart of the "neo" version lies religion and an uncompromising quest not only for monolithic religious order, but also a monolithic practice for the same religion Ñ at times overcome by pragmatism. Hence, it was not surprising at all when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan insisted on Tuesday that "from this day on we’ll make our own foreign policy and not listen to the others." He said that in response to criticism of his "more-Arab-than-any-Arab" rhetoric on Gaza.

But what is "our own policy" that Mr Erdoğan said he will not deviate from? During the Israeli offensive on Gaza, "our own policy" was to order millions of school children to stand for a minute’s silence, or the reflections on a poor 7-year-old street vendor who was telling a TV crew how he now hated the Jews and would donate his last 5 Turkish lira-note (about $3) for the Palestinians. Religion, like others things of importance or no importance, is at the heart of Mr Erdoğan’s foreign policy calculus (could anyone honestly imagine Mr Erdogan making an inaugural speech in which he would embrace also atheists?).

But there are two problematic aspects about this experimental neo-Ottomanism.

First, religion-based politics can be particularly perilous in a country which traditionally Ñ and increasingly Ñ borders on ethnic and religious nationalism, which has Europe’s youngest population, which is poor and where education is becoming more and more religious. Add to that fine blend rapidly increasing conservatism, socially and politically engineered by the Mr Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party, or AKP, you’ll inevitably end up at various shades of intolerance coupled with a collective shift toward radicalism. My parents grew up with their non-Muslim neighbors. My generation grew up with sympathy for the last remaining members of this tiny community. Younger generations are killing non-Muslims. Next generations may simply not find any non-Muslim to target. Recently I rang my old summertime neighbors, an elderly Turkish-Armenian couple who live in Germany, to ask why they have not come for the last three seasons. "Son," he said, "Our country is too Muslim for us to come, and we have grown tired of hiding our identity. I sometimes fear not even my purely Turkish name could suffice to conceal our otherness." In Samuel Huntington’s view, culture is underpinned and defined by power. The West had once been pre-eminent and militarily dominant, and the first generation of third-world nationalists had sought to fashion their world in the image of the West. But Western dominion had cracked, Huntington argued. Demography best told the story: where more than 40 percent of the world population was "under the political control" of Western civilization in the year 1900, that share had declined to about 15 percent in 1990, and is set to come down to 10 percent by the year 2025. Conversely, Islam’s share had risen from 4 percent in 1900 to 13 percent in 1990, and could be as high as 19 percent by 2025.

A similar demographic change has occurred in Turkey. I am not going to repeat or quote hundreds of opinion polls whose results tell the same thing: Under the AKP’s governance, the Turks have become less tolerant and more conservative (often the same thing), less secular and more "Islamic." In the meantime, they have become anti-Western and anti-Semitic. Today, anti-Americanism in Turkey is nowhere to be seen in the world. If measured today, anti-Semitism, too, could be the world’s highest.

Second, neo-Ottomanism conceptually can have too little leverage on the Arab world, despite Mr Erdogan’s more-Arab-than-any-Arab rhetoric. Mr Erdoğan’s, and his Middle East policy architect, Ahmet Davutoğlu’s, ambitions for a powerful Muslim state with genuine influence over the entire region are a little bit too naive. They do not only contain several zigzags and bizarre, temporary alliances which often fail to achieve designated policy goals, but also ignores the realities of the post-Islamist Arab world. These policies often disregard the love (our Sunni Muslim brothers) and hate (our rivals) relationship with Saudi Arabia and Egypt. They, now, tend to irreparably offend Israel and Fatah. Tomorrow they may have to offend Iran and Syria (and Hezbollah and Hamas). But they almost always lack consistency.

Arab nationalism and its reflections on many minds which make policy in this part of the world are still alive. Too bad, Turks may be Muslim, but they are not Arabs. Even worse, the Arabs know that!

One columnist from the pro-Justice and Development Party, or AKP, media was arguing a few days ago that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s "schizophrenic Turkey" was forcefully wearing two diplomatic hats: one pro-western and the other pro-Islamic, a role which he said cannot be sustained in the long-term. This columnist thinks Turkey wore both hats during the Israeli military offensive on Gaza, but will eventually go back to where it belongs: the Islamic world instead of the West.

Same newspaper, same day, another page, another columnist. This time generous praise goes to Mr Erdoğan’s "landmark visit to Brussels" last week, accompanied by a quote from an unnamed European leader: "Erdoğan is a perfect leaderÉ and most leaders at the European Parliament were impressedÉ"

At first sight it looked as though Mr Erdoğan traveled all the way to Brussels after four years in order to lecture the European leadership on the virtues of Hamas and to threaten gas-starving Europe with stalling the Nabucco gas pipeline project if Europe pressed Turkey hard on Cyprus. Now we know we were wrong to think so. He went to Brussels to impress Europe’s leaders.

My impression from private meetings with some European Union diplomats in Ankara is that their governments did not know what exactly had slowed down Turkey’s EU reforms. Until last week everyone thought that Mr Erdoğan’s government was being reluctant on reforms. Last week, we were all relieved to hear from our prime minister that that was not the case. It’s all because of the opposition, Mr Erdoğan told everyone who apparently stood at attention to be impressed. The opposition has the habit of blocking every government effort to pass new reform laws.

I am intrigued, though. With a tiny presence in Parliament where Mr Erdoğan’s ruling party almost has enough seats to amend the Constitution how would the opposition miraculously block EU reforms? But since Europe’s prominent leaders were all impressed, we all must respect Mr Erdoğan’s explanation. I was glad to hear from a diplomat friend from an EU heavyweight that his embassy would now divert all accession contacts from the AKP to the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, and Democratic Society Party, or DTP. He, too, did not know these three parties were the real culprit for the slackened process.

It was precisely because of the same ignorance that the German Economy Minister, Michael Glos, accused Mr Erdoğan for blackmailing Europe on the Nabucco-Cyprus trade-off. Minister Glos did not know why Mr Erdoğan made that threat. I reveal: The CHP’s Brussels liaison office did not only shamelessly distribute to several European institutions an article from the Middle East Quarterly magazine, "Gülen’s Grand Ambition: Turkey’s Islamist Danger," but also successfully infiltrated its men into Mr Erdoğan’s working group in Brussels and changed his speech notes. The Nabucco threat was from a page slipped by these agents into the original text. I think Mr Glos should apologize.

Apart from that little misunderstanding of no importance everyone in Brussels was impressed. They were privately told that the AKP’s real reform campaign would take off after the local elections in March. At this point, I get confused. Why would the AKP freeze its reform campaign because of elections? Because it thinks EU reforms could cost it votes? Yes. Why, then, would the reforms cost the government votes? Because the Turks would not like them? If so, why, after four decades of membership efforts, are the Turks believed to be (or really are) bitter about reforms? Is this a fundamental incompatibility?

Most EU diplomats prefer not to talk about the possibility of a fundamental incompatibility for understandable reasons. It may be a fact, but spelling it would serve no one’s interest. Apparently, after March 29 there will be "some action" possibly overshadowed by not-so-good news from Nicosia. I recall Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Ciçek’s important Ñ but disproportionately covered Ñ remarks recently that "we hope the EU will not force us into a choice between Cyprus and membership." We’ll see. But let’s hope the CHP will not implant agents into the Turkish Cypriot statelet (as well as the AKP camp) and spoil the reunification talks.

Oh, but everyone among the corps diplomatique in Ankara is so very excited about the new chief negotiator, Egemen Bağış. I agree that Mr Bağış’s appointment is an indication of Mr Erdoğan’s commitment to the reform process. I just do not understand how an extremely complex matter like the eventual Turkish membership could be dependent on the personality of one man, or a few men. Four decades after the Crescent and Star took off with Europe as target destination it is changing course since it has demographically become "something else" during the very long journey. In the words of Soner Cağaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute, "This is not your mother’s Turkey." Another two decades and someone else will probably hate to say it, but it won’t even be Mr Erdoğan’s "schizophrenic Turkey." The columnist my first paragraph referred to has a point: this is destination neo-Ottomanism!

There is nothing wrong if one is a (political) soldier of Islam. It is just awfully dishonest if one is a soldier of Islam but claims he is not. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s love affair with the democratically elected, pro-Shariah and terrorist Hamas is not new. Israeli offensive on Gaza has just unmasked the depths of this love affair. Mr Erdoğan’s rhetoric and governance about the Gaza affair deserve careful thinking and perhaps a few questions.

In a speech on Iran’s nuclear ambitions a few months earlier, Mr Erdoğan signaled his government’s disinclination to follow the United States lead, saying: "Countries that oppose Iran’s nuclear weapons should not have nuclear weapons themselves." Despite the plural (countries) the addressee in that remark was apparently Israel, not the United States as many people speculated. Now, let’s simulate.

Iran is Turkey’s neighbor. Tehran’s claims that it has no ambitions to possess nuclear weapons is tantamount to Mr Erdoğan’s claims that he is not an Islamist. Turkey perceives Iran as a security threat, according to an official national security threat document which carries Mr Erdogan’s signature.

The same threat paper considers Greece, another neighbor but westward instead of east, as a security threat too, but not as "high priority" as Iran. Assume Greece, which Turkey considers less of a security threat than Iran, overtly or covertly, decided to go for nuclear weapons. Would Mr Erdoğan defend a nuclear Greece and say that "countries that oppose Greece’s nuclear weapons should not have nuclear weapons themselves?" We can fairly guess the answer. Another question: Why would Mr Erdoğan support Muslim Iran’s ambitions for nuclear weapons but oppose Orthodox Greece’s ambitions for nuclear weapons as the document he signed says Iran is a bigger security threat to Turkey?

Brussels. That’s where Mr Erdoğan went to lecture European Union leaders on the virtues of democracy and of Hamas. He blamed the deaths in Gaza on the "West that does not respect Hamas." Reformulate the phrase: If the West respected Hamas innocent civilians would not have died in Gaza. Convincing?

Rockets. Oh, how do we know they are fired by Hamas, Mr Erdoğan asked, there are many other groups in the Gaza Strip that may be firing rockets. No, he was not joking!

Improvised explosive devices and bombs and attacks on Turkish soldiers by the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK? Oh, how do we know they are operated by the PKK? There are many Kurdish groups in the Southeast and in northern Iraq.

Democracy? Numbers? Would Mr Erdoğan care to ask the people of the southeast whether they would wish to have autonomy for a Kurdish region? A referendum perhaps? Would that not be at least as democratic as the Palestinian elections?

During the Israeli assault Mr Erdoğan said, in quite broken Turkish, that "he approaches the Gaza issue with a Muslim’s approach." Good. He may approach any issue with anyone’s/any faith’s approach. But why does he loudly suspect that the "EU may be approaching the Turkish membership with a Christian’s approach?" What’s wrong with that? Is it perfectly all right when he approaches politics with a Muslim’s approach but not so perfectly all right when Christians approach politics with a Christian’s approach? But there is more. During the Israeli offensive Mr Erdoğan’s government issued a directive to schools calling for a minute’s silence for Palestinians killed in Gaza. Students aged six to 18 in over 45,000 Turkish schools stood to silence for solidarity with the Palestinian victims. Good.

One wonders, though, why did the humanity-sensitive Ministry of Education not issue a directive calling for a minute’s silence when in 2004 Muslim Chechen terrorists massacred hundreds of Russian schoolchildren in Beslan. Could it be because in Beslan the victims were not Muslim but the murderers were?

Let’s keep on simulating. We know that Mr Erdoğan approaches Gaza with a Muslim’s approach. Should, then, the Orthodox Christians, or all Christians for that matter, approach the Armenian genocide dispute with "an Orthodox’s or a Christian’s approach?" Should Christian governments issue directives to their Christian schools calling for a minute’s silence on every April 24, with or without the term "genocide?"

If one day they do so, would Mr Erdoğan empathize? Would he "understand" if, say, Russian students stood to silence "in memory of the tragic events of 1915 to 1919?" For sure, there must have been far more Armenian children who lost their lives in that period than in Gaza at any time. Mr Erdoğan’s contradictions will never end. He is "the Islamist" who pretends he is not.

At the same time U.S. President Barack Obama was cherishing his election victory, villagers in a remote eastern Turkish village were sacrificing sheep to join in the celebrations, featuring placards that read "Obama, you are our hero!" and "You are one of us!" An all-too premature optimism? Probably. Turkey’s relations with the United States have moved from the notorious tag ’strategic alliance’ during the Cold War to ’problematic partnership’ in the first two years after the Iraq war, and then to ’sporadic partnership mixed with sporadic problems’ since then. Today, the Turks, according to various opinion polls, proudly sport the highest rate of anti-Americanism. With Mr Obama taking over from President George W. Bush, Turkish-American ties will slide towards an unknown territory where the "ethos" will much depend on whether the "hero of the remote Turkish village" will keep his pre-election pledge to recognize the WWI-era killings of Ottoman Armenians as genocide.

Other critical fault lines that will shape the fresh Washington-Ankara axis are Iraq, Iran, Cyprus, Afghanistan and weapons deals.

There has been an American-Turkish modus vivendi over the past decades regarding the Armenian genocide controversy. On every April 24 the Turks and Armenians have looked into the president’s eye to see if he would spell out the sacrosanct word: the genocide. The modus vivendi has worked in a way that the American presidents felt free to catalogue the Ottoman Turks as every evil of their choice except for genocide committers. I once described the situation as "your friend tells you your wife sleeps with everyone else around but never calls her a prostitute." The Turks would go mad at the word "prostitute," so the Americans never mentioned that word although they talked of adultery in every possible detail. But this time things may turn out differently. During the election campaign, not only Mr Obama, but also his nominee for secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and Vice President-elect Joe Biden, strongly committed themselves to "call the Turk’s wife a prostitute." Will they? We don’t know.

Although the possibility that a U.S. administration spells the G-word has never been this high, the Americans are aware that such a move would hurt bilateral ties in a major and lasting way. One early hint tells us the new administration may not be tempted by the idea of an early crisis with Turkey. Last Tuesday, testifying at her confirmation hearing at a senate panel, Mrs Clinton declined to spell the G-word when asked by a pro-Armenian senator, Robert Menendez, how the new administration would describe the tragedy. Senator Menendez also asked about the Obama administration’s policy on Cyprus.

Mrs Clinton quite vaguely replied that: "Senator, we will be looking very closely at those and other challenging issues with the eye of moving forward and being effective in responding to these very legitimate concerns." What does that mean? Obama et al are weighing the option of writing Turkey off, but it won’t be an easy decision.

If they do, all else will be null and void. If they behave pragmatically and opt for Mr Obama’s other pre-election pledge, that "he will restore a strategic partnership (with Turkey) badly hurt during and shortly after Iraq’s invasion in 2003," then we can talk about other problematic issues. In fact there is something badly tautological about Mr Obama’s two campaign pledges: How can he recognize the Armenian genocide and at the same time restore a strategic partnership with Turkey?

One face-saving formula to please both the Armenians and the Turks could be via a resolution that could pass in the House of Representatives, a resolution with the "genocide branding." That may please the Armenians, but not the Turks. It would have almost the same earthquake effect as the G-word spelled by the president would. Hence, no happy-ending about that either. Otherwise, Washington will wish to see Ankara as "facilitator" in its diplomatic efforts to convince Tehran not to go nuclear. Also, Mr Obama’s policies for a withdrawal from Iraq and focusing on Afghanistan instead will have repercussions on ties with Turkey. If things go crisis-free the U.S. is expected to make extensive use of the southern Turkish airbase of Incirlik in pulling back troops and equipment from Iraq.

A modus vivendi on Afghanistan seems reasonable. Presently, Turkey keeps some 1,200 troops in Afghanistan, responsible for the protection of Kabul but so far has refused to send more troops or to militarily engage insurgents in the eats and south of Afghanistan. Turkey may send additional troops and engage in training the Afghan army instead of sending the much-wanted combat forces: a perfect modus vivendi.

Cyprus is a different matter that depends more on the policy influence of Mr Biden, than Mr Obama himself. Turkish diplomats fearfully consider Mr Biden as "dangerously close to the Greek position" on Cyprus than to theirs. But they also think the future of the reunification talks will depend more on ’the ground in Nicosia’ than on Mr Biden’s personal agenda. In any case, Mr Biden is a nightmare figure for Ankara. "It’s not only about Cyprus," one Turkish diplomat said. "He has never been warm to any Turkish position on any conflict." Another relief for Ankara: When the world goes wrong in all aspects, politically and economically, it is quite unlikely that Cyprus will be a priority for the new U.S. administration.

Another litmus test: the Predator B

If all goes smooth on the potentially explosive Armenian genocide issue, there is going to be another nice little test to gauge the merits and demerits of Mr Obama’s policy on Turkey. Will the Obama administration approve the sale of the Predator B to Turkey? The hunter-killer Predator B, otherwise known as the MQ-9 Reaper, is a solid unmanned aerial vehicle which, unlike most others in its family of military air platforms, can bomb designated targets -- Turkey wants it for use against the PKK.

Ankara has already officially asked for the Predator B in what could be a government-to-government sale, with unknown prospects as for an American go-ahead. Congress has already given its nod for the delivery of the Predator B to a couple of NATO allies. If it denies permission for the sale of the same weapons system to Turkey, also a NATO ally, hell may break loose at the Turkish military HQ, and therefore in the rest of government offices in Ankara.

So, there are many unknowns in the U.S.-Turkish ’strategic’ equation. During the election campaign, the Turkish bureaucracy, whether in civilian attire or uniform, leaned towards Senator McCain because "the devil I know is better than the devil I don’t know." Now they must deal with the ’devil they don’t know.’



This article was published first in the Greek daily Kathimerini on Jan. 18, 2009