Turkish Foreign Policy and Turkish Identity: A Constructivist Approach (International Relations Series)

STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Edited by

Charles G.MacDonald Florida International University

A ROUTLEDGE SERIES

STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS CHARLES G.MACDONALD, General Editor

PROMOTING WOMEN’S RIGHTS The Politics of Gender in the European Union Chrystalla A.Ellina

TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY AND TURKISH IDENTITY A CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH

Yücel Bozdaglioglu

Routledge New York & London

Published in 2003 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 www.routledge-ny.com Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE www.routledge.co.uk RoudedgeFalmer is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group. This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Copyright © 2003 by Taylor & Francis Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bozdağlioğlu, Yücel. Turkish foreign policy and Turkish identity: a constructivist approach/by Yücel Bozdağlioğlu. p. cm.— (Studies in international relations) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-94600-X (alk. paper) 1. Turkey—Foreign relations—History–20th century. 2. Nationalism— Turkey—History—20th century. I. Title. II. Series: Studies in international relations (Routledge (Firm)) DR477.B696 2003 327.561′009′04–dc21 2003004357 ISBN 0-203-50203-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-57709-4 (Adobe eReader Format)

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS CHAPTER 1 A. CHAPTER 2

vii

Introduction

3

Review of Chapters

9

Literature Review

13

A.

Neorealism and the Rational Choice Explanations of International Relations

13

B.

Constructivism and the Critique of Neorealism

14

C.

Implications of Identity

22

D.

Roots of State Identity

24

Modernization and the Construction of Turkey’s Official Identity

35

A.

The Impact of the West and the First Ottoman Reforms

36

B.

Reforms and the Organized Opposition

40

CHAPTER 3

a. The Young Ottomans

40

b. The Emergence of Islamism

41

C.

Young Turk Revolution and the Constitutional Era (1908–1923)

42

D.

Ataturk and the Institutionalization of Turkey’s Western Identity

46

E.

Implications and Conclusion

51

Turkey and the West

57

A.

Turkey and Post-World War II Security Arrangements: The NATO Context

59

B.

Turkey and the European Union (EU)

68

CHAPTER 4

vi

C.

Turkey and the West in the 1990s

79

D.

Implications and Conclusion

85

Identity Crisis and Turkey’s Search for Alternatives

87

A.

Culture and Identity in Turkish-European Relations

92

B.

Nationalism and Turkey’s Relations with Central Asia

96

C.

Implications and Conclusion

106

Turkey and the Muslim Middle East

111

A.

Turks and Arabs in Historical Perspective: The Development of Misperceptions and Images

112

B.

Turkey and the Middle East in the Cold War Period

115

C.

Turkey’s Relations with the Middle East in the 1990s

130

a. Political Islam, the Welfare Party and Turkish Foreign Policy

130

b. The Turkish Military: Guardians of Kemalism

136

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

D.

Implications and Conclusion

139

CHAPTER 7

Turkey and Israel: The “Outsiders” in the Middle East

141

A.

Turks and Jews in Historical Perspective

142

B.

Identity and Self-Interest in Turkish-Israeli Cooperation in the 1990s

147

C.

Implications and Conclusion

156

Conclusion

159

NOTES

167

BIBLIOGRAPHY

197

INDEX

215

CHAPTER 8

Acknowledgments

This book grew out of my Ph.D. dissertation prepared during my study at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, U.S.A. I would especially like to thank my dissertation advisor, Prof. Dr. Stuart Kaufman, who supported me throughout my study at the University of Kentucky. I would also like to thank my dissertation committee members, Prof. Dr. Karen Mingst, Prof. Dr. Robert Olson, Prof. Dr. Charles Davis, and Prof. Dr. John Stempel as well as my friends at UK Political Science Department. My special thanks go to my parents and my brother, Mehmet Bozdaglioglu, who provided the necessary documents, which made the completion of this work possible. I dedicate this book to them.

viii

TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY AND TURKISH IDENTITY

2

Chapter 1 Introduction

Political realism has dominated international relations theory for a long time. This tradition became more prominent especially in the post-World War II era due in most part to the emergence and persistence of the Cold War. Realism has been criticized frequently during the last few decades and “demands for a ‘new paradigm’ have been made.”1 Liberals have been the major participants in the critiques against realism.2 As Alexander Wendt puts it,“…the debate is more concerned today with the extent to which state action is influenced by ‘structure’ (anarchy and the distribution of power) versus ‘process’ (interaction and learning) and institutions.”3 Along with neoliberals, critical social theorists called constructivists have joined the debate.4 Constructivists have contested the most important neorealist assumption that “state egoism in anarchy begets self-help.” 5 In other words, “while neorealist pessimists assume international politics will always consist of self-regarding and relative-gain-seeking states, constructivist optimists assume that what is, need not always be.”6 According to constructivists, the causes of state egoism do not justify always treating it as given. Their main argument is that the fundamental structures of international politics are social rather than material; and these structures shape actors’ identities and interests. They suggest that collective identity could emerge endogenously at the systemic level and such a process would generate cooperarion.7 My theoretical work enters the debate within the field of international relations over the appropriateness of neorealism and consequently the existing rational choice models as explanations of state behavior. Does the existence of cooperation or conflict depend upon the rational calculation of the costs and benefits of states or are cooperation and conflict better understood as a question of the social identities of the relevant actors? In order to answer these questions, this book builds upon elements of

4 TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY AND TURKISH IDENTITY

constructivism developed by Alexander Wendt and argues that state identity is a key factor in explaining international relations, including anarchy and cooperation. Turkey, in this regard, constitutes a unique case study to assess the validity of the constructivist perspective as an alternative explanation of how foreign policy preferences, and consequently interests, are formulated. Turkey holds a special place in the international system because “it is on the very borderline between ‘North versus South’” 8 and ‘East versus West.’ In addition to its exceptional geographical position, Turkey also holds a special place among different civilizations: the Muslim Middle Eastern and the Western. “It is a country with a predominantly Muslim population, but at the same time, it represents a unique version of a secular state approximating a Western-style democracy.” 9 It houses various ethnic and social groups with different religious and ethnic identities. Given its geographical and cultural positions in the international system in general and Middle Eastern and European subsystems in particular, some scholars suggested that “Turkey should look simultaneously to the East and West” and try “to optimize the benefits of geographic location by developing close relations with all the major blocs that Turkey interacts with, without necessarily developing a complete economic and political union with any particular bloc.”10 Despite the apparent advantages of this kind of foreign policy, Turkey, throughout its modern history, fully identified itself with the West, especially with Europe, and established close relations with the United States, while she maintained a very low profile in her relations with the Muslim Middle East, from which she derived much of her cultural heritage. This book argues that an analysis of Turkish identity is crucial to an understanding of Turkey’s Western-oriented foreign policy because Turkey’s decision to integrate itself into the West was tied to Turkey’s new western identity constructed in the years following the Independence War. The Westernization movement in Turkey goes back to the period when the Ottoman Empire started to decline in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When Europeans started to defeat the Ottoman army, Ottoman statesmen sent missions to Europe and opened embassies in various Western capitals in order to understand the West’s military superiority. When these missions discovered that the West’s superiority came from the use of science and technology, the Ottoman politicians tried to bring the new technology into the country by establishing engineering, medical, military and civil service schools with secular and positivist

INTRODUCTION 5

curricula. Even though they were trying to adopt only the material aspects of Western civilization, they could not prevent the spread of positivist ideas and cultural values of the West among the new classes created by the secular educational system. Although it started out as short-term practical measures to save the Empire, the pace and the scope of the Westernization movement increased in the second half of the nineteenth century and by the end of the century, many Western laws and practices had been adopted and a basically secular educational system had been established. The Kemalist revolution that began in the 1920s was the radical and inevitable result of these modernization and westernization efforts that the Ottoman Empire had been undergoing for almost a century. However, it differed from previous attempts at modernization in that whereas the Ottoman reforms aimed at creating new institutions while retaining the old ones, thus creating a “duality,” the Kemalist reforms sought to completely abolish the old ones. It was not confined to only science and technology; it aimed at creating a new state, a new society, and an individual in line with those of the West. For the Kemalist elite there existed only one civilization, and it meant European civilization. If Turkish society was to modernize, it would do so in every aspect of social, political and cultural life. The most important implication of this thinking was the exclusion of Islam from the definition of the state. In the Ottoman Empire, Islam was the basis of state legitimacy and the source of individual identification. The republican elite, in their efforts to create a national and secular state, sought to cut the ties linking the society and individual to the Ottoman past and the Islamic Eastern civilization by completely discarding Islam from the public sphere. There was only one civilization, which was superior to Eastern civilization, and Turkey had to be a part of it in order to survive. This policy in turn led to the suppression of other identities, mainly ethnic and religious, and exclusion of them from the political process. The reforms throughout the republican era served to realize this purpose. They show “how indigenous ruling elites have imposed their notions of a Western cultural model, resulting in conversion almost on a civilizational scale.” 11 Later, the republic’s principles, named Kemalism after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and incorporated into the Constitution in 1937, came to define the basic character of the Turkish State. Another characteristic of the modernization process was its being a top-down process carried out by bureaucratic-authoritarian political and military elites, who were the products of the Ottoman reforms. After the death of Ataturk, they consolidated their power

6 TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY AND TURKISH IDENTITY

and came to dominate Turkey’s domestic and foreign policies. As Hakan Yavuz pointed out, “foreign relations filtered down from the secular elite’s self-ascribed European identity, which in turn was the basis of framing ‘Turkish national interest.’”12 They took further steps in westernizing the country and in making Turkey an actual ally of the West. The process began when Turkey signed the tripartite agreement with Britain and France in 1939 and gained further impetus when Turkey joined NATO, the Council of Europe, and other Western political and economic organizations. It was in the context of the Cold War that Turkey was able to establish close relations with the West. At the same time, Turkey stayed aloof from Middle Eastern politics, a brief period of the Baghdad Pact in 1955 being the only exception. To be a part of the West in every aspect and gain recognition as a Western state thenceforth has come to occupy the center of Turkish foreign policy. “The ‘West’ to which Turks feel they belong or wish to belong” however, “means Europe more than the United States.” 13 It was Europe that inspired the generations of Westernists in Turkey as they struggled to modernize the country. To be a part of the West means to be “European.” The last step in this direction was membership in the European Union (EU). “According to Turkish policy-makers, membership in the new European Community was a logical extension of Turkey’s inclusion in the other Western organizations, since it was seen as the economic dimension supplementing and cementing the Western alliances.”14 Turkey applied for membership in the European Union (then European Community (EC)) on July 31, 1959. Despite the presence of economic difficulties in the Turkish economy, “the increased importance of security concerns encouraged the EC to waive economic objections to Turkey’s accession.”15 On September 12, 1963, Turkey and the EU signed the Ankara Agreement, which defined the preparatory, transitional, and final stages, whereby Turkey gained associate member status. Even though economic and political difficulties prevented Turkey from implementing the terms of Ankara Agreement and resulted in the deterioration of Turkish-EU relations, Turkey finally decided to apply for full membership on 14 April 1987. However, “the decision of the European Union to defer Turkey’s membership for an indefinite period was greeted by both the Turkish elite and the public at large with deep disappointment and resentment.”16 The EU’s decision coincided with a period in which a debate concerning Turkey’s national identity was taking place among the Kemalists Westerners, on the one hand, and the Islamists on the other. In the 1970s, Islamists had already resurfaced on the

INTRODUCTION 7

Turkish political scene, exploiting the failure of the Kemalist modernization project and demanding a change in the founding principles of the state. At that time, Islam as a political force was not strong enough to challenge the identity of the state and the westernization project. The 1980s and 1990s, however, witnessed a gradual rise of Islamic sentiment in Turkey that resulted in the electoral success of the Islamic Welfare Party (WP) in the 1995 national elections. The leaders of the WP heavily exploited the attitudes of Europeans toward Turkey and promised to change the direction of Turkey’s foreign policy away from Europe toward the Muslim world. During their short stint in power in 1996–1997, the WP initiated some Pan-Islamic projects and seriously challenged Turkey’s Western identity. The 1980s and the 1990s also witnessed the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of new Turkic republics in Central Asia, creating an enthusiasm for a leadership role for Turkey in the region. This enthusiasm for “Turkey’s tutelary role in Central Asia was in part a reaction to what was perceived as rejection by the West.”17 As Samuel Huntington puts it: Having rejected Mecca, and then being rejected by Brussels, where does Turkey look? Tashkent may be the answer. The end of the Soviet Union gives Turkey the opportunity to become the leader of a revived Turkic civilization involving seven countries from the borders of Greece to those of China.18 As a result, the debate revolved around national identity, the definition of national interest, and the kind of political, economic, and social systems that Turkey should adopt. In the course of these debates, basic decisions regarding Turkey’s foreign policy (defense and national security) became inextricably intertwined with the national identity of Turkey. According to the Kemalist elite, Turkey should stay with the West and try to gain recognition as a European state. For Islamists, Turkey cannot be a part of Europe because it belongs to a different civilization. Instead, Turkey should ally with other Muslim countries in the Middle East. Nationalists, on the other hand, argue that Turkey, without a radical departure from its West-oriented foreign policy, should pay more attention to the Turkic republics and play a leadership role in the region. Realists might argue that Turkey’s identification with the West was motivated purely by Turkey’s security and economic interests. Turkey’s membership in the NATO alliance and political commitment to the West, for example, might have been aimed solely against the Soviet threat that emerged after the second war.

8 TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY AND TURKISH IDENTITY

There are at least two objections to this argument, however. First, while Turkey’s ties with the West were based on concrete security interests, they also manifested a will to become part of the West. Joining NATO, as one scholar expressed, “filled Turkish hearts with pride and exaltation. They were no longer ‘outsiders.’ They were at last part of the West.” 19 Second, the direction of Turkish foreign policy was drawn during the time of Ataturk when he wanted Turkey to reach the level of contemporary civilization, which only meant European civilization. During this time, there was no Soviet threat to be balanced against. Furthermore, Turkey received financial and emotional help from the Soviet Union during the Independence War. The Soviet threat emerged after Turkey began to ally itself fully with the West. Turkey farther deepened its relations with the West even when there was no serious threat from the Soviet Union after the 1950s. As a middle power with a unique geographical position, Turkey could have played off the superpowers against each other to maximize its gains during the Cold War. As explained in chapter IV, especially after the Cuban missile crisis, the Soviets were doing everything possible to earn Turkey’s neutrality in the Cold War. However, Turkish political leaders bluntly stated that neutrality was not an option and Turkey would continue to fully ally with the West. Turkey’s identification with the West persisted even when it did not get any support from its allies on the Cyprus issue, which was— and still is—a major concern of Turkish foreign policy. Turkey’s somewhat chaotic relations with its Middle Eastern neighbors can also be explained by reference to its identity. Even though the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War gave many opportunities to Turkey to formulate more flexible regional policies, Turkey continued its full identification with the West. For example, a realist would expect that Turkey would try to get support from its neighbors, especially from Iraq and Iran, for its long-lasting Kurdish problem since they also have a substantial Kurdish population. However, Turkey’s fear that Iran and other radical Islamic countries may contribute to the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in Turkey drove Turkish political leaders to distance themselves from these countries. Turkey’s active participation in the Gulf War also further harmed its relations with Iraq, which reversed its policy on the Kurdish issue and supported the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party’s (PKK) activities in Turkey. Turkey’s policy in the Gulf War also required Turkey to cut off its trade with Iraq—one of Turkey’s biggest trading partners in the region—costing billions of dollars in damage. Moreover, Turkey’s military agreements with Israel concluded in 1997 sent shock

INTRODUCTION 9

waves throughout the Middle East and became a major problem in Turkey’s relations with the regional countries. This book argues that an adequate account of Turkish foreign policy requires an analysis of Turkey’s identity since it is closely linked to the formulation of foreign policy. As the above examples show, even though Turkey had ample opportunities during and after the Cold War to formulate its foreign policy to maximize its material gains, it chose to stay with the West, sometimes at its own cost. Furthermore, as I argue throughout, even when Turkish decision makers thought that only the identification with the West could maximize Turkey’s gains, their definition of those material gains was based on Turkey’s identity. A. REVIEW OF CHAPTERS The main focus of this book will be Turkey’s foreign policy during and after the cold war period. However, in order to see the effects of identity on the formulation of Turkey’s foreign policy preferences during this time frame, the analysis should be supported by a historical analysis of how that identity was constructed in the first place and how it defined Turkey’s preferences and interests. Chapter 2 reviews realist and constructivists arguments and gives a critique of both. Chapter 3 is an analysis of the impact of the West during the Ottoman Empire and the construction of official Turkish identity in the years following the Independence War in 1920. It argues that since Turkish politics was dominated by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk—the founder of the modern Turkish Republic—I look at his definition of western identity and his ideas on both western and eastern civilizations. The chapter also includes the elements and institutionalization of Turkey’s western identity. The chapter concludes with the argument that it was this identity that determined Turkey’s foreign policy preferences and its alliance with the West during the Cold War. Chapter 4 examines the institutionalization of Turkey’s western identity at the systemic level in terms of its relations with the West in general (particularly with NATO and the United States) and with Europe (in the context of the European Union) in particular. The emphasis will be on Turkey’s relations with the European Union in economic and political issues during and after the Cold War. The chapter demonstrates that during the Cold War period, Turkey’s relatively good relations with European Union and the signing of the Ankara Agreement that granted Turkey associate member status further transformed Turkey’s western identity. However, the

10 TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY AND TURKISH IDENTITY

end of the Cold War marked the beginning of a new era in Turkey’s relations with Europe. The end of Turkey’s role as a buffer state against the Soviet Union after the Cold War, the accusations blaming Turkey for its human rights violations and inadequate democracy, and economic difficulties that impaired Turkey’s ability to meet the conditions of the European Union worsened Turkey’s relations with Europe. And finally, explicit statements by European leaders arguing that Turkey does not meet the conditions for being a European state for cultural and ideological reasons further altered the nature of Turkey’s previously smooth relations with Europe and caused an identity crisis on the part of the Turkish State. Chapter 5 provides an explanation of the implications of Turkey’s identity crisis at both domestic and systemic levels and the strategies to overcome that identity crisis. It shows that the lack of a clearly defined role after the Cold War and its deteriorating relations with Europe coupled with the increasing strength of Islamic and nationalist sentiments in the country further intensified the identity crisis. The chapter also analyzes Turkey’s identity crisis and the struggle for a new role and identity in terms of three competing conceptions—pro-European, nationalist, and Islamist—and how these forces tried to reorient Turkey’s foreign policy in accordance with their identity conceptions. Chapter 6 examines Turkey’s relations with the Middle East. It argues that the reason that Turkey’s relations with its Muslim Middle Eastern neighbors in general have never been trouble-free is due to Turkey’s uncompromising devotion to its western identity. Westernization efforts in Turkey, blaming Islam for its backwardness and the negative perceptions of the Arabs and the Turks about each other, required that Turkey’s relations with Middle Easterners be kept at a minimum. Turkey’s resistance to signing the Charter of the Islamic Conference because it contains clauses that conflict with its Western identity are examples of Turkey’s identity politics. The chapter further demonstrates that Turkey’s relations with the organization improved when Turkey’s relations with its Western allies deteriorated over the Cyprus issue in the 1970s. I also argue in chapter VI that as Turkey increased its ties with the Middle East it also opened to Islamic influences that threatened the secular character of the Turkish state. This was evident in the rise of Muslim sentiment and the growing electoral support for the Islamic Welfare Party, which became the major party in the 1995 general elections. During their short term in office, the officials of the Welfare Party under the leadership of Necmettin Erbakan seriously contested Turkey’s western identity

INTRODUCTION 11

and tried to reorient Turkey’s foreign policy away from Europe toward the Middle East. Chapter 7 illustrates how the presence of a shared identity with Israel based on Westernization and secularization contributed to good relations between the two countries. The chapter opens up with Turkey’s and Israel’s perceptions about each other in general and argues that both countries because of their distinct identities feel like outsiders in the region dominated by Muslim countries. In the second part of the chapter, I argue that the signing of TurkishIsraeli military agreements proves that Turkey’s alliance with Israel was a move toward balancing against the perceived threats to the official Turkish identity—Islamic fundamentalism and the Kurdish separatist movement—and their external connections in the region. In this case again, identity provided a better conceptual link to the construction of threat and informed Turkish decisionmakers as to who is deemed an attractive ally to contain that threat. Finally, chapter 8 examines the implications of the arguments presented in the book for international relation theories in general and Turkish foreign policy in particular.

12

Chapter 2 Literature Review

A. NEOREALISM AND THE RATIONAL CHOICE EXPLANATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Kenneth N.Waltz argues that “a system is composed of a structure and of interacting units. The structure is the system-wide component that makes it possible to think of the system as a whole.”1 In international politics, states are the units and their interactions form the structure of international political systems.2 Processes, in this view, are “patterned relations among units that go on within a system—relations that reflect in varying degrees the constraints imposed by the system’s structure.” 3 Having so defined political structure, Waltz goes on to identify the analytical components of that structure. Political structure is defined on three dimensions: ordering principles, the character of the units, and the distribution of capabilities.4 Unlike domestic political systems, international systems are decentralized and hierarchic. Therefore, anarchy is the ordering principle of the system. The assumption that follows is that the desire of the units is to survive. In order to survive in this anarchic world, states should take care of themselves. In other words, they “must rely on the means they can generate and the arrangements they can make for themselves.” 5 As a result, self-help becomes the ordering principle of action in an anarchic order. The second component of international political structure is the functional similarity of the units. This is a natural result of anarchy because “anarchy entails coordination among a system’s units, and that implies their sameness.”6 However, states are similar in the tasks they face, not in their abilities to perform them. “The differences are of capability, not of function.” 7 Related to this is the distribution of the material capabilities of the units to perform similar tasks. The distinction between international political

14 TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY AND TURKISH IDENTITY

systems is made according to the number of great powers that explains the variation of structure because “the structure of a system changes with the distribution of capabilities across the system’s units.”8 Since variation of structure is introduced by distinctions among the units according to capability “number becomes a factor of high explanatory power.”9 Changes in the system, then, depend on the distribution of material capabilities that move the system from anarchy to hierarchy. For the sake of his structural theory, Waltz excludes motives, attributes or any particular qualities of states except their capabilities from his analysis. “What emerges is a positional picture, a general description of the ordered overall arrangement of a society written in terms of the placement of units rather than in terms of their qualities.”10 He is more interested in how the qualities, the motives, and the interactions of the units are affected by structure. Thus, structure becomes a cause producing a similarity in processes and performance. The structure of the international system, once formed, becomes a force that the units cannot control. It constrains and puts limits on the behavior of the units. “Structures encourage certain behaviors and penalize those who do not respond to the encouragement.”11 States, in this account, must therefore act in accordance with the necessities of the system, or they will cease to exist. The interests and identities of states are constructed by the structure of the system exogenous to them. Under the conditions of anarchy, it is logical to assume that states must acquire egoistic identities and take care of themselves or they will risk being crushed. The implication of the above argument is that since states have egoistic identities and consequently egoistic interests imposed upon them by the anarchic structure they all will be concerning about cheating and relative gains in their relations with others.12 This situation in turn will constrain their willingness to cooperate because they are unable to change the structure and their selfish identities in anarchy. B. CONSTRUCTIVISM AND THE CRITIQUE OF NEOREALISM Constructivists challenge the dominance of neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism in the study of international relations. They argue that there are other variables that may be more important than anarchy and power for explaining state behavior.

LITERATURE REVIEW 15

Constructivists contend that “explanations based primarily on interests and the material distribution of power cannot fully account for important international phenomena and that analysis of the social construction of state identities ought to precede, and may even explain, the genesis of state interests.” 13 Constructivists criticize neorealists for defining “international system structures in terms of the observable attributes of their member states (the ‘distribution of capabilities’),” 14 and as a result, their understanding of the explanatory role of those structures in individualist terms as constraining the choices of preexisting state actors. They argue that in this logic, “the properties of state actors are given exogenously to the system…; therefore system structures are only constraints on behavior.” 15 Thus, neorealists reduce the structure of the state system to the properties and interactions of states. Constructivists, on the other hand, emphasize a process of interaction between agents and structures; “the ontology is one of mutual constitution, where neither unit of analysis—agents or structures—is reduced to the other and made ‘ontologically primitive.’”16 In other words, human agents and social structures are interrelated and interdependent entities, and “hence, we cannot account fully for the one without invoking the other.”17 Constructivists reject the neorealist assumption that structure is an unintended by-product of rational, self-interested efforts to survive. According to constructivists, structure is a medium of activity that in principle can be altered through that activity. Any given action will reproduce or transform some part of the social structure; the structural product itself may be intended or unintended. In general, social action is both a product (an intended action) and a byproduct (the reproduction of rules and resources implicated in the intended action). 18 In this logic, then, the preexistence of rules and norms, even under anarchy, becomes the essential prerequisite for social action. Structure, defined in terms of anarchy and distribution of power, cannot alone lead to behavior. “Some link between this environment and the realm of action is needed.”19 In neorealism and other rationalist accounts of international relations, this link is established through the rationality assumption, which suggests that “leaders will respond to the incentives and constraints imposed by their environments.”20

16 TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY AND TURKISH IDENTITY

Constructivists, on the other hand, claim that even the rationality assumption in neorealism presupposes the existence of rules, norms and practices in international relations because it is not “merely an assumption about the manner in which nations calculate and act; it is also an assumption about the means through which those actions are carried out.”21 Therefore, structure must also consist of the media through which rational action is affected. Meaningful behavior is possible only within an intersubjective social context: Actors develop their relations with, and understandings of, others through the media of norms and practices. In the absence of norms, exercises of power, or actions, would be devoid of meaning. Since structure is meaningless without some intersubjective set of norms and practices, anarchy, mainstream international theory’s most crucial structural component, is meaningless.22 This argument marks the most important difference between constructivists on the one hand and neorealists and neoliberals on the other. For neorealist, norms do not have any causal force in international politics. For neoliberals, norms play important roles only in certain issue areas and help actors with given interests maximize utility. “For constructivists, by contrast, norms are collective understandings that make behavioral claims on actors. Their effects are deeper; they constitute actor identities and interests and do not simply regulate behavior… For constructivists, agents (states) and structures (global norms) are interacting; they are mutually constituted.” 23 Norms provide agents with understanding of their interests. The implication of this argument for the role of international institutions in international politics is that institutions can constitute the identities of actors and thus shape their interests. If one defines international political structure in constructivist terms, then “it opens up what for most theorists is the black box of interest and identity formation; state interests emerge from and are endogenous to interaction with structures.” 24 And thus, the concept of identity serves as a link between environmental structures and interests.25 If anarchy, the fundamental pillar of neorealism, is structural, then “it must be mutually constituted by actors employing constitutive rules and social practices.” 26 This means that anarchy is indeterminate and it may have multiple meanings for different actors based on their own intersubjective understandings and practices. “And if multiple understandings of

LITERATURE REVIEW 17

anarchy are possible, then one can begin to theorize about different domains and issue areas of international politics that are understood by actors as more, or less, anarchic.”27 Alexander Wendt, for example, argues that Waltz’s definition of political structure based on ordering principles (anarchy) and the distribution of capabilities, by itself, predicts little about state behavior. “It does not predict whether two states will be friends or foes, will recognize each other’s sovereignty, will have dynastic ties, will be revisionist or status quo powers…These factors, which are fundamentally intersubjective, affect states’ security interests and thus the character of their interaction under anarchy.”28 Alternatively, he develops the concept of a “structure of identity and interest” and contends that “without assumptions about the structure of identities and interests in the system, Waltz’s definition of structure cannot predict the content or dynamics of anarchy.” 29 In Wendt’s terms, structure is not only made of material capabilities, but also social relationships. Defined, social structures include three essential elements: shared knowledge, material resources, and practices; and these three elements are interrelated.30 First, social structures are defined, in part, by shared understandings, expectations, or knowledge. “These constitute the actors in a situation and the nature of their relationships, whether cooperative or conflictual.”31 An anarchical society, for example, is a social structure composed of intersubjective understandings in which states do not trust each other; and accordingly, they define their interests in self-help terms. A security community, by contrast, is a different social structure, composed of shared knowledge in which states trust each other to resolve disputes without war. States’ ideas about each other, then, become an important determinant of the nature of structure. In this sense, ideas are social. “What makes these ideas (and thus structure) ‘social,’ however, is their intersubjective quality.”32 Material sources constitute the second element of social structure. However, what makes the constructivist view of material sources different from that of neorealists is the constructivists’ socialized view of such capabilities. Constructivists argue that “material sources only acquire meaning for human action through the structure of shared knowledge in which they are embedded.”33 People act toward objects, including other actors, on the basis of the meanings that the objects have for them.”34 As a result, states will act differently toward enemies than they do toward friends even if the former holds more material capabilities than the latter. In

18 TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY AND TURKISH IDENTITY

this case, for example, Iraq’s nuclear capability would be more threatening to the United States than that of Great Britain because of their different significance for the United States. In other words, the US would be more worried about Iraqi missiles because Great Britain is friend and Iraq is not. “Amity or enmity is a function of shared understandings.”35 Even though the distribution of material capabilities affects states’ calculations “how it does so depends on the intersubjective understandings and expectations, and the ‘distribution of knowledge,’ that constitute their conceptions of self and other. 36 The third element of social structure consists of practices. According to Wendt “social structure exists, not in actors’ heads nor in material capabilities, but in practices. Social structure exists only in process.”37 Social practices produce and reproduce the intersubjective meanings, which, in turn, constitute social structures and actors alike. As Ted Hopf notes: The US military intervention in Vietnam was consistent with a number of US identities: great power, imperialist, enemy, ally, and so on. Others observing the United States not only inferred US identity from its actions in Vietnam, but also reproduced the intersubjective web of meaning about what precisely constituted that identity. To the extent, for example, that a group of countries attributed an imperialist identity to the United States, the meaning of being an imperialist state was reproduced by the US military intervention. In this way, social practices not only reproduce actors through identity, but also reproduce an intersubjective social structure through social practice.38 Identities, in essence, are relational. Actors acquire identities by participating in collective meanings. States may have multiple identities and which identity will be more salient depends on the specific social context. “That someone has the identity of a ‘student,’ for example, has no meaning outside of a particular institutional environment that also defines related identities, like professor.’ A similar argument can be made about the identity of some states as ‘sovereign’ which presupposes a system of mutual recognition from other states with certain competencies.” 39 In both cases a specific social context defines the properties, as well as the behaviors, of an actor, and makes their properties endogenous to the environment. According to constructivists, identities define states’ interests. Therefore, they have a powerful explanatory power in foreign policy

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analysis. States “do not have a ‘portfolio’ of interests that they carry around independent of social context; instead, they define their interests in the process of defining situations.”40 Sometimes actors may experience unprecedented situations so that they have to construct their meaning, and thus their interests. In these cases, actors assign meanings to these kinds of situations through institutionally defined roles. “The absence or failure of roles makes defining situations and interests more difficult, and identity confusion may result.”41 If the identities of actors are the basis of their interests, then, how do they acquire those identities in the first place? How would they define self and other? In order to explain identity construction, Wendt makes a distinction between the corporate and social identities of states. “Corporate identity refers to the intrinsic, selforganizing qualities that constitute actor individuality.” 42 This type of identity generates four basic interests: 1) physical security 2) predictability in relationships to the world 3) recognition as an actor by others 4) economic development.43 How a state satisfies these corporate interests “depends on how it defines the self in relation to the other, which is function of social identities at both domestic and systemic levels of analysis."44 A social identity, on the other hand, is defined as “a set of meanings that an actor attributes to itself as a social object while taking the perspective of others, that is, as a social object.”45 While actors have one corporate identity, they usually have multiple social identities. As explained above, social identities vary in salience depending on the social context. Social identities enable actors to determine “who they are’ in a situation and their “positions in a social role structure of shared understandings and expectations. In this respect, they are a key link in the mutual constitution of agent and structure, embodying the terms of individuality through which agents relate to each other.”46 The existence of social identities depends on relations to others. For example, “one cannot be an ‘anticommunist’ if there are no communists around, nor a ‘balancer’ if there is no one to balance.”47 For the sake of his structural theory, Wendt de-emphasizes the corporate identities of states because their roots are in domestic politics. Instead, he is more interested in showing how, through systemic interaction, states construct social identities and how self —and collective interests are produced. By excluding the domestic roots of state identities from his analysis, he aims to prove that state identities are endogenous, not exogenous, to the system. For Wendt, “interests and identities of actors emerge only in an

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interactive process.” 48 This brings us to the conclusion that the structure of identities and interests in the system is constituted intersubjectively and subjectivity is a social construction. In other words, “the meanings in terms of which action is organized arise out of interaction.”49 As the above argument suggests, the nature of the system, whether it is anarchic or not, is determined by a history of interaction between two actors. In other words, whether or not states acquire “selfish” or “collective” identities and interests, depends on the nature and “manner in which social identities involve an identification with the fate of the other. Identification is a continuum from negative to positive—from conceiving the other as anathema to the self to conceiving it as an extension of the self.” 50 If states identify negatively with each other, then, as realists suggest, the system will be a competitive security system in which relative gains will take precedence over absolute or collective gains. In the case of positive identification, states perceive each other’s security “as the responsibility of all. This is not self-help in any interesting sense, since the ‘self’ in terms of which interests are defined is the community; national interests are international interests.”51 In the middle of the identity continuum lies the individualistic security system in which states are more concerned about absolute gains rather than relative gains and indifferent to others’ security as suggested by neoliberals. In this case, states still continue to be egoists; however, cooperation is more possible.52 Figure I. illustrates the point: Figure 1: Identity Continuum

The above argument suggests that even though states often define their interests in egoistic term, this does not justify treating them as given. Depending on the nature of practice with others, states may as well define their interests in collectivist terms, creating new definitions of self and other during interaction. If states sustain a stable pattern of practice over a long period of time, “the rationalist assumption that interests are given may be useful.” 53 The next question to be asked is, then, what are the factors or mechanisms that either inhibit or facilitate collective identity formation?

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According to Wendt, there are three factors at the systemic level that can play a causal role for the emergence of collective identity formation: structural contexts, systemic processes, and strategic practice. Even though he accepts the fact that domestic factors matter as well, for the purpose of endogenizing the identity change to systemic theory, he rules them out from his analysis.54 The structure of regional or international systems may promote or inhibit the emergence of collective identity formation since they “constitute interaction contexts.” 55 However, the constructivist understanding of structure differs from that of realists. While realists define structure in material terms, constructivists emphasize intersubjective structure although they accept the effects of material capabilities. As explained above, “intersubjective structures give meaning to material ones, and it is in terms of meanings that actors act.”56 Neorealists assume that states are concerned about material capabilities that other states have relative to their own. For constructivists, not material capabilities themselves but who has them occupies the most important place in states’ calculations. In the constructivist analysis, there is a difference between the material capabilities that friends have and those that enemies have. Systemic process is another factor that plays an important role in the emergence of collective identity. The first systemic process is rising interdependence among states through either increasing trade and capital flows or the emergence of a common external threat. These systemic processes “increase the objective vulnerability and sensitivity of actors to each other, and with these the thickness of systemic structures. This reduces the ability to meet corporate needs unilaterally, and increases the extent to which actors share a common fate.” 57 The second systemic process is “the transnational convergence of domestic values,” 58 cultural and political ones being the most important. The convergence of political and cultural values increases the similarity among nations and “the rationale for identities that assume they are fundamentally different from us, and the potential for positive identification increases…”59 Strategic practice is the last factor that affects the emergence of collective identity. It could be in the forms of behavioral—what actors do—and rhetorical—what actors say. First, interaction helps actors learn “to see themselves as others do…Second, through interaction actors [try] to project and sustain presentations of self. Thus, by engaging in cooperative behavior, an actor will gradually will change its own beliefs about who it is, helping to internalize that new identity for itself.” 60

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Rhetorical strategic practice may have similar effects as behavioral practice, but it does so in a different way. Rhetorical practices are aimed at changing others’ conceptions of their interests through consciousness raising, dialogue, discussion and persuasion.61 The argument here is that “the social world is constituted by shared meanings and significations, which are manipulable by rhetorical practices.” 62 C. IMPLICATIONS OF IDENTITY Deriving its elements from social psychology, political science, and social theory, constructivism, as outlined above, constitutes an alternative research program to the study of international politics and foreign policy. Despite the presence of different approaches within the constructivist research program, constructivists, in general, share the idea that international politics is not solely driven by material factors. Without denying the importance of material factors in the formulation of states’ foreign policies, constructivists argue that, in the process, states’ interests, and consequently their behaviors, are influenced by social and intersubjective factors such as norms, culture, ideas, and identity. Where they disagree with rationalists (and neorealists) is the degree to which international politics is affected by these factors. For constructivists, state identity is the basis of interest. And thus, state identity precedes and even accounts for interest because “actors often cannot decide what their interests are until they know what they are representing—‘who they are’ which in turn depends on their social relationships.”63 The term “identity” comes from social psychology “where it refers to the images of individuality and distinctiveness (“self-hood”) held and projected by an actor and formed (and modified over time) through relations with significant “others.” 64 At this point, a distinction between personal and social identity has to be made. “Personal identity is the individuated self—those characteristics that differentiate one individual from others within a given social context.”65 This definition conforms to the corporate identity of states defined by Alexander Wendt as intrinsic qualities, such as psychological traits, feelings of competence, bodily features, intellectual interests, personal tastes that constitute actor individuality. 66 “Social identities” on the other hand, “are categorizations of the self into more inclusive social units that depersonalize the self-concept, where/becomes we” 67 Any part of social identity can be core to the self (core construct) and under

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particular circumstances “social identity may function almost to the exclusion of personal identity.”68 While actors (individuals or states) have a single personal (or corporate) identity, they have multiple social identities that may vary in salience. According to one author, “overlapping identities are not considered possible; from a security point of view, they may even be regarded as desirable:…individuals whose identity is related to several groups in society are less likely to engage themselves uncompromisingly in conflicts than individuals whose entire self is defined in relation to a single group.”69 Identity, defined in this way, is more than a psychological sense of self. “It is extended to encompass a sense of self-in-relation-to-the-world, which may be experienced socially as well as psychologically.” 70 Internal and external factors play important roles in shaping identity. According to one view in behavioral and psychoanalytical psychology “humans continuously seek—and seek to protect— common identity with other humans. States accordingly avail themselves of this psychological need to mobilize support for the political entity.”71 Another view “emphasizes the inseparability of identity formation and relations between groups. If a human collective is to nurture some kind of common identity, it has to contrast that identity to something different.”72 In this sense, the notion of the other becomes “an epistemological necessity in the definition of the self . the very capacity to experience a self is contingent upon otherness; it is in dialogue with others that the self is shaped.”73 The latter argument about the other has recently found its way into the literature on international relations. Collectively held identities draw the boundaries of the self and define who ‘we’ are, as well as “they delineate the boundaries against ‘them,’ the ‘other.’ Identities then prescribe norms of appropriate behavior toward those perceived as part of ‘us’ as well as toward the ‘other.’” 74 In this sense, actors’ identities become a crucial factor in determining their perceptions about each other in the international system. Perceived identities of other actors in the system also inform states who is a friend who is enemy. In the above example, Iraq was threatening to the United States because Iraq was identified as the ‘other’ while Great Britain was considered to be part of ‘us.’ “The collective identity of actors…defines both the ‘in-group’ of friends and the ‘out-group’ of potential foes.”75 Accepting the inability of neorealism in explaining major events in world politics, some neorealists tried to modify the theory by adding more variables to it. Stephen M.Walt, for example, argued that states balance against threats not against power. Because

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anarchy and the distribution of power alone cannot explain which states will be identified as threats, Walt argues that “threat derives from a combination of geostrategic and military factors and ‘aggressive intentions.’” However, “Walt leaves the issue unresolved: How is intent determined? What constitutes a threat?”76 The puzzle can be best solved by a reference to identity from which actors infer others’ intentions. D. ROOTS OF STATE IDENTITY This book is organized to demonstrate that identity-based explanations offer a better understanding of a state’s preferences and interests, and consequently its foreign policy priorities. By applying the elements of constructivism to Turkey’s foreign policy, it aims to assess the validity of the constructivist perspective as an alternative explanation of how foreign policy preferences and interests are formulated. However, my argument differs from that of structural constructivists in that a complete account of states’ foreign policy preferences and interests requires a combination of factors at both domestic and international levels. In this section, I develop an interactive model of identity formation that takes into account both domestic- and international-level factors and interactions between them. Alexander Wendt’s re-conceptualization of the notion of interest “as the product of intersubjective processes of meaning creation”77 does not provide an adequate account of interest and preference formation, because he, like realists, continues to treat states as unitary actors with a single identity and a single set of interests. He even accuses neorealists of not being structural enough.78 Treated in this way, then, the state itself becomes “a black box, internal workings of which are irrelevant to the construction of state identities.” 79 Therefore, the meanings that objects have for states and the identities and interests of states are created only through and restricted to systemic interaction. Systemic interaction, then, becomes the starting point in Wendt’s analysis. “Absent in this argument is the individual agency that is included and subsumed by the corporate identity of the state.”80 Actors in Wendt’s analysis do not have any conceptions of self and other before interaction. He reasons that if there is no interaction between two actors, then, they have “no history of security or insecurity between the two. What should they do?… Most decisions are and should be on the basis of probabilities, and these are produced by interaction, what actors do.” 81 Before

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interaction we cannot know whether or not the other actor is a friend or enemy. Our decision would depend on how we interpret their first ges-ture. 82 Wendt’s argument, then, “puts enormous weight on the first act, since initial interaction determines so much about the way things go afterward."83 Even though the first contact is one of the most important part of his theory, Wendt ignores “its significance or deeper heritage. What brings alter and ego together?…Why do alter and ego take any ‘interest’ in the other…?”84 In Wendt’s theory, the self and the other come into contact accidentally. He says nothing about the actors before interaction. “Haven’t actors already constructed some sense of self and some understanding of others prior to contact? A socially constituted structure depends, at least in part, ideas, purposes, intentions, and images actors bring to contact.”85 Furthermore, “the meanings which objects, events, and actions have for ‘states’ are necessarily the meanings they have for those individuals who act in the name of the state.” 86 These state officials have some ideas about the world, the international system, and the place of their state within that system. These ideas, in turn, are “necessarily rooted in meanings already produced, at least in part, in domestic political and cultural contexts.” 87 In other words, actors usually construct themselves and others long before the actual contact most often through discursive practices; that is through representations. 88 Depending on the nature of these representations (negative or positive), actors produce and reproduce meanings and identities that make a certain course of action possible or impossible. This does not, however, mean that everybody in a country shares the same representations about others since those representations are closely related to cultural and political contexts within which they are produced. By the same token, individuals, state institutions, other domestic groups that are involved in foreign policy making process and that have different cultural backgrounds and identity conceptions will act differently when faced with different situations. The reason for this is “the notion that human behavior is guided by socially shared and transmitted ideas and beliefs. Cultures as such comprise beliefs about the way the world is—including at the most basic level beliefs that define the individual’s and the group’s identities—and the ideas about the way the world ought to be.”89 It is therefore safe to assume that implementing a certain foreign policy would require consent and consensus among different groups that are involved in identity and interest construction and that have different role identities. In pluralistic societies, then, a state’s identity and consequently its

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interests arise out of a struggle among different domestic groups trying to influence the course of the state’s foreign policy in accordance with their identity conceptions.90 Once an identity is constructed, states institutionalize that identity at both domestic and international levels. Domestically, while states develop their identities “they also develop myths and institutions to protect them.”91 Internationally, “states seek to enact their identities (potentially shifting or multiple ones) in interstate normative structures, including regimes and security communities.”92 While states try to institutionalize their identity at both domestic and international levels, domestic and international environments, especially cultural and institutional ones, shape their identities.93 International institutions, where the density and frequency of systemic interaction are the greatest, “shape identities that inform interests rather than, directly, behavior—a characteristic blind spot in the rationalist vision.”94 The identities of states are not static. They can change as a result of interaction with others due to internal developments. Domestic political developments can transform identities in several ways. First, drastic political developments such as revolutions can change a state’s identity and replace it with a new one as happened in Iran after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Second, through domestic institutional arrangements or elections, the role of domestic political groups/state institutions or individuals in the foreign policy making process can be altered. In this case, the foreign policy discourse can be dominated by entirely new organizations or individuals with different identity conceptions that may perceive the national interest in a different way. This is an important contribution to the constructivist approach because Wendt argues that any change in strategic practice can change the identities of states from collective to selfish or vice versa. He does not, however, explain what would change the nature of practice and why states would want to change it. Considering domestic roots of that change would be a good starting point in the constructivist analysis. “Identity is reinforced (or not) by contacts with others.”95 Systemic interaction, depending on its nature, can confirm or transform already held identities, which is also a function of domestic politics because systemic interaction can be interpreted and internalized differently by different individuals and organizations with different cultural backgrounds and identities. The last point that should be mentioned in the constructivist analysis is the importance of reciprocity or reflected appraisals in identity formation. “…Actors learn to see themselves in the roles

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that other actors, especially powerful ones attribute to them.”96 States often internalize that identity. However, as a result of a change in a state’s internal or external environments, “a given state’s identity may fail to conform to international expectations of the state’s role.”97 This may mean rejection by others who hold similar identities. In this case, lack of a clearly defined role may result in an identity crisis because human beings need approval and recognition from others. As Axel Honneth puts it: For up to the present day, in the self-descriptions of those who see themselves as having been wrongly treated by others, the moral categories that play a dominant role are those—such as insult and humiliation—that refer to forms of disrespect, that is, to the denial of recognition. Negative concepts of this kind are used to designate behavior that represents an injustice… because it injures them with regard to the positive understanding of themselves that they have acquired intersubjectively.98 Human beings need approval of others because their normative self-image is dependent on the possibility of being supported by others. “The experience of being disrespected carries with it the danger of an injury that can bring the identity of the person as a whole to the point of collapse.”99 States construct their identities before they start interacting with others in the system. In pluralistic societies, the state’s identity will emerge as a result of a domestic struggle among various groups— each pressing for an identity that would conform to their identity conceptions. “Communities and societies can be understood as engaging in a continuous debate over their collective identity.” 100 In the words of Edward Said, society “is the locale in which a continuous contest between adherents of different ideas about what constitutes the national identity is taking place.” 101 This debate may trigger an identity crisis, which in turn further affects the role identities of the actors engaged in the debate. In the end, we expect that the definition of national identity (and consequently the state’s identity) will be dominated by the most powerful groups. Once constructed, the identity will shape the interests and preferences of states as well as the construction (or representation) of others. States will carry those identities and preferences into the international system through their interactions with others. In this sense, “identity provides a better conceptual link to the construction of the threat than do anarchy

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and other materialist derivations,…and potentially informs as to who is deemed an attractive ally.”102 Systemic interaction can either confirm or transform the already held identity. This is an interactive process in which systemic interaction can shape the identity by adding more elements (such as norms and values) that may exacerbate the debate over the national identity at the domestic level, which may or may not cause a new identity crisis. Resistance to any change (especially at the collective end of the identity continuum) may also affect the nature of interaction. Any conflict with the in-group members of a broader community defined as part of “us” will be likely to result in a negative interaction that would produce another identity crisis. These systemic interactions and their effects on the identity will be debated and interpreted differently at the domestic level, which is likely to reproduce new definitions of the self and the other . “Changes in systemic patterns, caused by transnational, economic, or military politics, can trigger wide-scale domestic change and debates concerning the collective identity and the state’s relationship to the wider community.”103 As a result of changes either in domestic politics or in the international system, states will continuously produce and reproduce meanings and redefinitions of ‘the self’ that will stabilize or change their identifications with others in the system—from selfish to collective or vice versa. In conclusion, states start systemic interaction with an already defined corporate identity. The corporate identity of the state, depending on its definition, informs states with whom to interact and with what intention. In other words, defining the states’ constitutive elements (or basically the internal character of the state) will determine the foreign policy of the state. In the light of this argument, then, Wendt’s identity continuum needs to be modified. According to Wendt, identity is a continuum from positive to negative (from collective to selfish). Since he assumes that states do not have any conceptions about each other, there is no reason to believe that they will start interaction with a selfish identity. They are likely to start in the middle of the identity continuum where absolute gains take precedence. For realists, since states in the state of nature acquire egoistic identities, they are inclined towards the egoistic side of the identity continuum and stay there. However, if we assume that states bring their corporate identities into interaction, then, depending on their corporate identity and consequently, the definition of self and other, they may start their relations on either side of the identity continuum.

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To further elaborate the point, an example might prove useful. During the reign of the Shah in Iran, the state was defined in secular and western terms. However, the Islamic revolution in 1979 changed the character of the Iranian state and Islam became the dominant element in the identity of the state. This transformation, in turn, changed the course of Iranian foreign policy. While before the revolution Iran was one of the most important allies of the West in the region, the Islamic government declared that the most important enemies of Islam and Iran are the West and Western values. In the light of the above argument, one can argue that understanding states’ foreign policy preferences and their choice of alliance partners requires an analysis of corporate identity at the domestic level. If corporate identity is defined as the constitutive features of the state, then, we should first examine the basic character or the ideological principle of the state as defined in its institutions and how that identity came to define the state’s foreign policy preferences and interests. This is an important contribution to the constructivist project because the systemic constructivist approach does not specify state identity at the domestic level. It only tries to explore “the effects of international social structure on state identity, not the latter’s effects on state action.”104 Once we define the content of state identity, we can predict who will be regarded as in-group or out-group members by the state. If the definition of identity is close to that of another state or group of states in the system, then, the state will identify with them positively and seek to institutionalize its identity in international economic or security arrangements. In this case, it is highly likely for the state to start interaction with in-group others somewhere close to the collective identity side of the identity continuum. The state’s relations with the perceived out-group members will follow the opposite manner in which the interaction is likely to start at the selfish-identity end of the continuum. In other words, before systemic interaction, corporate identity informs who is likely to be friend and who is not. Therefore, it becomes a crucial independent variable in the formation of social identities at the systemic level. Several elements can be identified as sources of state identity. At the domestic level, state identity can be identified as national identity. I choose two main elements of national identity: common culture and domestic economic and political systems. Common culture can be defined in terms of language, customs, and religion. 105 I define domestic economic and political systems in terms of being liberal/democratic or autarkic/authoritarian. One or more of these elements can take precedence in the definition of

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a state’s corporate identity at a time, depending on internal and external circumstances and the distribution of power among different domestic groups with different role identities and cultural backgrounds. The most powerful groups or individuals in the statebuilding process will try to impose their own ideas and identities and institutionalize them in legal, political, and social structures. Whether or not they will succeed in their endeavor will depend on their relative power vis-à-vis other groups and their relations with society. “The congruence between culture and polity has been sufficiently achieved when internal political conflicts—no matter how fierce—do not intrinsically threaten the existence of the state itself.” 106 Any disagreement over the definition of identity between the state polity and large segments of society will start a debate on what constitutes the collective identity. In this case, the debate is highly likely to trigger an identity crisis that may or may not change the definition of the state’s identity depending on who dominates the political discourse. The most important implication of the above argument in terms of foreign policy is that once constructed corporate identities determine the direction and intention of states’ foreign policies. In other words, states will iden-tify positively with those with similar corporate identities—in-group members—while they distance themselves from others with different identities—out-group members. Systemic interaction (behavioral or rhetorical), depending on its nature (positive or negative), then, can confirm or transform the already held identity from selfish to collective or from collective to selfish. While the presence of similar corporate identities, interdependence (in economic and security matters), a common threat, and acceptance by others contribute to the formation of a collective social identity by fostering a positive interaction among states, the absence of these variables will contribute to the formation of a selfish identity. Table I illustrates the point: Table 1: Systemic Identity Formation

As table 1 shows, states come into interaction with an already held corporate identity. Depending on the definition of that identity

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at the domestic level while they approach the perceived out-group members with a selfish identity, they start interaction with the ingroup members with a collective identity. Positive systemic interaction with out-group members can create a possibility for states to transform their selfish identities into a collective one (cell I) while negative interaction strengthens their selfish identities (cell II). While positive interaction with in-group members confirms the already held identity (cell III) negative interaction will result in an identity crisis (cell IV). Identity formation at both domestic and systemic levels is a continuous process in which corporate and social identities interact with each other and in which states produce and reproduce new definitions of self and other. Any changes in the corporate identity of the state as a result of domestic political developments will eventually affect the identity formation at the systemic level where states will try to reorient their foreign policy preferences in accordance with the new identity. Changes in corporate identity can vary from simple modifications to a complete transformation of the identity. While simple modifications may include changes in the emphasis of the defining features of corporate identity, a complete transformation may replace the old identity with a completely new one. If the latter occurs, the state’s foreign policy orientation will be altered drastically. Systemic developments can also affect corporate and social identities. First, states’ identities will be enforced by contact with others. During the process, states may add new elements to the definition of their identity to fit in new circumstances. Any modification in social identity will eventually lead to changes in corporate identity to maintain the congruence with the social identity at the systemic level. Second, rejection or exclusion of a state by ingroup members due to the failure to conform to the new identity may trigger an identity crisis. This will threaten the state’s individual sense of identi-ty and cause anxiety. In this case, either the state will try to protect the already held identity by refusing to make any changes or “a new synthesis of identifications is made appropriate to the situation and its constraints.” 107 Derived from the theory elaborated above, there are four central arguments in my book: ARGUMENT I

Corporate identities inform states who is likely to be a friend and who is not before interaction. The closer the corporate identities of

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states, the more likely they will positively identify with each other and start interaction at the collective end of the identity continuum. ARGUMENT II

Systemic interactions consistent with the roles assigned by a state’s identity tend to confirm that identity, while interactions inconsistent with the expected roles work to change the state’s identity. Presence of such factors as similar corporate identities (convergence of domestic values or ideologies), rising interdependence (trade or capital flow, common external threat), acceptance by others, and positive systemic processes (behavioral or rhetorical) contribute to collective identity formation. 108 A challenge to a collective identity as a result of hostile systemic interactions is likely to produce an identity crisis that can affect the corporate identity of the state. ARGUMENT III

Domestic politics transforms a state’s identity in at least two ways: First, the collective identity of a given state is a function of a domestic struggle among different domestic groups who have different—and sometimes conflicting—ideas about what constitutes the national identity. Through domestic political developments such as wars, revolutions or institutional or electoral arrangements the allocation of power among these groups can be altered. In this case, the discourse on the state’s identity and its foreign policy can be dominated by entirely new actors with different role identities. Second, intersubjective meanings that are created through systemic processes are the meanings for those who are engaged in the debate over the collective identity. Those meanings can be interpreted and debated differently by different actors in the society, which may or may not (depending on the allocation of power) change the definition of the collective identity, and consequently the nature of the systemic interaction. In both cases, states are likely to experience an identity crisis. ARGUMENT IV

If a state’s assertion of a collective identity meets with a sustained negative response from other states in the chosen in-group, an identity crisis will result. Identity crisis can affect the course of states’ foreign policies in several ways: First, states may try to change the identity (or emphasize one or more of the other social identities) and consequently their foreign policy preferences and interests. This is a very hard and traumatic process since states

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create myths and institutions when they create their identities, which must be abandoned and replaced with new ones. Second, they may try to hold on to the already held identity or create a new synthesis of that identity to make it appropriate to the new circumstances to get recognition from others. Again which strategy they adopt will depend on who dominates the identity and foreign policy discourse. By applying the elements of constructivism to Turkey’s foreign policy in the post-World War II period, this book aims to explain how identity determined the formulation of Turkey’s foreign policy preferences, interests and behavior and why neorealist and institutionalist explanations are inadequate for explaining Turkey’s definition of its interests and behaviors. Recent studies on Turkey, for example, often emphasize the pragmatic and selfinterested nature of Turkey’s foreign policy.109 However, they often ignore how those interests and preferences were formed in the first place. For example, why did Turkey choose to be a part of the West even when there was no Soviet threat? What was the underlying cause of Turkey’s alliance with the West? Why is Turkey still pursuing its goal to be accepted as a European state even after the end of the Cold War? And finally, what were the main constraints on establishing closer relations with the Middle East? The main focus will be on preferences because there might be a discrepancy between behaviors and preferences due to objective structural constraints. When it becomes clear that preferences and behaviors are in harmony, foreign policy behavior will be examined as well. The most important source of preferences comes from the speeches of Turkish political leaders because “the discourse(s) instantiated in various documents produce meanings and in doing so actively construct the ‘reality’ upon which foreign policy is based.” 110 The time frame is chosen for two reasons: First, it is the time period in which important systemic changes took place. It marks the end of the Cold War and consolidation of the new international system. Examining Turkey’s foreign policy during and after the Cold War (interaction context) will enable me to compare how the new developments in the system changed Turkey’s systemic interaction with others, especially with the West. It will also help me determine how these developments affected Turkey’s identity and foreign policy preferences and how the changes in systemic interaction intensified the domestic debate concerning Turkey’s identity. Second, it is also the period in which the official Turkish identity was seriously challenged by the rise of Islamic and nationalist

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sentiments. Benefiting from the opportunities and the problems that the end of the Cold War brought about, these new forces contested Turkey’s western identity and its Western-oriented foreign policy, and thus further precipitated Turkey’s identity crisis. In this sense, while I analyze the effects of both systemic and domestic factors on Turkey’s identity and the formulation of foreign policy preferences, I also analyze how these factors at both levels interacted with each other. In order words, my analysis includes an examination of how systemic processes (rhetorical or behavioral) are interpreted and debated both by the Turkish public and foreign policy decision-makers and how these affected the formulation of Turkish foreign policy.

Chapter 3 Modernization and the Construction of Turkey’s Official Identity

In the first two decades following the Second World War, many social scientists in the West and Turkey viewed Turkey as “one of the most successful models of a universally defined modernization process.”1 The establishment of a secular nation-state, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923, which created a shift “in the bases of political legitimation and the symbols of the political community, together with a redefinition of the collectivity,”2 confirmed all the expectations of modernization theorists. In the eyes of many, the Turkish transformation depicted the transition of a traditional society to a modern one. The most salient characteristic of the Turkish revolution lies in the totality of its modernization project. For Turkish modernizers, modernization meant westernization—“taking a place in the civilization of Europe.” 3 Their understanding of western civilization was that of ‘Western Europe’, especially France and Britain. Modernity, in their conception, was a project of “embracing and internalizing all the cultural dimensions that made Europe modern.”4 In order to achieve secularization and autonomy for the individual, simply increasing rationality, bureaucratization, and organizational efficiency were not enough; a complete social and cultural transformation was needed. 5 The understanding of modernization in this way required the “negation of a universal framework: Islam”6 that had provided the state with political legitimacy and individuals with an identity during the Ottoman Empire. “The society withdrew from the Islamic framework into that of the newly-defined Turkish nation… The Turkish revolution rejected completely the religious basis of legitimation and attempted instead to develop a secular national one as the major ideological parameter of the new collectivity…”7 It was launched in order to achieve “the qualities of nationalism and a modern state in a fundamentally medieval, theocratic empire, and to throw off the pre-existing institutions and concepts.”8

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Even though the Turkish revolution represents a sudden and total transformation of Turkish society and a complete break with the past, the country’s history of modernization and westernization goes back to the institutional reforms of the late Ottoman era. The Ottoman Empire as a result of continuous interaction with the West “underwent a century-long period of modernization and secularization. Many western laws and practices had been adopted…by the end of the nineteenth century. Kemalism represented an intensification, radicalization and culmination of this trend.” 9 Therefore, before explaining the construction and the institutionalization of Turkey’s western identity through a series of reforms, it would be useful to briefly look at the history of the ‘westernization’ movements in the Ottoman Empire that had prepared the preconditions for the Kemalist revolution. A. THE IMPACT OF THE WEST AND THE FIRST OTTOMAN REFORMS The Ottoman Empire has always been in contact with ‘Western civilization’ throughout its history. However, during the peak of its power, the Ottomans viewed their own Islamic civilization’ superior to that of the West. As a result, the West did not appear to the Ottomans as a ‘model’ to be followed. 10 Since the West (Western Europe) was a rival empire, civilization, and religion to the Ottomans and the other in Ottoman self-definition, “it was the sacred duty of the Islamic Empire to subjugate and convert.”11 Besides war, there were also other channels of contact. During peacetime, European diplomats, merchants, scholars, renegades and adventurers traveled in the Ottoman Empire in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries bringing with them “printing, medical and technological knowledge.”12 At the beginning, however, the Ottomans were eager to turn to Europe only for military instruction and technology. It was not until the early eighteenth century that the first deliberate and conscious attempts for westernization came into the Empire. This era also coincides with the period of the decline of the Empire. Two humiliating defeats by the Austrian and the Russian Empires and the treaties of Carlowitz (1699) and Passarowitz (1718) that followed forced the Ottoman political elite to search for the reasons of the decline. During the debates that mainly took place in the Ottoman “civil bureaucracy”13 two views emerged: The first argued that the reason for the defeats lay in the deteriorating state structure, while the second view contended that it was the

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military superiority of the West. According to this second view, “the example of Russia under Peter the Great suggested that a vigorous programme of Westernization and modernization might enable the Empire to throw off its weaknesses and once again become the terror of its enemies.”14 As soon as peace was restored, Damad Ibrahim Pasha, the Grand Vizir (1718–1730) and an ardent advocate of westernization, sent some missions consisting of high-ranking statesmen to various capitals of Europe “with instructions to make a thorough study of the means of civilization and education, and report on those capable of application in Turkey.”15 The impact of these exchanges in the realms of military and industrial technology began to spread to cultural and social life. French manners and lifestyles appeared among the upper classes and the palace circles.16 The first reaction against Westernization attempts during the reign of Ahmet III (1703–1730) came from the lower and middle classes of the Ottoman society together with the religious ulema (religious scholars) and the Janissary corps. As a result the Sultan was forced to resign, and the Grand Vizir and other notables were killed. This incident was the first example of the action-reaction mechanism that came with westernization and modernization attempts.17 Even though the incident delayed the westernization program, it was temporary. Western influence, which was irreversible, continued to affect the Ottoman society and the state at a slow pace until the French Revolution. In the period from the outbreak of the French Revolution to the 1830s the pace of the change accelerated.18 As Lewis points out: with the French Revolution, for the first time, we find a great movement of ideas penetrating the barrier that separated the House of War from the House of Islam…affecting to a greater or lesser degree every layer of Muslim society… While Western material culture transformed the structure and aspect of Islamic society, often for the worse, ideas from the West were affecting the very basis of group cohesion, creating new patterns of identity and loyalty, and providing both the objectives and the formulation of new aspirations.19 The period also coincides with the reign of Selim III (1789–1807) who showed a great enthusiasm in Europe and things European. After his accession to the throne he launched a program of reforms known as Nizam-i Cedid (New Order). Like his predecessors his aim was “to increase the strength of the central state organization,

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against both external enemies (Russia) and internal ones [the semiindependent ayan (rural notables)].”20 The most important of all the reforms in this period was the creation of different channels of communication with Europe, through European instructors in military education and the embassies established in various European capitals that facilitated the flow of Western ideas into the Ottoman Empire. Especially close relations with the French in military education created a new social class of young army and naval officers “familiar with some aspects of western civilization through study, reading, and personal contact, acquainted with at least one Western language—usually French—and accustomed to look up to Western experts as their mentors and guides to a new and better way.”21 The second major channel, the embassies, also had an influence on the creation of a Westward-looking bureaucratic class, similar to the army and naval officers. Later, these bureaucratic and military classes were going to be the pioneers of the later Ottoman and Republican reforms. Ambassadors traveled to Europe with some young secretaries whose duty was “to study the languages of Europe and to learn something of the ways of Western society.”22 Upon their return, they became officials in the Empire and spread the revolutionary ideas that they had acquired while in Europe. For first time in Ottoman history, systematic evaluations about Europe and later, the propositions for a new order in the Ottoman Empire by taking Europe as a ‘model/came from these foreign service officials.23 Again, the religious ulema, the Janissaries, and the ayan opposed the reforms, which resulted in the deposition of Selim III in the name of Islam. Even though the opposition against the reforms delayed the progress, it was temporary. Mahmut II (1808–1839) after assuming power embarked on a great program of reforms that later Turkish reformers were to follow in the nineteenth and even in the twentieth century. After having destroyed the Janissaries and weakened the religious ulema, Mahmut II initiated a series of reforms in the army, the central bureaucracy, the provincial administration, taxation, education and communication. 24 Later, these reforms would pave the road for the era of more rigorous reforms that would be called the Tanzimat (Reorganization, 1839–71) period in Turkish history. One of the most important conditions for the success of Mahmut’s reforms “was the creation of a cadre able to execute them. There was a desperate need for Ottomans with knowledge of Europe, of European science and technology and thus of a European language.” 25 For this purpose, Mahmut II, for the first time, sent a group of students to Europe to study modern sciences

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in 1827. In addition, a military medical school (1827), a military school (1836), and later a faculty of administrative sciences (1859) with secular curriculums were established. Foreign instructors played a very critical role in all these new schools, and knowledge of a Western language was a prerequisite for entrance. Especially in the army medical school “studying modern medicine, biology, physics almost inevitably induced a rationalist and positivist mentality in the students, and the army medical school spawned an extraordinary number of reformist thinkers, writers and activists later in the century” 26 Creating bureaucratic and military classes with secular and materialist ideas meant that the reforms in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries would be carried out by these officials not by the society. The result of these reforms was the drafting and promulgation of the Noble Rescript of the Rose Chamber (3 November 1839), the first of reforming edicts, which are collectively known as the Tanzimat . The Edict was promised the establishment of guarantees for the life, honor and property of the sultan’s subjects, an orderly tax system, a system of conscription for the army and equality before the law of all subjects whatever their religion.27 This document legitimized the entire enterprise of the reforms and outlined the direction it was to take.28 The second edict, Hatt-i Humayun (Imperial Rescript), was promulgated in 1856 confirming the principles of the first one. Even though these reforms, in part, were the result of external pressure on the Ottoman Empire, it would be wrong to attribute the reforms to foreign pressure alone. It is true that the reforms were used to gain foreign support or to avert foreign intervention, however, “they were also the result of genuine belief that the only way to save the empire was to introduce European-style reforms.”29 By implementing the reforms, the Ottoman statesmen thought, they could assimilate different cultures and create an ‘Ottoman identity’ among different subjects that in turn would save the state from disintegraring.30 In the second half of the nineteenth century, the impact of the reforms began to be felt in every aspect of the Ottoman society. While the founders of the Tanzimat were adopting the military and administrative structure of the West, Western culture was penetrating into the daily lives of the individuals. Clothing, the use of money, the style of houses and interpersonal relations all became European.31 For reformers, “there [was] only one civilization, and that was European civilization. We must borrow Western civilization with both its rose and its thorn.” 32 For example, Saffet Pasha (1814–1883), urged Turkey to adopt “the

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civilization of Europe in its entirety to prove itself a civilized state.”33 It went further than comparing the technological superiority of the West, but became an issue of comparing different civilizations: Islamic and Christian. A poem by Ziya Pasha (1825– 80) illustrates the point: I passed through the lands of the infidels, I saw cities and mansions; I wandered in the realm of Islam, I saw nothing but ruins.34 B. REFORMS AND THE ORGANIZED OPPOSITION A. THE YOUNG OTTOMANS By the 1870s, it became clear that the reforms that had been undertaken since the sixteenth century had not produced the expected results and had not saved the state from decline. The political opposition, which emerged in this period of decline, generally known as the Young Ottomans, “was the first example of a popular Muslim pressure group whose aim was to force the state to take their interests into account.”35 It consisted of a new administrative and governing elite that had been created through the reforms of Mahmut II and his successors. It was an opposition movement against the policies of the Tanzimat and the way they were implemented. The Young Ottomans, Namik Kemal and Sinasi being the most prominent of them, “were both pious Muslims and Ottoman patriots, who looked back nostalgically both to a golden era of Islam and the era of the empire’s greatness.”36 According to the Young Ottomans, the policies of Ali and Fuat Pasha were superficial imitations of Europe without regard for traditional Ottoman and Islamic values. They thought that through their policies the +Ottoman Empire had become submissive to European interests. They commented that “our position in comparison with France is like that of an uneducated child beside an accomplished scholar.”37 Since the Tanzimat was a cultural imitation of Europe it deteriorated the foundations of Muslim society.38 It lacked a philosophy and was not based on ethical values. They were convinced that the Tanzimat was a one-sided bureaucratic despotism and its policies would lead to the destruction of the state.

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For the Young Ottomans, the gap could be filled by taking Seriat (Islamic Law) and Islamic values into account. They contended that the solution was the introduction of representative, constitutional and parliamentarian government in the empire, “thus instilling a true feeling of citizenship and loyalty to the state among all Ottoman subjects, Muslim and non-Muslim.” 39 In their view, the state should be following the example of liberal European states but in accordance with the Islamic law. In short, their argument was “a defense of liberal values with Islamic arguments”40 that aimed at creating an ‘Ottoman consciousness’ among all subjects of the Empire. To put their ideas into practice, the Young Ottomans played important roles in drafting and writing the 1876 Constitution and opening the Parliament. B. THE EMERGENCE OF ISLAMISM In contrast to the liberal arguments of the Young Ottomans, another opposition movement whose effects would be felt in the long run was emerging in the Ottoman Empire: Islamism. This new group believed that with the introduction of the Tanzimat, the Ottomans started to lose their ‘cultural identities.’ The best way to prevent this was to bring the Values of the Seriat ’ back into the Ottoman society.41 The emergence of an Islamic opposition and its use by the state both internally and externally intensified during the period of Abdulhamid II (1876–1909), who ruled the Empire as an absolute monarch for thirty years. Although there is a great deal of controversy over Abdulhamid’s reign, it is true that the Tanzimat reforms in most part were initiated and implemented in his era due in part to the development of the means of communication. He also took the West as a ‘model’ while trying to strengthen Islam among his subjects. Westernism in his view was a way to bring the technology, administrative and military structure, and educational system of the West to the Empire. For this purpose, he paid special attention to the development of medical and administrative schools in line with that of the West. While Abdulhamid II tried to save the state with Western technology, he despised ‘Western civilization.’42 He also tried to prevent Western ideologies such as liberalism, nationalism and constitutionalism, which he saw as disruptive forces, from spreading in the Empire and emphasized the traditional and Islamic character of his reign by using the title and symbols of the caliphate. Knowing that an Islamic trend had already been

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developing in Ottoman society, Abdulhamid extensively used Islam in both domestic and international politics. His Islamic policy known as Pan-Islamism was in a sense a reaction to Western ideologies that had been gaining momentum in Europe after 1870s. By doing this he wanted to gather his subjects around Islam and create a Muslim solidarity on the one hand and gain the loyalty of outside Muslims through the Caliphate on the other.43 Despite the efforts of Abdulhamid to maintain the unity of the Empire by using Pan-Islamist ideology, which aimed at the unity of all Muslims (ummetcilik, ummah), European ideologies, especially nationalism, spread in the Ottoman society. What he ignored was the multi-ethnic and multi-religious character of the Ottoman society that was very vulnerable to such an ideology. He failed to instill loyalty in the new generations of bureaucrats and officers, who were the products of his own expanded educational system. “The new generations being trained in schools like the Civil Service Academy (Mulkiye) and War Academy (Harbiye) continued to be attracted by the liberal and constitutional ideas.”44 C. YOUNG TURK REVOLUTION AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL ERA (1908–1923) The first organized opposition against the rule of Abdulhamid II again was formed by a new generation of elite, trained in the military academy, the school of medicine, the school of administration and the secular law school and found many adherents from the Young Ottoman movement. The core of this first organized opposition was the Ittihad-i Osmani Cemiyeti (Ottoman Unity Society) founded by four students of the Military Medical College in 1889 to reinstate the constitution and parliament. Some of its members were arrested by the sultan’s police and some managed to escape abroad, mostly to Paris and continued their movement there. They formed a small committee called Ittihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Committee of Union and Progress, CUP). In France, the group came to be called as Jeunes Turcs (Young Turks).45 The ideas of the Young Turks grew rapidly and resulted in the 1908 Revolution that opened the second constitutional era in Turkish history. The CUP, an outgrowth of the Young Turk movement, became the major ruling power in the Ottoman Empire between 1908 and 1918. “The official ideology of modern Turkey as shaped during this period by the early Young Turks has continued to exert its influence even today on Turkey’s intellectual

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and political life…The founders of modern Turkey, including the first three presidents, were former CUP members.” 46 The Young Turk movement was “unquestionably a link in the chain of the Ottoman modernization movement as well as representing the modernist wing of the Ottoman bureaucracy.”47 The leaders of the movement honored the previous reforms and demanded that the Ottoman state establish Western institutions. For them, the relations with the western civilization were the beginning of the enlightenment era in the Ottoman Empire. As one of Young Turk leaders, Sabahattin Bey, argued: “since we established relations with western civilization, an intellectual renaissance occurred; prior to this relationship our society lacked any intellectual life.” 48 They were heavily affected by European science and materialism. In contrast to the Young Ottomans, they “gave no credit to efforts to reconcile western civilization and science with Islam and traditional values.”49 They secularized the judicial and educational systems that further undermined the position of the ulema. The curriculum of the higher religious schools “was modernized, even the study of European languages being made compulsory.”50 The Young Turk modernization was not only confined to education; they infiltrated in every sphere of life. Young Turk ideologues dreamed of several of the socio-cultural reforms Mustafa Kemal was later to implement: abolition of polygamy, replacement of the fez by European headgear, new rights for women, complete secularization of the educational and legal systems, and purification of the Ottoman language.51 “Hardly anything was left untouched. They not only changed the political system but they also attempted to refashion society by borrowing more freely from the West than ever before.” 52 For the Young Turks, as bureaucrats and officers, the state was the only means to achieve change. The relative freedom of discussion during the Young Turk period encouraged an explosion of public debate on all kinds of political and social questions. The political and social debate centered on three competing ideologies: Ottomanism, the ideal of the Young Ottomans to unite the different communities in the Empire around the Ottoman throne; (Pan)Islamism, which tried to create solidarity within the Islamic community; and (Pan)Turkism, which sought the union of the Turkic peoples under the Ottoman flag. 53 The other ideological current, Westernism, was a constant in the middle of these ideologies that could be differentiated by their approach to the degree of westernization. While Ottomanism and Islamism were not against the idea of borrowing Western science and technology, they wanted to incorporate those in line with

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Islamic principles and still protect the society from the harmful effects of Western culture. Their debate centered on how “to become modern while remaining oneself.” 54 Westerners, on the other hand, thought that civilization is a whole that cannot be reduced to pieces. If the Ottomans were to adopt European civilization, they should do so in its entirety, i.e., with its underlying logic and its culture. According to them, “Western civilization did not achieve its superiority by means of science alone, but as a whole with all its concepts.” 55 As it should be obvious, the fundamental question in these debates centered on the identity of both state and society. During the Young Turk era, another component, Turkism, was added to the debate. Before that, there existed two traditional forms of identification in the Ottoman society: Ottoman and Muslim. However, by the turn of the nineteenth century, many educated Turks had come to identify themselves “as ethnically (or ‘racially’) Turkish. The Young Turk period may be viewed as the one which accelerated the process of ‘conversion’ to Turkism and prepared the ground for Kemalism.”56 The rise of Arab nationalism and the fear that in case the Arabs remain in the Empire they may capture the political power that the Turks had been enjoying further accelerated the trend.57 Even though the CUP officially supported Ottomanism “its interpretation of Ottomanism came close to Turkification of the non-Turkish elements,” 58 thus undermining the credibility of Ottomanism. The most ardent advocate of Turkism and the founder of a Turkish nationalist doctrine in this era was Ziya Gokalp, a poet and sociologist, whose ideas would heavily influence the founders of the Turkish Republic, especially Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Gokalp basically tried to formulate an answer to the prevailing question of the time: “who is a Turk and how ought this national identity be understood in relation to Islamic religious identity, on the one hand, and to modern scientific-rational identity, on the other.”59 Gokalp’s idea of Turkism went as far as Turanism. “The Union and Progress Party, of which Gokalp was a member, regarded the Turks in Russia as being within the limits of Pan-Turanism.” 60 For Gokalp, nations merge on the scale of civilization; what separates them is their unique culture. 61 According to Gokalp, Turkish culture and Western civilization are not in conflict; but the former should be purified from the harmful effects of Islam through secularization. He believed that the only way to save the Empire was to call in aid from “the pre-Islamic Turkish civilization.”62 For Gokalp, the only way to save the empire was based on the formulation of “Turkization, Islamization, and Westernization.” 63

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Turkization was the purification of Turkish culture from mixed culture and traditions. Islamization meant a reform in the religious language such as the translation of the Koran into Turkish. As for Westernization, Gokalp believed that Turks were to be westernized or were to fit into Western culture. He contended that culture and civilization were completely different concepts. This fundamental reform would enable a Turk to pronounce, “I am of Turkish race, Islamic religion and western civilization.”64 With the waning of Ottomanism as an alternative source of corporate identity, these three ideologies would be the dominant sources of identification, and later the sources of conflict, among the different segments of Turkish society. Even though Westernizers in the Young Turk movement was the dominant group and they managed to implement many reforms of Western origin they could not, however, save the Empire from declining. The most important reason for this was that the reforms of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries “consisted of the creation of new laws, regulations and new institutions, rather than the abolition of old ones. In time this created a dualism,”65 which would exist until the Republican era, producing both reformers and reactionaries at the same time. As argued above, when Ottoman officials undertook Westernizing reforms, they had no intention of changing the identity of both the state and the people. On the contrary, the purpose of the reforms was to protect the state and its Islamic character. However, the influence of the West went beyond the intended aims and took on a cultural character, which resulted in the creation of a Western identity in addition to Islamic and Turkish identities. The emergence of three fundamental identities in the country eventually turned into a struggle to capture state power. The struggle ceased, but did not end, with the victory of the Kemalist Westernists. When they came to power, Kemalists first attacked the existing state institutions, which represented the Islamic/Ottoman character of both the state and society. However, Kemalists not only changed the state’s identity but also tried to create a new Western identity for the people since a discrepancy between the state’s and society’s identity would result in the loss of the state’s legitimacy.

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D. ATATURK AND THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF TURKEY’S WESTERN IDENTITY Even though the Turkish revolution and its underlying ideology, Kemalism, aimed at a sudden and total transformation of the Ottoman Empire into a modern nation-state, there existed elements of continuity between the Ottoman and Turkish polities. “Continuity is obvious particularly at the level of value systems, cultural codes and symbols of collective identity as the basis of the legitimacy and institutionalization of the state…One also observes a close resemblance between the social background characteristics of the Young Turk political elite, whose criteria of recruitment were Turkishness, education, youth and belonging to the ‘official’ class, and the political elite of the Kemalist era”.66 When the Independence War resulted in a Turkish victory, the arguments over oriental and western civilizations resurfaced. Claims again centered on the degree of westernization to be adopted. The fundamental question to be settled was the form and the structure of the Turkish state. Some advocated the selective adoption of appropriate aspects of Western civilization while others encouraged the complete adoption of it. From the beginning, Ataturk was the leader of the second camp. According to Ataturk, culture and civilization were not separable: “Our largest claim is to continue our nation as the most civilized and prosperous of nations. This is the dynamic ideal of the Turkish nation, which has performed a true revolution not only in its institutions, but also in its thought.”67 On another occasion, he remarked: “If we are going to be Westernized let us go to the fundamentals of the West.” 68 For him, modernization cannot succeed by combining the old with the new. “It would have to assume a radical character, to affect all aspects of Turkish society, and to sweep away most, if not all, of its traditional beliefs and institutions.”69 Kemalism, named after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and the Kemalist principles are the products of the Turkish Revolution and “denotes the basic character” 70 and the ideological principle of the Turkish Republic. The Kemalist ideology (defined in terms of six principles, namely nationalism, republicanism, populism, secularism, statism and revolutionism) was unveiled in 1931 at the congress of the Republican People’s Party (RPP). The Kemalist principles were incorporated into the Turkish constitution in 1937 and thus institutionalized. 71 Among these principles, republicanism, nationalism, and secularism occupy the most important place in the construction of the Turkish state since they

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symbolize “the rejection by the Turkish revolution of the Ottoman dynasty, the Caliphate and ummet ideology.”72 Kemalism, the official ideology of the Turkish Republic, is more than a political social system alone. In the words of Rom Landau “it is giving understanding and meaning to the emergence of Turkey into modern science and development; to new technology, education, ethics, as well as to new faith and work-life.”73 The most important purpose of it was to put Turkey on the level of ‘contemporary civilization,’ which meant European civilization. In order to provide Turkish citizens with a new view of the world that would replace that of religion and religious culture, thus the traditional basis of individual identification, Ataturk embarked on a movement of cultural westernization, which he equated with civilization. In creating a new national identity, Ataturk “had to stand against the Muslim concept of political identity which had been the legitimate basis of the polity of the Ottoman Empire.”74 Westernization movements, therefore, constitutes the scientific basis of the Turkish revolution. 75 The natural result of this shift in the basis of state legitimacy was the exclusion of Islam from social and political life and replacement of it and its symbols with a newly-defined Turkish nation. The only way to realize this was to make a clean start by cutting attachments to recent (i.e., Ottoman) history. “In [nationalist elite’s] discourse, Islam became an all-purpose bogey representing everything that reform, progress, and civilization were not and only the West was rational and capable of modernity.”76 According to Ataturk, Islam and civilization were two conflicting terms.77 On one occasion, Ataturk argued that: The Turks were a great nation even before they had accepted Islam. However, after they had accepted this religion, it loosened their national ties and numbed their national feelings. That was a natural outcome because the purpose of Islam as laid out by Mohammed was an ummet policy. 78 In Ataturk’s eyes, the Caliphate represented Turkey’s attachment to the past and to Islam, and it was precisely for that reason that he was determined to end it.79 For him, it was the most important barrier to progress: The Caliphate had never enjoyed universal jurisdiction over the Moslem world, as had the papacy over the Catholic world. The office was an Arab institution adopted by a former Turkish Sultan, whom millions of Moslems had never

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acknowledged as their spiritual ruler. The new Turkey was not irreligious but needed a religion stripped of artificiality, which implied nothing contrary to reason or hostile to progress.80 Abolishing the Caliphate (March 3, 1924) was Ataturk’s first open attack on the forces of Islamic orthodoxy. Elimination of the ancient institution of Seyh-ul-Islam and Ministry of Seriat (Sharia), closing separate religious schools and colleges, and abolishing the Seriat courts operated under the Islamic Law soon followed. Especially, the unification of education through the Law for the Unification of Instruction (1924) was a fundamental step in the establishment of a unified, secular and national educational system. “Its nation-building role was especially vital in a country where identity was often Islamic rather than national.”81 In this sense, Kemalism aimed at changing individual self-definition by providing a new identity. Since, in Islam, spiritual and daily lives are not separable, the creation of a new identity meant a change in the worldview of the individual. The other reforms within the Kemalist program of Westernization intended to eliminate the visible symbols of the past and Islamic tradition. The most important reform in this regard was the adoption of a new dress code that aimed to change the outward appearance of people. It was one of the most symbolic and visible reforms because traditional forms of outfit in the Empire often symbolized people’s allegiance to Islam. “Costume, in the Islamic religion, had a deep symbolic significance.” 82 In the words of Bernard Lewis, to the Muslim, dress was, a matter of fundamental significance, expressing—and affecting—his relations with his neighbors and his ancestors, and his place in society and in history. Islam was a faith and a civilization, distinct from other faiths and civilizations, uniting the Muslim to other Muslims, and separating him both from his heathen forefathers and his infidel neighbors. Dress, especially the headgear, was the visible and outward token by which a Muslim indicated his allegiance to the community of Islam and his rejection of others. 83 On September 2, 1925, a group of new laws banning the wearing of religious dress by persons not holding a recognized religious office went into effect. “The most symbolic of all was the order to all civil servants to wear costume common to all civilized nations of the world,” 84 which was the Western suit and hat:

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The people of the Turkish Republic, who claim to be civilized, must show and prove that they are civilized by their ideas and their mentality, by their family life and their way of living. In a word, the truly civilized people of Turkey…must prove in fact that they are civilized and advanced persons in their outward aspect.85 On November 1925, a new law required all men to wear hats, and made the wearing of the fez a criminal offence. For Ataturk, the fez was the most visible symbol of Muslim distinctiveness and identification and was associated with the refusal to conform to the West.86 On October 1927, he described the fez as something that “sat on the heads of [the] nation as an emblem of ignorance, negligence, fanaticism, and hatred of progress and civilization.” That is why: It was necessary to abolish it…and to accept in its place the hat, the headgear used by the whole civilized world, and in this way to demonstrate that the Turkish nation, in its mentality as in other respects, in no way diverges from civilized social life. 87 Together with the fez some other symbols were also changed. On December 1925, the Turkish finance calendar based on a modified hijri (flight of Mohammed) year was abolished and the Gregorian calendar and era (the birth of Jesus) was adopted. Sunday rather than Friday was accepted as the weekly day of rest. At the same time the twenty-four-hour international clock was accepted as the only legal method for measuring time. October 4, 1926, the Swiss civil code was adopted and went into force to bring the Turkish people’s family life and way of living in line with the ‘common practice of civilized nations.’ The abrogation of the second article of the 1924 constitution stating that “the religion of the Turkish state is Islam” completed the secularization of the Turkish state both legally and constitutionally. Finally, the Arabic script, which was one of the most important components of Muslim identity, was banned. For Ataturk, the Arabic script “bound [Turkey] to the Orient and set her apart from the Western community of nations.”88 On May 24, 1928, the international numerals replaced the Arabic figures that Turkey had previously shared with other Muslim countries. In the same year, a committee completed the new Latin alphabet and on November 3,1928, the parliament passed a law establishing the new Turkish script and banning the public use of the Arabic alphabet on the

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grounds that the Arabic alphabet prevented “education and cultural expan-sion.”89 Even though the hostility towards Arabs after World War I and the desire for acceptance by the European community played an important role in the language reform, the real purpose was the cultural manipulation of the younger generation. This would, in turn, enable the reformers to cut younger generation’s cultural ties with the Ottoman past and Middle Eastern civilization. “Kemalists persisted in viewing the Arab and Persian influence on Turkish culture as an insidious plague, and considered Near Eastern civilization inherently inferior to European civilization.”90 Middle Eastern cultural values that had been transmitted through the Ottoman-Turkish language prevented Turkish culture and therefore, the Turkish society from developing: My friends, our rich and harmonious language will now be able to display itself with new Turkish letters. We must free ourselves from these incomprehensible signs, that for centuries have held our minds in an iron vice… Our nation will show, with its script and its mind, that its place is with the civilized world.91 Through a radical language reform, reformers aimed at creating a different world-view among Turkish-speaking people. This would, in turn, lead to the manipulation of individual and collective consciousness and facilitate “the introduction of European culture and scientific ideas into Turkish culture.”92 Since the Arabic script was also the script of Koran, abolishing it would help to build a new collective identity without religion (Islam). The translation of the Koran into Turkish and the decree, which stated that all prayers and sermons must be in the new national language not in Arabic, soon followed. As should be obvious from the above discussion, the Kemalist reforms were directed toward the disestablishment of Islam, “changing the Ottoman institutions and reshaping the physical environment in order to make it more similar to that of their European counterparts"93 and creating a new society that fit into the new circumstances: The aim of the reforms we have already carried out and are continuing to carry out is to form Turkish society into a modern society in every aspect. This is the basis of our reforms. Up until now, the nation has been dominated by concepts, which are disabling to the functioning of the mind .94

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Through all these reforms, what Ataturk was seeking to do was to disassociate his people from their old sense of identity and create a new one that would replace Islam. Kemalist principles, especially secularism, tried to eliminate entire traditions in the life of the Turkish people. “From among his people, he was moulding a new type of Turk, fitting him by education and example to rank with the people of Europe, releasing him from a dead past.” 95 E. IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION Kemalism, which has always been “more of a theory for society than one which had grown out of society”96 has come to be the center of Turkish politics. It was a top-down process carried out by a bureaucratic-authoritarian political elite and military officers whose ideology was based on secularism, rationalism, nationalism, and statistism. 97 They are the products of modern educational setting of the late nineteenth century, and had some knowledge of European languages. They have been heavily influenced by western ideas and maintain some contacts with westerners. “They were exposed to both Middle Eastern and European civilizations but definitely impelled towards the modern European world which they were daily discovering.”98 They thought that the Turkish people did not have any political maturity; they were still an oriental people socially and culturally backward who were not able to implement the literal application of Western democracy. “They could not yet rule; they required to be ruled.”99 The principle of populism as defined in the Republican People’s Party program reflects the elitist character of the Kemalist revolution: “For the people, with or without the people.”100 The years during and after the Kemalist period witnessed the consolidation and centralization of power by this new bureaucratic elite. The most obvious result of this power consolidation was the gradual exclusion of religious leaders from the Grand National Assembly. “Their percentage fell from seventeen in 1920 to eleven in 1923, four in 1927, three in 1931, two in 1939, and one in 1943.” 101 The transformation of the state from a theocratic empire into a modern, secular nation-state through Kemalist reforms and the creation of a new political elite, who was responsible for preventing any deviations from the Kemalist principles, carried important implications for both Turkey’s foreign and domestic politics. In terms of foreign policy, the construction of a new identity through the Kemalist reforms provided the new political elite with

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the framework within which Turkish foreign policy was thenceforth to be formulated. The most important aim of the new Turkey was to join with all civilized nations in pursuit of peace and friendship. Civilization meant the West “the modern world, of which Turkey must become a part.” 102 The Kemalist reforms served to realize this purpose by removing the obstacles that stood on the way. After the abolition of the Caliphate, Ataturk remarked: The Turkish nation has perceived with great joy that the obstacles, which constantly, for centuries, had kept Turkey from joining all civilized nations and marching on the path of progress, have been removed.103 On October 29, 1923, the day the Turkish Republic was founded, Ataturk gave clues about the direction that Turkish foreign policy was to take in the future: Our object now is to strengthen the ties that bind us to other nations. There may be a great many countries in the world, but there is only one civilization, and if a nation is to achieve progress, she must be a part of this one civilization… The Ottoman Empire began to decline the day when, proud of her successes against the West, she cut ties that bound her to the European nations. We will not repeat this mistake.104 On another occasion, he remarked: We lived through pain because we did not understand the conditions of the world. Our thinking and our mentality will have to become civilized. And we will be proud of this civilization. Take a look at the entire Turkish and Islamic world. Because they failed to adapt to the conditions and rise, they found themselves in such a catastrophe and suffering. We cannot afford to hesitate any more.105 As a result, Turkey fully and unreservedly identified herself with the West. After Ataturk’s death in 1939, his successors took further steps to make Turkey an actual ally of the West. This process began in 1939 with the tripartite agreement between Turkey, Britain and France; developed further after World War II when Turkey joined NATO, the Council of Europe, and other Western organizations. Identification with the West was so deep that during and after WWII

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“although…many nations and governments revised their estimates of the balance of the power and prospects and revised their allegiances accordingly, the Turks have seen no reason to abandon the Western alignment of their foreign policy, or the westernizing trend of their internal development.”106 The implication of Westernization and the Western-oriented foreign policy was a movement away from Islamic practice and tradition, and therefore, from Middle Eastern civilization, toward Europe. In the words of Falih Rifki, a close friend of Ataturk’s, “the reforms blew up the bridges attaching Turkey to the Middle Ages.” 107 The modernization and westernization process, which constitute the raison d’être of the Republican regime, “required that interaction with the Middle East to be kept to a minimum.” 108 Ataturk did not have any intention of protecting the interests of the Islamic world in the name of Islam because he argued that they were alien to Turkish culture. This was a dramatic change in the context of individual Turks because, at the time, many Turks defined their identity in terms of Islam and being a Turk also meant being Muslim. Pan-Islamist and Pan-Turanist policies conducted by Abdulhamit II and the Young Turks respectively, were “illusions which are a long way from any practical value and which aroused fear and anxiety in the rest of the world.”109 Ataturk’s Turkism was confined to the borders of the new Turkey, and his objections to the ideology of Pan-Turkism were as strong as his criticisms of PanIslamism. The republic’s Western and secular ways were disapproved of by conservative Muslims both inside and outside the country. Conservative Arabs regarded Turkey as having abandoned Islam. The declaration issued in March 1926, on behalf of the ‘Islamic Religious Presidency of the Kingdom of Egypt,’ and signed by the Rector of the al-Azhar University and the Chief Mufti of Egypt, which came after the Turkish parliament had passed a law that banned the wearing of the fez and required all men to wear the western suit and hat, illustrates the point: It is clear that a Muslim who seeks to resemble a non-Muslim by adopting the latter’s distinctive form of dress, will also come to take the same way as he in his beliefs and actions. That is why he who wears the hat because of an inclination to the religion of the other and a contempt for his own is an infidel, according to the unanimous opinion of the Muslims. He who wears the hat in order to resemble non-Muslims, if he also adopts some of the practices of their religion, such as entering a church, is an infidel…110

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The reaction of Muslim conservatives in Turkey was not different from that of the Arabs. After the adoption of the Latin alphabet in place of the Arabic script, Kazim Karabekir, a general and Ataturk’s wartime comrade, argued that: To adopt the Latin letters would be to put a splendid weapon into the hands of Europe; they would declare to the Islamic world that the Turks have adopted the foreign writing and turned Christian. 111 The Turks, on the other hand, viewed the Arabs with suspicion and hostility, especially after Arab cooperation with the British against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. “The ‘untrustworthy Arab’ and the ‘uncivilized, backward Arab states governed by Shariat law…’ are stereotypes that served to reinforce one another.”112 As a result, the gap between Turkey and the eastern Islamic world widened. As for domestic politics, the Kemalist ruling elite thought that “the unity of society achieved through ‘progress’ of a Western sort is the ultimate goal. Thus, throughout republican history, all kinds of differentiation—ethnic, ideological, religious, and economic— have been viewed…as sources of instability and as threats to unity and progress.”113 The most dramatic result of this thinking was the suppression and exclusion of the other elements, especially Islamic, of collective identity from political discourse. The most important aim of the Kemalist regime was to free state institutions, juridical structure, the educational system and society in general from the influence of religion. The Kemalist regime sought to create a modern society in line with that of the West. This policy resulted in a gradual exclusion of Islam, which was an important component of the old system, from political and social life. When the Kemalist elite abruptly removed the traditions of centuries, they did not replace it with a new culture. Only a small group of intellectuals benefited from the system both economically and socially. The rural population, on the other hand, was untouched by economic, social and cultural development. “This caused some dislocation in the mind and the life of the ordinary Turk,”114 creating a conflict between traditionalists and Westerners. The difficulties in transforming a traditional society with a cultural background different from Europe “into a modern one with considerable European elements” 115 created political, economic and social crises and paved the way for the emergence of new political parties and groups “calling for a radical revision of Turkish

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foreign policy and a change in the principles governing the policies and structure of the state”116 throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Especially, the revival of Islam as a politically effective force in the 1980s called into question the continued validity of Kemalism. The nature of the modernization process in Turkey created a society, neither old nor new, that began to search for a definite cultural identity. This search, coupled with the failure of modernization, created an anti-Western segment and led to a polarization of the society.117 Especially, the communist Labor Party and the Islamic National Order Party (later National Salvation and finally the Welfare Party) exploited and thrived on the strong anti-Westernism then occupied much of the Turkish public opinion. The Kemalists argued that Turkish modernization failed because “the nation was derailed from its idealist path by reactionary forces bent on reasserting the primacy of religion in Turkish society.” 118 For Islamists, it is the opposite. They argue that the cause is not Turkey’s deviation from Kemalism. The real reason lies in the fact that Turkey stayed with it for so long. Kemalist modernization, in their view, is not compatible with Muslim culture, of which the people of Turkey are an integral part. According to them: under Ataturk, Muslims in Turkey were cut off from their religious tradition by force…once the restrictive cloak of Kemalist ideology is removed, Turks will rejoin the Islamic world and be perfectly capable of creating a society that is not only modern (which they take in the technological sense of the word) but also more equitable and ‘just’ than the one created by the Kemalist elite after the Western image. 119 The debate concerning the identity of the Turkish state and society between the Kemalist Westerners and Islamists extended to the formulation of Turkish foreign policy. While the Kemalists argued that the best way to protect Turkey’s interests lay in its Westernoriented foreign policy, Islamists contended that Turkey’s interests are in the Muslim world and civilization to which Turkey originally belonged. After the electoral success of the Islamic Welfare Party (WP) in the national elections of 1995 and their short term in the office from 1996 top 1997, they made attempts to change the course of Turkish foreign policy such as Prime Minister and the head of the Islamic Welfare Party Necmettin Erbakan’s highly criticized visits to radical Islamic countries like Iran and Libya. As noted earlier, the debate over Turkish identity did not end with the Kemalist victory in the 1920s. After the collapse of the

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Soviet Union and the emergence of new Turkish republics in Central Asia in the early 1990s also revived Pan-Turanist aspirations in Turkey, and thus adding a third component to the debate. Changing attitudes of European countries regarding Turkey’s membership in the European Union (EU) and the West’s support to Kurdish nationalism helped the nationalist sentiment grow further in Turkey. They proved to be a potent force capable of influencing Turkish foreign policy in the early 1990s when Turkish foreign policy makers opted for assuming a leadership role in these republics. Slogans like “the 21st century will be a Turkish century” were common themes in Turkey’s foreign policy discourse.

Chapter 4 Turkey and the West

Throughout its modern history, Turkey’s main foreign policy goal has been to be a member of the Western family of nations. As Oral Sander argues, “this fundamental inclination that emerged as establishing close ties with the West cannot be defined as a limited and temporary policy preference aimed at thwarting off a threat against Turkey’s security and territorial integrity; but one that shows a surprising continuity.”1 After the creation of the Turkish Republic in the years following the Independence War in the 1920s, Turkey followed a neutral foreign policy and tried to consolidate the new regime. However, even during this period, Turkey economically and politically became part of the European community of nations and established close ties with England and France in the interwar period and intimate relations with the United States in the era following World War II. This fundamental orientation continued without change after the Second War and became even stronger. “In a very short period of time, Turkey not only became a sympathizer but an actual ally of the West.”2 This orientation in Turkish foreign policy marks the most important difference from all Middle Eastern, African and Asian countries. The fundamental question to be asked, then, is “why, among all Middle Eastern, Asian and African countries, did Turkey become the only state in the Western alliance?”3 The question cannot be answered, as Sander argued above, only by reference to Turkey’s short-term security interests because this orientation continued without any interruption even when there was no serious threat to Turkey’s security. Instead, in analyzing Turkish foreign policy, one should look at the character of the Turkish State and how this character helped Turkish policy-makers formulate Turkey’s foreign policy preferences. As argued in chapter 3, the founders of the Turkish Republic created a new Western identity for the state and the nation distinct from that of its predecessor. This identity, institutionalized in every

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aspect of the political and social life, in turn, defined the direction that Turkish foreign policy was to take in the years to come. In this sense, creation of a Westernized nation is closely linked to its foreign policy since “a westernized nation is one that was born and wants to live in harmony with Western nations with whom it shares structural and molecular similarities.”4 From this point of view, one can argue that “the desire to gain acceptance as a European state in its own right has always been an implicit objective of Turkish foreign policy.” 5 Post-war developments induced Turkey to forge closer links with the West, not only ideologically but also in terms of foreign and military policies. “In the next years, Ankara’s diplomatic efforts would be devoted to attaining full participation in the complicated political, military, and economic system of Atlantic and European integration.” 6 “The design of republican Turkey [was] to become identified as European.”7 This basic preference to become an integral part of the West gained further momentum in the post-war era due to the presence of the Cold War and the Soviet threat. In fact, the Cold War order, for the first time, provided Turkey with the opportunity to establish organic links with the West. In an attempt to gain recognition as a European state, Turkey gave up its “position of neutrality by applying to join the newly-emerging European organizations.”8 Since modernization meant westernization for the founders of the Republic, these links were “also in line with the declared aim of modernization espoused by the leaders of the Turkish Republic and…these projects it was thought could not be realized unless in cooperation with the United States and Western Europe.”9 As a result, Turkey applied to join almost all of the international institutions in the wake of the Second World War. The full association of Turkey with the West was realized through the Truman Doctrine in 1947, membership in the OECD and the Council of Europe in 1948 and 1949 respectively, and its admission to NATO in 1952. Turkey’s “membership of these organizations was seen as a realization of Ataturk’s dream of Turkey as part of Europe.”10 These attempts to become part of Europe, which were successful in part, however, required Turkish political leaders to further adopt other European values such as democracy and respect for human rights that came to constitute the most important features of European identity. As will be argued later in this chapter, these same elements would become the most problematic areas in Turkey’s relations with the West—especially with the European Union—in the following years when suspicions about Turkey’s European credentials arose.

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The most important manifestation of Turkey’s allegiance to the West and Western political institutions was the voluntary process of democratization. In 1946, the government under President Ismet Inonu, leader of the Republican People’s Party, decided to abandon the one-party system and to replace it by popular democracy. 11 In the same year, the Democratic Party under the leadership of Adnan Menderes was formed and came to power in 1950. The aim of the Democrat Party government was to take a place in the newly emerging international arrangements, NATO being the most important. A. TURKEY AND POST-WORLD WAR II SECURITY ARRANGEMENTS: THE NATO CONTEXT Among all other Western political and economic institutions the most stable of Turkey’s institutional connections with the West has undoubtedly been its membership in NATO. In fact, membership in NATO went well beyond military considerations and was regarded as the key step towards becoming a European state. Turkey first applied for membership in NATO in May 1950 and was rejected. The United States and Great Britain in their rejection stressed that “Turkey did not belong either to Western Europe or the Atlantic and consequently she could not join the Atlantic regional group.” 12 In the wake of Turkey’s rejection by the United States and Great Britain for membership of NATO, Turkish policy makers increasingly started to emphasize Turkey’s geopolitical situation vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and their concern about Turkey’s security. These early attempts, however, do not seem to have had any effect on the Americans and the British. As one British official wrote: Although the Turks have a good deal over which to be apprehensive, I cannot help feeling that some of this pessimism and gloom may sometimes be exaggerated, with the object of making our flesh creep, and by implication, of getting more material aid from us. 13 Despite its narrow assessment, the statement has some truth in it. “It is true that since August 1946, Russia had abstained from any action that would have put Turkey under pressure. Equally, in Turkey there was no ground for fearing that the Soviets might repeat a coup on the Czech model” since the number of the communists was very low in the country.14 Especially, after Stalin’s

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death in 1953 the Soviet note declaring that “they renounced their former claims on the Turkish territories and wished to establish ties of friendship within a very short time “ 15 removed the threat. The rejection, nevertheless, created considerable anxiety among the Turkish people and political elite “as to the wisdom of carrying on with the policy of Westernization as amended after Ataturk’s death.”16 During the early years of the Republic, modernization was perceived as Westernization and Turkish foreign and domestic policies were formulated accordingly. The Republican Party (RPP) and its successor after 1950, the Democratic Party (DP), “reinterpreted Westernization to mean intimate cooperation with the “Western” countries at all costs and under all conditions. Thus ‘Westernization’ in this sense became a general philosophy of domestic politics and foreign policy.” 17 Accession to NATO was a logical conclusion of this philosophy. Turkey, however, got a second chance for membership in NATO when the Korean War broke out. Benefiting from the unclear situation that the war created in the West, Turkey made its second application on August 11, 1950. To secure Turkey’s admission to NATO, the DP government, on October 18, 1950, without waiting for the Parliament’s approval, sent 4500 Turkish troops to Korea. Finally, the reputation of the Turkish troops in the war and the change in American and British attitudes toward Turkey’s strategic importance after 1951 helped Turkey, along with Greece, become a member of NATO on February 18, 1952. “Turkey’s role in the alliance was well defined; it was to resist Soviet expansionism by serving as NATO’s southern flank.”18 Turkey’s admission to NATO was perceived not only in military but also in political and cultural terms. By entering NATO Turkey assumed a new role as a partner of the West. “The defender of the Western civilization was in Turkish eyes the proof that they were finally accepted and became part of the Western world. With almost total dedication to a cause encountered only among new converts to a faith Turkey appeared to have become more Westernist than the West.” 19 Membership in NATO introduced Turkey to the American and West European political and diplomatic circles and thus allowed “for a continuous and spontaneous exchange of views between Turkey and her collective allies. The value of such diplomatic contacts in political, economic, and cultural relations is inestimable; more than anything else, it has enabled Turkey to establish herself as a ‘European’ power.”20 The most important result of this orientation in Turkish foreign policy was the further isolation of Turkey from the Middle East and the Eastern Bloc. Even when “a considerable number of NATO

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powers which interpreted the concept of strategic embargo according to their own interests did not hesitate to enter into commercial relations with the Eastern bloc,”21 Turkey avoided any contact with those countries. In response to the Soviets’ attempts to resume friendly relations with Turkey in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, Prime Minister Ismet Inonu in January 1962 made it clear that Turkey did not have anything to do with any country other than the West. “Turkey,” he argued, “was committed to a system and it was therefore impossible for her to become an ally of the USSR or even neutral.”22 This uncompromising devotion to the West and Western institutions persisted even when the advantages and disadvantages of these institutions to Turkey’s national interest were seriously questioned in the country. The 1961 Constitution that was introduced by the military government and that granted many rights to Turkish citizens led to the emergence of many groups—leftists and Islamists—that increasingly challenged Turkey’s Western-oriented foreign policy. Especially, leftist intellectuals criticized the government for making Turkey too dependent on the United States and NATO and organized anti-American and anti-government protests. Despite the unfavorable public opinion, the government maintained its allegiance to the United States and NATO. However, two incidents that occurred in the 1960s and the 1970s forced the Turkish government to reevaluate Turkey’s foreign policy orientations: the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cyprus problem. During this period, Turkish decision-makers seriously questioned the West’s and “NATO’s commitment to protecting Turkish interests and led Ankara to seek ways of diversifying its foreign policy.”23 However, these efforts by the Turkish governments were never intended to revise their original views and attitudes toward NATO. “The Turkish government made no changes in its basic NATO policy and expressed repeatedly the view that there was no need to do so.” 24 The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962–3 was the first event to test whether or not NATO membership served Turkey’s best interest. During the course of the crisis, the United States agreed to remove the Jupiter missiles based on Turkish territory in exchange for the Soviet Union not installing missiles in Cuba. The removal of the missiles was a rational decision on the part of the United States because they were already outdated, inefficient, and had no military value. Despite the fact that the missiles were incapable to defend Turkey against a possible Soviet attack, it nevertheless sent shock waves to Turkey. The most important reason for this emotional Turkish reaction was the ‘psychological value’ that the

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Jupiter missiles had in the eyes of many Turks. As Bruce Kuniholm writes: The Turks felt more assured by a weapon on their own territory and somewhat in their own hands. Even if they did not control the warheads and the missiles were subject to a dual key arrangement, it was important from their point of view that they could participate in the process and share control. The Turks saw the Jupiters as symbols of the alliance’s determination to use atomic weapons against a Soviet attack on Turkey.25 Other than having no military value for the defense of Turkey, the presence of the missiles on Turkish soil carried the danger of provoking a Soviets attack. It is true that although the missiles provided certain assurances and addressed some of Turkey’s security needs, they nevertheless made Turkey a target and “render them vulnerable to decisions that were made in Washington.”26 Despite the apparent disadvantages of having the missiles on the Turkish territory (other countries in NATO refused to install the Jupiter missiles in their own country), Turkish leaders still expressed their disappointment in the way the crisis was resolved. It was argued that “despite American commitments to Turkish security, Washington was willing to forgo its assurances to Turkey when American interests were at stake… The Americans would guarantee Turkey’s security only if it was to their advan-tage.”27 Furthermore, the fact that Ankara had not been invited to participate in the negotiations to resolve the crisis gave the Turks “the feeling that [Turkey] was no more than a pawn in the American game.”28 Another event that caused both the Turkish public and decisionmakers to question the advantages and disadvantages of close relations with the United States and membership in NATO was the 1963–64 Cyprus crisis. When the Cyprus crisis broke out, the Turkish government decided to intervene in the conflict to protect the rights of the Turkish minority and informed Washington of its intention, assuming that “the United States was NATO’s leading and most powerful member and one of the two superpowers which would be affected by any major incident anywhere in the world.”29 President Lyndon Johnson replied to Prime Minister Ismet Inonu in a letter that US Undersecretary of State George Ball called “the most brutal diplomatic note [he had] ever seen.” 30 President Johnson stated that:

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I must call your attention, Mr. Prime Minister, to the obligations of NATO. There can be no question in your mind that a Turkish intervention in Cyprus would lead to a military engagement between Turkish and Greek forces… War between Turkey and Greece must be considered as “literally unthinkable.” Adhesion to NATO, in its very essence, means that NATO countries will not wage war on each other… Furthermore, a military intervention in Cyprus by Turkey would lead to a direct involvement by the Soviet Union. I hope you will understand that your NATO allies have not had a chance to consider whether they have an obligation to protect Turkey against the Soviet Union if Turkey takes a step which results in Soviet intervention without the full consent and understanding of its NATO allies.31 Furthermore the letter also stated that the United States would not allow Turkey to use the military equipment donated by the United States. As a result, Turkey refrained from invading the island in the face of the strong American opposition. The so-called ‘Johnson letter’ made it clear that the United States did not have any intention to call in the NATO mechanism in favor of Turkey “even though the most vital Turkish interests were at stake.” 32 The prevailing mood in Turkey was that the United States would favor Greece in matters involving both Turkey and Greece. The letter that was leaked to the press created widespread antiWest and anti-American feeling in the country. The Turks were extremely traumatized to find out that “their most important ally, the United States, not only would not help them in a deeply felt cause, but apparently disagreed profoundly on the force of NATO commitment to defend Turkey.”33 The strong anti-West campaign in Turkey in the aftermath of the Cyprus crisis and the Johnson letter was soon followed by demands that Turkey should revise its foreign policy. Some argued that “the present rigid Turkish-American relationship should be transformed into a ‘flexible alliance’ based on common values and principles.” 34 Some others argued that Turkey should withdraw from NATO and pursue a ‘neutral’ foreign policy. Their arguments were supported by additional evidence that the change in the NATO strategy from ‘massive retaliation’ to ‘flexible response’ would make Turkey a war zone in Europe and increased the feeling that “Turkish territory might be traded against time in the event of Soviet aggression.”35 The argument that Turkey should pursue neutral status gained prominence among academic circles. Professor Haluk Ulman, for

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example, argued that as the Cyprus conflict demonstrated Turkey would not receive support from NATO or the United States “when engaged in a struggle involving her individual interests.” 36 They also emphasized the economic burden brought by NATO membership. The argument was that Turkey was devoting a considerable portion of its resources to its oversized army required by NATO not to much needed economic development. Advocates of Turkey’s membership in NATO often stressed NATO’s value to the economy and defense of Turkey. From an economic point of view, they argued that Turkey maintained its economic development largely with the aid it received from the United States and other Western countries. Without the alliance with the West and NATO, Turkey would not have been able to finance its growth in the 1960s and 1970s. As for Turkey’s security, NATO membership played a very important role in deterring the Soviets from attacking Turkey. Therefore, Turkey’s Westernoriented foreign policy served its best interest and there is no reason to withdraw from NATO. Several arguments can be advanced against the above statements. It is true that the economic policies pursued by the governments since the early 1950s made Turkey increasingly dependent on foreign aid. This, in turn, led to the reasoning that if Turkey maintained foreign policies that are in line with those of the United States it would get more aid from the latter. “However, this reasoning proved misleading and fallacious. For instance, Yugoslavia and Spain have, from time to time, received more direct aid from the United States than Turkey, despite firm adherence to their respective ideologies.” 37 It can be argued that the reason for Yugoslavia and Spain to get aid from the United States was due to Yugoslavia’s anti-Soviet and Spain’s anti-communist stances. Turkey too could have maintained her anti-communist foreign policy without any formal commitment to the United States and NATO and benefited from her geographical position. Furthermore, a considerable portion of the aid went to the modernization of the Turkish military since being a member in NATO required Turkey to maintain an over-sized army. As one observer points out if “Turkey could become a balancer instead of one weight in the balance of power, she might by skillful diplomacy obtain economic assistance and exert influence in European affairs.” 38 However, Turkey did not intend to follow a policy of balance between the blocs and did not use her exceptional geographical position as a means of political blackmail against the two sides.39

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As for the benefits of NATO membership in terms of Turkey’s security, one can argue that Turkey would be just as safe without NATO as within in the case of a Soviet attack. As Haluk Ulman puts it: Turkey would be dragged into war under the NATO commitments should there be a conventional war anywhere in Europe. On the other hand, should Turkey be attacked by the Soviets, she would receive help even without NATO membership because the United States could not allow Russia to conquer the Middle East. In case of a nuclear war, and as a member of NATO, Turkey most probably would become a victim of a nuclear devastation; if she were not a member and had neither nuclear nor radar detection devices on her territory, she would be spared.40 One may argue that the Soviet Union might have been more likely to mis-calculate and try to invade Turkey as it did in Afghanistan. However, Turkey’s geographical position and her importance to the West and the United States would more likely induce the Soviets to think twice on the issue. NATO membership encouraged Turkey to follow a provocative foreign policy toward the Soviet Union and made her a target in case of a nuclear war. Also, as the Johnson letter proved, the United States and NATO would leave Turkey alone if their interests were not threatened; but Turkey could be involved in a war in which her interests are not at stake. In addition to the above arguments, Turkey’s close relations with the West and membership in NATO damaged her relations with Arab and other Third World countries and reinforced the image of Turkey as an American satellite in the region. Many believed that Turkey was used by the Western powers as an instrument to protect their interests in some of developing countries. Turkey’s behavior as the spokesman of the West at the Bandung Conference in 1955 and its efforts to prevent Third World countries from establishing a neutral bloc, its stance on the Suez crisis against Egypt despite the fact that many in Turkey and in the world supported Egypt’s claim, and finally its pro-Israeli policy in the Middle East all reinforced this image. “At a time when colonialism was rapidly eliminated, Turkey felt obliged to support colonial powers because of her membership in NATO…”41 Turkey, for example, voted with France against the independence of Algeria in 1957–58 at the United Nations.

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As a result of these actions, Turkey was isolated and humiliated at the United Nations. This most apparent sign of this isolation was the resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 18, 1965 on the Cyprus issue that was detrimental to the interests of Turkey. The vote, which put limits on Turkish rights on the island, was 41 for, 6 against—including the vote of Turkey —and 54 abstentions. In this case, Turkey could not convince many Third World countries and even her own allies to vote with Turkey. This situation alone best reflected Turkey’s situation on the international stage. Turkey’s devotion to the West and Western interests also prevented her from taking advantage of détente between the superpowers and of the Soviets’ requests for more friendly relations, which would reduce Turkey’s dependence on the United States and greatly eliminate the Soviet threat. Turkey tried to diversify its foreign policy and pursue more flexible relations with both sides. However, this new orientation was never meant to affect its close relations with the West and “Turkish policymakers and the Turkish public still valued their country’s alliance with the United States"42 and NATO. Alliance with the Soviet bloc was seen as impossible since it required a series of political, cultural and ideological adjustments and compromises “which in some ways conflicted with the political and ideological course followed in the previous decade. It was to be, as a Turkish statesman put it, a policy designated to ‘rely upon a balance between alliance with the West and friendship with the East.'"43 Even when Turkey encountered serious problems with the United States and NATO she tried to diversify her foreign policy only within the Western camp. As a result, Turkey intensified her relations with the European Union. There was consensus among the major Turkish political parties that while in power, none of them would consider to cut off Turkey’s relations with the United States and NATO. During the second half of the 1960s, when the Justice Party came to power, the connection became stronger than before. Even Ismet Inonu, who had to deal with the Johnson letter during the Cyprus crisis “did not question the NATO alliance, for to do so would have meant questioning the very foundations on which the Turkish regime rested."44 Despite all these problems, Turkish political leaders increasingly emphasized the value of membership in NATO and the alliance with the West not only to Turkey’s security and economy but also to the modernization of the country. Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel, in a press conference on January 27, 1968, stated that Turkey considered its alliance with NATO as “a manifestation of the identity

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of fate among the countries embracing freedom and democratic ideals."45 Later in February 1968, the foreign policy spokesman of the RPP, Nihat Erim, stressed the same point on the grounds that Turkey is a Western country and will follow a western-oriented policy as Ataturk showed. Turkey’s legislation and state organization are proof of western civilization. Turkey is a country which is striving to be western and taking her place in front ranks of western civilization. Today there are countries, which appear at first glance to be outside the blocs. But, in reality, there is no such country as a neutralist one. Here we have Egypt.. .Today she is under the control of Russian technicians, Russian experts, Russian money. This shows that the Third World countries have to choose one of the blocs in the first serious clash.46 This orientation continued throughout the early 1970s. The new government formed after the resignation of the Suleyman Demirel government on March 12, 1971 confirmed their loyalty to NATO and the West.47 The second Cyprus crisis in 1974 that resulted in Turkey’s military intervention in the island and the American arms embargo on Turkey marked a new era in American-Turkish relations. With the international mood brought about by the détente between the two superpowers and the strong anti-American feeling within the country after the Cyprus crisis, Turkey, for the first time, felt the necessity to reduce its dependency on the United States and improve her relations with the Soviet Union. This new policy orientation was not a result of an identity crisis because it was not Turkey’s identity in question. Besides, Turkey’s identity crisis was in most part related to her relations with Europe rather than the United States. Turkey started to experience an identity crisis mostly in the 1980s and the 1990s as the European Union emphasized cultural and political factors behind Europe’s integration project. It was also the time that Turkish political leaders realized that the relaxation of tension between East and West would reduce Turkey’s strategic importance, which earned her a place in the Western camp. “By 1978, the Soviet Union was aiding forty-four different development projects in Turkey and by the end of the decade Turkey received more economic assistance than any

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country in the third world except Cuba.”48 The embargo imposed by the United States on Turkey after the Cyprus crisis and Turkey’s need for other allies in the international system were the major factors in this new foreign policy behavior. The efforts to reorient Turkish foreign policy, however, did not last long when several incidents increased Turkey’s strategic importance for the United States. The Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979 and Turkey’s deteriorating sense of security drew Turkish foreign policy into alignment with US interests once again. Also, the military coup of September 1980 in Turkey contributed to improving relations with the United States. “The conservative philosophy and worldview of the military regime promoted strong pro-American and pro-NATO policies.”49 The breakdown of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, however, forced Turkish decision-makers to change some of their foreign policy strategies. During the Cold War, Turkey served as a bulwark against the communist threat. In turn, Turkish policy makers expected protection, and most importantly recognition as a Western (or European) state. Thanks to the cold war politics and her unique geopolitical situation, Turkey got some recognition from its Western allies. This feeling was strengthened further when Turkey signed the Association Agreement with the European Community (EC) —later European Union (EU) —in 1963. However, the removal of the Soviet threat reduced Turkey’s strategic importance, which had helped her take a place in the Western bloc four decades earlier. Turkey’s relations with the European Union also ran into serious obstacles and her ‘Europeanness’ was seriously questioned. As will be explained in the last section of this chapter, the changing nature of her relations with the West compelled Turkey to change some of her foreign policy strategies. Many of these changes brought uncertainty, instability and unpredictability to Turkish foreign policy, which caused an identity crisis at the international level and accelerated the identity crisis at the domestic level. B. TURKEY AND THE EUROPEAN UNION (EU) Turkey’s relations with Europe, particularly the European Union, constitute the major component of the country’s foreign policy. The issue became more important for Turkey in the last two decades when Turkey’s relations with the European Union deteriorated to the point of her exclusion from Europe. “Of all the countries at the

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periphery of the EU, the question of inclusion or exclusion presents Turkey with the greatest problems concerning identity.”50 That is why Turkey’s relations with Europe should be analyzed in the context of Turkish identity. Even though some problems occurred in Turkey’s relations with its allies, especially with the United States, in the framework of NATO, Turkey, nevertheless, maintained stable relations with NATO before and after the Cold War. Turkey’s relations with Europe in the context of the European Union (EU)51, on the other hand, have encountered insurmountable difficulties that caused resentment on both sides and still continue to do so. This is because Turkish-EU relations have not only been based on strategic partnership but also involved, in large part, factors such as culture and identity, thus, making the conflicts more difficult to resolve. That is why “Turkey has always had something of an identity problem with regard to its position within the European system of states. Turkey does not share in the Judeo-Christian cultural tradition, but neither does it belong to the predominantly Arab Islamic culture.” 52 As explained in chapter 3, “the desire to gain acceptance as a European state has always been an implicit objective of Turkish foreign policy.” 53 For this purpose, Turkey applied to join and entered many Western political and security organizations that emerged after the Second World War. Seeking closer relations with the EU, in this context, was the next step in this direction because “the EU was regarded by the Turkish policy-makers as the economic axis of the Western alliance, supplementing and cementing the political pact. Europeans, for their part, also regarded relations with Turkey mainly in the framework of the Western alliance.”54 Another reason for Turkey’s search for closer relations with the EU also stemmed from her problems with the United States and, as a result, the need to diversify Turkish foreign policy that would reduce her dependency on a single power. Turkey, from the beginning, wanted to take part in the EU. Ismet Inonu, then the leader of the opposition, expressed his views as follows: “Being a member of the western world and in view of our regime, from the start we were always enthusiastic about the EC. We want to join the Community.”55 Turkey first applied to participate in the EU in July 1959, following Greece’s application in the same year.56 The reason for Turkey’s application was mainly political and aimed at strengthening her ties with the West by participating in its political, economic and military institutions. “The popular expression of the period ‘sharing a common destiny with the West’ reflected this view.57 The EU was seen as a

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mechanism that would accelerate the westernization and modernization process of the country. “Not only the trade benefits but also the ‘civilizing mission’ of association with the West was stressed.”58 Turkey signed the Ankara Agreement with the EU in September 1963 through which it gained associate-member status. “Even though associate membership was not desirable in itself but a temporary stage in the transition to full membership,”59 it was nevertheless described as a political and economic success. Some political leaders even argued that its political implications were more important than economic gains and that the Agreement confirmed Turkey’s ‘Europeanness.’ Turhan Fevzioglu, then the State Minister and the Vice Prime Minister, declared that: The efforts Turkey had been making for a long time to be a European State reached a new victory by the Agreement. Turkey’s desire to participate in the European Economic Community as an associate member was not based only on short term and simple foreign trade calculations. It confirms that Turkey shares the same destiny with the free West and that European borders are drawn through Eastern and Southern Turkey.60 For Turkish political leaders, the Ankara Agreement was the beginning of a new era in Turkish-European relations and confirmed Turkey’s place in the world as a European state. The Turkish Foreign Minister, Feridun Cemal Erkin, at the signing of the Agreement, emphasized this aspect of the Agreement: There is no doubt that this agreement is essentially an economic document. However, it is also certain that it constitutes a turning point in the life of the Turkish nation as a political document. A new era is opening for Turkey…an era that confirms and approves Turkey’s desire to be part of Europe.61 As a result, the Association Agreement created a positive mood in the country and the “Turkish press called the Agreement ‘historical’ referring to it as the most permanent and productive step in Turkey’s efforts of the last 150 years to westernize and become an equal member of the western world."62 Europeans, for their part, also seemed to emphasize the political aspect of the Agreement and accept Turkey as part of Europe. First of all, in theory, for a country to be eligible for membership of the

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EU, the country must be European, be a democracy, and have a market economy. “The conclusion of the Association Agreement with Turkey indicated that the Community accepted Turkey’s European credentials and believed Turkey to have the potential for the further economic and political development.” 63 Second, Turkey’s ‘Europeanness’ was further confirmed by EU officials. In a joint communiqué after the signing of the Agreement, they declared that “the Agreement that creates an association between Turkey and the EC should be evaluated in a larger political framework.”64 Walter Hallstein, then the President of the EU, even went further when he said “Turkey is part of Europe.”65 A closer examination, however, reveals the fact that Europeans were more concerned about finding a loyal ally to encounter the Soviet threat. “They wanted to bind Turkey closer to the West because Turkey, for them, was a country that was deemed to be an indispensable ally in countering the strategic threat from the east.”66 In the 1960s, the relations between the EU and Turkey progressed smoothly, as Turkey fulfilled the obligations of the preparatory stage. However, in the 1970s, when Turkey was preparing for the second transitional stage, it became obvious that “the decision to seek associate membership was not based on comprehensive studies of the implications for the Turkish economy and the development strategy of the envisaged customs union.”67 Turkish political leaders, for the most part, were not aware of the economic obligations that the Treaty had placed on Turkey. For them, the Association Agreement was a step toward the realization of Turkey’s desire to become an integral part of Europe. The realization of this goal would make Turkey’s westernization process irreversible and “cement [Turkey’s] identity in Europe.”68 For Turkish policy-makers, membership in the EU was a modernization project. Vahit Halefoglu, then Foreign Minister of Turkey, explained Turkey’s application for full membership in the EU in April 1987 as a natural “result of our foreign policy goal to integrate Turkey with Western civilization since the establishment of the Republic.” 69 As Prof. Korkut Boratav argued, “the political elite in Turkey believed that Turkey has no democratic culture and the western way of life is alien to Turkish culture. They thought that the only way for these values to take root and to be secured in the Turkish society is to join Europe.” 70 When the negative effects of the association began to be felt on the Turkish economy Turkey had difficulties with implementing the terms of the Agreement. The first negative effect was the declining ratio of Turkey’s exports to its imports from the EU, falling from 71 percent in 1966 to 54 percent in 1973.71 However, Turkish policy-

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makers continued to ignore economic problems and signed the Additional Protocol in 1970 to initiate the second transitional stage that would place a greater burden on the economy. The decision to establish a customs union with the EU came under severe criticism in Turkey and became a subject of contention among different state agencies and political parties during the 1970s. “The Turks suddenly realized that the gradual opening of their economy to European competition ran contrary to the established policy of planned national economic development by way of import substitution.”72 Despite growing criticism, the Justice Party government signed the Additional Protocol on 23 November 1970. For Justice Party officials, Turkey should become European not only politically but also economically too: For many years, Turkey has implemented a closed and introverted economic policy. Turkey cannot afford to continue with such an economic policy any longer…It is compulsory to change the identity of the economy and open it up to the rest of the world.73 The debate in Turkey about the Association Agreement also revealed the other aspects of Turkish identity other than Western, which were suppressed after the War of Independence. The dividing line between the advocates of membership in the EU and the opposition was mainly determined by their respective ideologies and identity conceptions. This was especially clear among different government bureaucracies, which were controlled by different groups of people with different ideologies, and thus, different identity conceptions. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for example, strongly advocated Turkey’s membership in the EU for purely political reasons that were also in line with their identity conceptions. As explained in chapter 3, they were among the first to be westernized and initiate a westernization program during the Ottoman Empire. The career officers of the Foreign Ministry constitute the highest level of Turkish civil service and possess an international outlook and Western acculturation. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its minister hold a powerful position and “exercise independent authority in matters of political detail and are able to influence the higher level decision-making process.”74 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs throughout the 1960s and the 1970s emphasized the primacy of political rather than economic considerations in shaping Turkish foreign policy.75 The State Planning Organization (SPO), which was controlled by the leftists, on the other hand, emphasized the detrimental effects

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of the association on the Turkish economy and argued that there was a need for radical changes in the existing relationship: The necessary changes in the relationship can be affected either within the framework of the Association Agreement, or by considering new alternatives outside an Association Agreement…There are alternatives such as a preferential Trade Agreement, and an Agreement on Commercial and Economic Cooperation. The advantages and disadvantages of these alternatives should be carefully examined. 76 The different attitudes of various government agencies toward membership in the EU suggest that each agency’s culture shapes their identity conceptions, and therefore, their perception of others. For the Foreign Ministry, what was important was the political nature of membership and its potential contribution to the Westernization efforts of Turkey. For the SPO, in line with their leftist ideology, the economic aspects of membership were more important than its political implications. Furthermore, the SPO implicitly opposed Western orientation of Turkish foreign policy, and suggested that Turkey should look for associations with countries other than the West. However, whose identity conception would dominate a state’s foreign policy depends on the allocation of power and the degree of influence among different groups in a country. At the end the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s view prevailed because of its relative power in the foreign policy decision-making process. The signing of the Ankara Treaty that would eventually lead to a customs union with the EU also created a heated debate among political parties and academic circles. While pro-Western political parties such as the Justice Party and the Republican Peoples’ Party advocated closer relations with the EU for political reasons, the opposition consisting of leftists, Islamists, and nationalists emphasized the negative effects of such an association. Even though they were united in their opposition to close relations with the West, they differed on what kind of foreign policy Turkey should pursue. A leftist representative from Istanbul, Prof. Dr. Besim Ustunel, for example, argued that Turkey should pay more attention to the adverse economic effects of the association: It is a scientific fact that a customs union and economic integration based on free market principles will not benefit an underdeveloped country such as Turkey. Its negative effects, on the other hand, will be felt for a long time.77

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Another leftist representative Prof. Dr. Sadun Aren even argued that the Association Agreement with the EU will prevent Turkey’s development: The Common Market has rules and principles to serve the interests of developed countries. These rules and principles are in conflict with the measures that should be taken for Turkey’s development. Therefore, membership will not only prevent our development but also will prevent our efforts for this purpose.78 The Marxist Turkish Workers’ Party, for their part, initiated a “No to Common Market!” campaign and argued that Turkey should “develop and progress by making use of its own resources and its own means as an independent entity.”79 ‘They are partners we are their market’ was the often-used slogan in political discussions. Islamists and nationalists were also the major participants in discussions against Turkey’s association with the West in general and the EU in particular. For Islamists, the Common Market “was a scheme to assimilate Islamic Turkey within Christian Europe.”80 Necmettin Erbakan, then the leader of the Islamic National Salvation Party, opposed the idea of being a member of the EU for cultural and economic reasons. Speaking of the signing of the Additional Protocol, he argued that: Today, there is a newly budding industry in our country. We are obliged to facilitate its development by attending to all its problems with extreme care, let alone opening the doors [for European competition] by means of this protocol. Otherwise, none of the industries established so far will have any chance of survival, 81 Therefore, Erbakan suggested, full membership in the Common Market would make Turkey “a colony and a servant of the West.”82 Islamists argued that Turkey should try to found an Islamic Common Market with other Muslim countries rather than joining the EU. Nationalists, on the other hand, argued that in case of EU membership Turkey “will become an open market for foreign giants and the Turkish nation will no longer be able to retain its economic, social and finally political independence,” and that Turkey’s proper place in the world was “within the Middle East and the realm of the Turkic people.”83

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Nationalists and Islamists had a chance to strengthen their opposition when they became the coalition partners with the Republican Peoples’ Party under Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit in 1974. The pressure from his coalition partners and economic difficulties involved in implementing tariff reductions as envisaged in the Association Agreement and domestic political problems finally, compelled Prime Minister Ecevit to freeze the terms of the Ankara Agreement in October 1978. The decision was a relief for the EU because they had been struggling with enormous economic problems after the 1973 oil shock. To ease the pressure on their economy and to solve the growing unemployment problems, they had already started to limit the free movement of Turkish workers in Europe. As a result, Turkey’s relations with the EU deteriorated throughout the 1970s. The diminishing volume of Turkey’s trade with the EU and the reduction of EU’s financial assistance to Turkey were the indications of the beginning of a new era in Turkish-EU relations. While Turkey was coping with economic and political problems at home, Greece applied to the Community for full membership in 1975 after the fall of the military regime. Unlike Turkey’s response to the negative effects of the Association Agreement without being a full member, Greece applied for full membership to improve its position that was eroded as a consequence of the EU’s Global Mediterranean Policy. Following the Greek example, the minority Demirel government announced in February 1980 that Turkey would apply for full membership as soon as possible. 84 However, this attempt was delayed when the Turkish military toppled the government in a military coup in 12 September 1980. Many observers argued that Turkey missed a historical opportunity.85 The military coup in Turkey came when political issues acquired increasing weight within the EU, which included the promotion of democracy as a foreign policy objective. The 1980 military intervention in Turkey exacerbated the divergence between Turkey and the EU and “further complicated Turkish bids for incorporation in Europe, thus ushering in a new phase in TurkishEC relations.”86 As Europe began to prioritize democracy and foreign policy issues, geopolitical considerations that helped Turkey take a part in the European system of states lost their importance. However, at the same time, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Islamic revolution in Iran increased Turkey’s importance in the eyes of the United States and resulted in rapprochement between two countries. This also widened the gap between Turkey and the EU, which was trying to distance itself from the United States.

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Even though the military intervention was a serious setback to Turkish-EU relations the military government tried to improve its relations with the EU. Bulend Ulusu, then the Prime Minister of the military rule, emphasized in the new government’s program that “Turkey’s relations with the EEC will be directed towards securing Turkey’s place in the Community as envisaged in the Ankara Agreement.” 87 As a reaction to the military intervention, the EU first delayed the implementation of the Fourth Financial Protocol and started to voice its concern regarding human rights in Turkey. Later in 1982, the European Parliament passed a resolution that suspended the joint Community-Turkey Parliamentary Committee and the meeting of the Association Council until Turkey resumed democracy. Turkey, on the other hand, regarded these attempts by the EU as interference in Turkey’s internal affairs. “This pointed to another serious divergence between Europe and Turkey. While the former regarded democracy as a sine quo non for inclusion into Europe, Turkey’s leaders considered it to be an internal problem.”88 The hardening nature of the relations between the EU and Turkey and the fear that Turkey could be excluded from Europe pointed to the fact that Turkey’s desire to be part of the West had gone beyond security and become something of a psychological issue. As the relations deteriorated further, suspicions arose in Turkey that Europeans do not want to accept Turkey as one of them and they “were reverting to nineteenth-century EuroChristian discriminatory practices against the Muslim Turks.”89 The following remarks by a well-known Turkish journalist, Oktay Eksi, illustrate the point: Turkey, which identified itself with the idea of becoming westernized 150 years ago, and which was converted to the “one way” system by Ataturk’s reforms, will sooner and later convince everyone that it is part of the western world. And it will do this not only through its institutions, but also its mentality and work.90 The psychological crisis was more apparent when Greece was admitted to the EU in 1981. The issue went beyond competition between the two countries and became a matter of identity at stake. As daily Gunaydin argued: They [Greeks] have become Europeans and we have remained Asians. We are getting farther and farther from the date we

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had expected to achieve membership. Although our workers won the fight to move freely in Europe, today, on the contrary, we cannot set foot in the Common Market countries without a visa. The western powers themselves admit that the West is trying to sever us from Europe and turn us into a Middle Eastern country.91 The relationship between Europe and Turkey during the 1980s turned into a struggle between the two parties over the definition of democracy, which came to be the most important pillar of ‘European’ identity. The attempts by the EU and the Council of Europe for transition of democracy in Turkey intensified during this period. As a result, the military government held elections in 1983, which the Turkish government depicted as marking the transition to democratic rule. The elections showed that “Turkey’s long-standing military, political, economic and ideological [identification with the West] made the military leaders vulnerable to Western influence and enabled the West to adopt a policy of pressure which was felt and responded to in the democratic transition of Turkey.”92 The 1980s witnessed attempts by Turkish governments to make Turkish identity closer to that of Europe and as much as possible in economic and political life to normalize the relations and possibly, to secure full membership in the EU in the future. For this purpose, the Ozal government elected to power in 1983 promoted neoliberal economic policies and transformed the Turkish economy. Turgut Ozal, the leader of the Motherland Party and the Prime Minister, made Turkey’s future membership in the EU “a central theme of his policy pronouncements.”93 These economic reforms were accompanied by political reforms and by 1987, the ban on the other political leaders who were held responsible for the political turmoil by the military before the 1980 coup was removed, the right of individual petition at the Council of Europe was granted to Turkish citizens, and around 30,000 political prisoners were released, and the Turkish Parliament stopped approving death penalties.94 For Ozal, “the aim of the economic liberalization program and the political reforms was to facilitate [Turkey’s] integration in to the Community as a full member.” 95 In addition to economic and political reforms, Ozal declared that early elections will be held in 1987 and stated that “it is what Europeans want, so if they want democracy, we establish democracy.”96 These attempts resulted in the normalization of relations between Turkey and the EU and on September 15, 1988, the European Parliament adopted a

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resolution on the revival of the Association Agreement. Finally, the relative relaxation of the tension led the Ozal government to believe that it was the time to apply for full membership in the EU on April 14, 1987. The decision to apply for full membership was seen by a large segment of the Turkish society as a natural step towards westernization. It was believed that membership in the EU would guarantee the continuity of democracy and make the process irreversible.97 Turkish political leaders openly stressed the “importance they attached to the issue of westernization. The Minister of Foreign Affairs Mesut Yilmaz, even [declared] that Turkey’s membership in all Western institutions prevented its exclusion from the EU.”98 The underlying logic behind these arguments was that cooperation between Turkey and the West should be rooted not only in strategic security matters but also in common economic and political interests. Ozal, for example, argued that Turkey’s contribution to the defense of the free West should be rewarded in economic and political realms too: “Turkey’s importance for the West cannot be reduced to its strategic position or military alliance. Turkey is also a country that shares Western ideals.” 99 Along with economic and political considerations, there were at least two other factors that influenced Ozal’s decision: first, he was hopeful about the public mood that full membership would create. He would be the first to officially gain the stamp of approval for Turkey’s ‘Europeanness.’ This, in turn, would increase his declining popularity and his party’s chance to win in the forthcoming local elections. Second, he realized that the developments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe would eventually lessen Turkey’s chance to be part of the West by even further reducing its geostrategic importance. As Ziya Onis put it, “what was remarkable at that time was the degree of consensus achieved within Turkey concerning the desirability of EU membership. Parties of left and right, excluding only a small minority of Islamic radicals, appeared to be united on the issue of membership.”100 Such a consensus was reached when Turkey signed the Association Agreement in 1963. Then, expectations were high; so was the disappointment when those expectations were not met in the following years. However, in the absence of a strong alternative, the psychological crisis that Turkey was experiencing at the time was not able to contest Turkey’s traditional adherence to the goal of westernization. Again, Turkish political leaders and the public (at least the secular and Westernized portion) committed themselves to full membership

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more emotionally than ever before, and “therefore, the decision of the EC to defer Turkey’s membership for an indefinite period [in December 17, 1989] was greeted by both the Turkish elite and the public at large with deep disappointment and resentment.”101 As one observer puts it, Turkey’s rejection by the EU “has sharpened a Turkish inferiority complex.”102 The sense of disillusionment and rejection further proved that “joining the EC became an emotional issue and a matter of national pride.” 103 What was different at this time was the rise of Islam in Turkey as a political ideology that would benefit from the situation and seriously contest Turkey’s westernization. After Turkey’s application for full membership in April 1987, Turkey’s relations with the EU ran into serious obstacles. The first blow to Turkish-EU relations came when the European Parliament passed a resolution titled “Political Solution to the Armenian Problem,” which accused Turkey of denial of the so-called Armenian genocide, and of not taking necessary steps to resolve conflicts with Greece, especially on the Cyprus issue. This caused a very emotional reaction among the political elite and the public who argued that these harsh accusations intensified after Turkey’s application to prevent its membership in the EU. The European Parliament’s pressure over the Kurdish issue and other political problems in Turkey created an image of Europe trying to destroy Turkey’s unity. In the face of strong accusations from Europe, the Minister of Industry and Trade, Yalim Erez said in December 1997: “Turkey will be partners with its friends, not with its enemies.” 104 C. TURKEY AND THE WEST IN THE 1990s During the Cold War period, Turkey’s self-created European identity was the most important variable in its interaction with the West in general and with Europe in particular. The creation of the Turkish state’s western identity changed the perceptions of Turkish political leaders about themselves and others in the international system, which, in turn, defined Turkey’s national interest. Despite some problems, this reasoning provided consistency and continuity in Turkey’s foreign policy throughout the Cold War. Even though “identity is at base a subjective or unit-level quality, rooted in an actor’s self-understandings,”105 it is also a mutual construction. The meaning of an actor’s self-understanding about himself and others often depends on “whether other actors represent [the] actor in the same way.”106 An actor’s self-created

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corporate identity must be recognized and accepted by others. In this sense, “two kinds of ideas can enter into identity, in other words, those held by the Self and those held by the Other. Identities are constituted by both internal and external structures.”107 An actor’s identity acquires meaning only when it is recognized by others as such. If an actor’s belief about his identity is not shared by others, then, that identity will not work in their interaction. Until the end of the Cold War, the West seemed to have acknowledged Turkey’s European identity, which led Turkish political leaders to believe that Turkey’s Western identity had been recognized by the West. After the end of the Cold War, however, Europe began to emphasize cultural factors in their self-definition, creating fundamental differences between Turkey and Europe in terms of basic characteristics, values, opinions, attitudes, experience, and historical commonalities, which brought Europeans together. This eventually led to the increasing isolation of Turkey from Europe and created an identity crisis on the part of Turkey. The most important result of this identity crisis was instability and uncertainty in Turkish foreign policy beginning in the early 1990s. In the 1990s, it was clear that the basic aim of Turkish foreign policy was to get recognition as a European state through establishing more links with Europe without any serious consideration to the possible negative effects of such relations. The signing of the Customs Union Agreement with the EU on 6 March 1995 indicates the existence of this tendency among Turkish political elite. Although the repercussions of participating in a customs union without being a full member had been emphasized by many state agencies and leading academics—most notably the State Planning Organization—Turkey did not hesitate to enter a customs union with the EU in the beginning of 1996. As for the economic aspects of the customs union, the debate showed that a large part of Turkey’s political and economic elite who favored the customs union had a misleading “idea of the goals and mechanisms of a customs union. In their view, this undertaking was a mutual exchange of economic sacrifices and benefits, which should support Turkey in its economic development. This position, however, does take into account that a customs union is not an instrument of guiding national economic development.”108 The underlying logic in a customs union is indirectly to promote economic development in the whole area and increase the welfare and the production structure in the union. “This does not say very much about how resulting development gains are distributed among the participants of the customs union.”109 This point is particularly important for Turkey because the EU’s decisions

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related to its economic policies and external trade are made in supranational decision-making institutions in which Turkey is not a member. The most immediate negative impact of the customs union was Turkey’s increasing deficit in its trade with the EU in the same year the customs union agreement was signed. In 1996, Turkey’s trade deficit was $20 billion, $10 billion of which came from its trade with the EU. In addition to the increasing trade deficit, Turkey did not receive any of the promised financial aid from the EU because of Greece’s veto, which exacerbated the existing economic problems. 110 Even Deputy Prime Minister, Bulent Ecevit, argued that “the customs union with the EU is working against Turkey’s interests and should be reviewed.”111 Another potential negative economic effect of a possible membership in the EU is that in most sectors of the economy, industries have to be restructured in order to compete fully with the economies of the other EU members. In the process, many industries, which are unable to compete in EU markets, will disappear. “Especially, State Economic Enterprises (SEE) have to be privatized and deregulated. This may cause a political and social struggle which can lead to significant economic problems.” 112 Additionally, the implementation of the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in Turkish agricultural sector, which is the most efficient working sector in the country, will “export inefficiency to Turkey as a result of full membership. Considering the size and potential strength of Turkey’s agricultural sector, the application of the CAP based on the existing line would have immense negative effects on Turkey’s economy.” 113 Turkey further felt the negative implications of the customs union agreement toward the end of the 1990s. The EU’s unilateral decisions to reduce quotas on Turkish agricultural products in July 1998 and Turkey’s inability to appeal these decisions further proved that the EU would implement the conditions of the customs union only when they did not threaten its interests. The negative effects of full membership in the European Union can also be felt on Turkey’s external trade with third parties. Many in Turkey often assume that Turkey can participate simultaneously in several economic spheres and that full membership in the EU would not prevent Turkey from engaging in independent economic relations with non-EU members. “This assumption is clearly not justified since, in practice, full membership in any club excludes other options. For example, if a country is a full member in the EU, its relations with non-member countries are no longer independently determined. The country

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needs to comply with the EU’s common industrial, agricultural, and trade policies vis-à-vis the third parties.” 114 In the case of Turkey’s participation in the customs union without being a full member in the EU, the issue is much worse because in this case Turkey cannot even have a say in decisions regarding its foreign economic and political relations. “By participating in the customs union, Turkey accepts that it will abide by the rules and decisions regarding its external trade and foreign policies determined by the EU’s institutions of which Turkey is not a member.”115 Being the only country to establish this kind of relationship, Turkey also agrees to comply with the decisions of the EU’s Court of Justice, whose membership is only limited to the full members and whose decisions are final in any conflict pertaining to the implementation of the customs union. Apart from its negative effects on the economy, full membership in the EU will also place some political costs on Turkey. For example, the Commission in its opinion on Turkey’s application of full membership stated that Turkey’s problems with Greece over Cyprus and the Aegean Sea must be resolved before Turkey can become a member. Given Greece’s membership and influence in the EU, in case of a possible membership, Turkey is likely to be forced to accept solutions that would contradict its national interest. The same thing can be said about the Commission’s opinion on the Kurdish issue. The European Parliament, for example, has stated that “if the south-east of Turkey wants autonomy then it should have it, thus producing an autonomous Kurdish entity.”116 This would eventually mean that Turkey has to make an important concession from its territorial integrity, which constitutes the most important principle of its national interest. The EU’s Luxembourg Summit in December12, 1997, which discussed the expansion of the EU, was the turning point in Turkey’s relations with Europe. Despite serious problems between Turkey and the EU, Turkey consistently pursued its goal to be a part of Europe in the absence of a clear rejection. However, the EU’s decision not to include Turkey as one of the candidates for full membership at the summit caused a very strong emotional reaction in Turkey. For the first time, Turkish political leaders stressed that Turkey should get used to the idea of living without Europe. Mesut Yilmaz, then Prime Minister of Turkey, clearly expressed this when he said in July 22, 1998: “We must get rid of the idea of being a member of the EU and mind our own business. In the new world order, Turkey and Europe will live side by side.” 117 Deputy Prime Minister, Bulent Ecevit, also stressed the same point and argued that EU membership is not a necessary condition for

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Turkey’s economic development: “There are countries in the world, such as the USA, Japan, and China whose economies are highly developed even though they are not members of any economic union. Without having any kind of inferiority complex, Turkey should maintain its relations with Europe. Membership is very important for us, but not necessary.”118 Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz even went further and accused the EU of trying to be a Christian club under the leadership of Germany, which he believed to be the most important obstacle to Turkey’s membership: “Chancellor Kohl said the EU is a Christian project that does not include Turkey”119 and “in order to admit [Turkey to the EU], they want us to change our religion.”120 On another occasion, he remarked: “Germany is trying hard for Eastern Europeans’ membership because they are still pursuing Hitler’s policy of ‘Lebensraum’”121 and warned: “If they [Europeans] do not review their decision in six months, we will withdraw our application for full membership."122 Later, Deputy Prime Minister Ecevit told reporters that it is the personal view of the prime minister and does not reflect the government’s official policy on the issue.123 It is interesting to note that Turkish political leaders often emphasized cultural and political factors as the most important causes of the EU’s rejection of Turkey. This by itself confirms that Turkish political leaders from the beginning have seen membership in the EU as the last step of Turkey’s modernization project. During his visit to Hungary on September 5, 1997, President Suleyman Demirel explained the reason behind Turkey’s quest to join Europe as “a desire to attain the level of contemporary civilization.”124 However, in the wake of the EU’s Luxembourg Decision, Turkish policy-makers started to emphasize the importance of being European without being in Europe. Many in Turkey argued that Turkey should be clear on if being accepted by Europe “is a desire, a goal or a complex” and maintained that “there is a difference between Westernization and acceptance as a part of Europe. Westernization represents a way of life, a system of thought, and a political order.”125 Earlier, Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz stressed the same point: “Europe is a state of mind, not an arbitrary line drawn down the Bosphorus.”126 Therefore, Turkey does not have to be actually in Europe to be European. Foreign Minister Ismail Cem, for example, argued: “Turkey has been European for more than 700 years and does not need Europeans to confirm this.” 127 He remarked on another occasion: “We should not see the EU as a proof of Turkey’s European identity. It is wrong to assume that we can be contemporary and civilized only when we are accepted by the EU.” 128

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In the face of the EU’s rejection of Turkey’s ‘Europeanness,’ Turkish political leaders often emphasized the fact that Turkey’s Western credentials were accepted a long time ago when Turkey was admitted to almost all of other Western organizations. When the ‘issue of cultural compatibility’ was brought into discussions about Turkey’s role in Western security organizations, especially in NATO, Turkish leaders often stressed Turkey’s Western identity. The removal of the Soviet threat, the reason d’être of NATO, altered the security environment in Europe and raised fundamental questions about both NATO’s future and Turkey’s role in Western security arrangements. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union left Turkey “without a powerful communist adversary for the first time since the end of World War II.” 129 As Samuel Huntington argued “Turkey’s ties to NATO must inevitably weaken because the historic ‘civilization’ is Islamic rather than Western.”130 For Turkey, “the NATO connection retains tremendous symbolic and material importance. Above all, participation in the Alliance is seen, rather like the prospect of EC membership, as a symbol of Turkey’s membership in the Western democratic ‘club.’”131 Turkish political leaders consistently emphasized that Turkey became a member in NATO not only for security but also cultural reasons. As President Suleyman Demirel commented: On February 1952, Turkey became a member of NATO. Turkey was not only compelled by her anxieties emanating from Soviet claims concerning her territorial integrity and sovereignty but also by her strong belief in the common values of the alliance. By deciding to join NATO, the Turkish nation anchored its destiny in the West…Turkey’s membership of NATO also constituted a reconfirmation of Turkey’s Western orientation.” 132 The exclusion of Turkey from the new alliance network in Europe, the Western European Union (WEU), 133 created a concern that Turkey is also being marginalized in European security affairs. 134 Since full membership in the WEU requires full membership in the EU, Turkey was granted an observer status in the WEU with responsibilities but with no say in the decision-making process. This created additional concern for Turkey and caused a strong reaction in the country. Prime Minister Tansu Ciller argued in January 1997 that the expansion of NATO is dependent on Turkey’s membership in the EU. “If the EU does not accept

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Turkey’s membership,” she said, “Turkey will veto NATO’s expansion.”135 Especially, when Turkey membership in the EU seemed almost impossible after the Luxembourg Summit, Turkish political leaders thought that Turkey’s full membership in the WEU, which may replace the European wing of NATO, might also be in danger. Through blocking the EU’s offer on the rapid reaction force, Turkish political leaders were trying to force Europeans for Turkey’s membership in the EU. This point was made by Minister of National Defense, Hikmet Sami Turk at the NATO Summit in Washington D.C.: “In fact, Turkey’s main difficulty regarding its role in the new European defense structure stems from the unsatisfactory status of Turkey within the EU. It must be understood that Turkey justifiably expects to see concrete and tangible progress towards full membership.”136 Turkish political leaders thought that while the EU is attempting to develop a common foreign and defense policy, Turkey is being left out of this process. Turkey’s first reaction to these new developments was to block “plans for the EU’s rapid reaction force… by refusing to allow it to use NATO equipment in a future crisis.” 137 As Minister of National Defense of Turkey, Hikmet Sami Turk indicated, at the NATO Summit in Washington D.C. in April 1999, the purpose of Turkish politicians on the issue was that “if the WEU is to be incorporated into the EU, it will be essential to preserve the vested interests and ‘acquis’ that Turkey has accumulated within the WEU so far. This leads to the need to include Turkey fully in the Common Foreign and Security Policy mechanism of the EU on equal footing.”138 Thus, by using Turkey’s connections with other Western institutions, Turkish political leaders were still trying to secure membership in the EU in the 1990s. D. IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION As noted in the previous chapters, being accepted as Western, specifically European, has always been an implicit objective of Turkish foreign policy. In order to able to realize this goal, Turkish political leaders took every step necessary to Westernize and modernize the country. As Arnold Toynbee once argued “no country has tried to westernize as much as Turkey.”139 Prof. Dr. Mustafa Cizakca explains that: “We [Turks] have always admired and imitated the West. We sometimes did this to survive; but most other times, just to get respect from the West.”140 Turkey’s relations

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with the West, especially with Europe, have, in most part, been a result of this objective. Realists may argue that Turkey’s choice to join the Western alliance was guided by self-interest to get protection from the West. However, they cannot explain how that self-interest was defined in the first place. Turkey’s self-created identity perception was the main factor behind Turkey’s alliance with the West. For the Turkish political elite, being a part of the West was an identity project in itself. They aimed at creating a new state and a new society in line with those of the West and being within the West, it was thought, would make the process irreversible. Additionally, as the West’s attitude in the Cuban and Cyprus crises showed, Turkey’s alliance with the West by no means guaranteed its protection when her vital interests were threatened. Furthermore, by joining the Western alliance, Turkey further antagonized Russia, and as the Johnson Letter demonstrated, in case of a possible Russian attack, the West was not sure about whether NATO had obligations to defend Turkey. In all circumstances, Turkish President Turgut Ozal, for example, emphasized the same point: “If we had to consider our own defense we should not necessarily be concerned with the defense of Europe. The commitment we have undertaken to defend Europe [was] for us a supplementary threat.”141 Many political leaders confirmed that Turkish foreign policy has been guided by the desire to be accepted as a European state. It was only in the late 1990s that Turkish decision-makers started to realize that opposition inside and outside the country would make it harder to pursue this goal. Especially, Europe’s attitude towards Turkey caused very strong reaction among political leaders and the public and the virtues of Western-oriented foreign policy were seriously questioned. As Prof. Dr. Toktamis Ates commented: “We do not deserve this much abuse and insult. We should demonstrate that despite all the problems we have, we can still make it by ourselves.” 142 The immediate implication of this new situation was an identity crisis on the part of the Turkish state and society, which exacerbated discussions on Turkish identity and the course of Turkish foreign policy in the vears to come.

Chapter 5 Identity Crisis and Turkey’s Search for Alternatives

In order for states to hold and maintain a social identity requires acceptance and approval from others because identities are mutual constructions. This is especially true for Turkey because Turkey’s European identity was created within the country without acceptance from others. Because this self-image is dependent on the possibility of being supported by others, the most important goal of Turkish foreign policy has been to gain that support from the West. Since membership in the EU was seen as the last step toward recognition of Turkey, the reluctance of Europeans to grant membership to Turkey created an emotional outburst in Turkey. This point was made in 1988 by Prof. Dr. Korkut Boratav in the wake of Turkey’s application when he argued the impossibility of Turkey’s full membership in the EU: “Turkey’s approach to Europe is not healthy and often carries schizophrenic and paranoid characteristics. The EU’s rejection will contribute to the development of fascist and fundamentalist ideologies in Turkey. Therefore, it would have been better if Turkey had never made this application in the first place.” 1 This chapter argues that attempts at diversifying Turkey’s foreign policy in the 1990s, in most part, were a result of the identity crisis that Turkey was experiencing at the time. Turkish identity crisis had two dimensions: domestic and international. The identity crisis at the domestic level was closely linked to the negative effects of the modernization project. As explained in Chapter 3, modernization became an important part of the Kemalist doctrine, which “defined Turkey’s goal as the attainment of contemporary civilization, which for Ataturk and his associates meant western civilization.”2 Islam, in this context, was seen as the most important impediment to realizing this goal by the Republican elite and the principle of secularism was also introduced. “The secular approach [attempted] to cut society’s attachment to tradition at its most vital point: religion.” 3 As a result, Islam was excluded from political life.

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Kemalist notions of national identity, which aimed at creating a Turkish society both secular and western, however, have undergone fundamental changes as Turkish modernization failed to produce the promised benefits. Turkish national identity was created by the bureaucratic-authoritarian elite, which singlehandedly carried out the modernization project. As Dogu Ergil argues, “when national identity is not a construct negotiated by the citizens of that nation, it creates problems for neglected and excluded groups that can escalate into perceived security threats by the hyper-sensitive state.” 4 In this case while the state becomes more authoritarian religion in more traditional segments of society assumes the role of political opposition and thus, further politicized. The inevitable result of this process is “burgeoning of a culture of conflict where society is pitted against the state, and social groups are pitted against each other. This enormous confusion in society hampers the nation-building process and leads to a deep identity crisis.”5 In the case of Turkey, the identity crisis manifested itself most clearly in the split between secularists represented by the westernized elite—’white Turks,’ and Islamists represented by “the poor and marginalized sector of the population—‘black Turks.’”6 The Kemalist ideology somewhat succeeded in creating new “white” Turk, “defined in terms of his or her ability to imitate external European appearances,”7 while suppressing other ethnic and religious identities, thus making them feel excluded and marginalized. Since the new national identity created by nationalism was not convincing or attractive for every citizen, they did not adapt to this new identity and continued to “cling to their traditional identities and communities, or create new communities in different social settings.” 8 Islam, in this context, proved to be strong, given its utopian promises. As soon as the political system in Turkey was liberalized in 1946, “Islam, excluded from the construction of Turkish identity, has come back to haunt the Kemalist imagination…and created fear in the minds of the guardians of Kemalism and in their view, has polarized society into separate secular/Kemalist and Muslim/Islamist factions.” 9 Especially throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, “the role of religion in politics became one of the most central and contentious questions in Turkish politics and…a religious outlook became firmly embedded in the ideology and program of the mainstream conservative parties in Turkey.” 10 The influence of Islam also became evident in every sphere of social and political life. During this time, Islamic influences in the media, fashion, art, music, literature and cinema have been more visible

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and assertive. “Among the wide range of cultural preferences, artistic expressions and lifestyle choices that can be observed in Turkey, it is no longer possible to detect a consensus regarding modern Turkish identity.” 11 While the “Kemalist version of secularism has become the basis of identity for the white Turks, the opposing ideology provided by Islamic networks served as a foundation of identity for the black Turks."12 The most institutionalized Islamic opposition to the official identity of the state within the democratic framework has been the Islamic Welfare Party whose identi-ty was based to a large extent on the binary opposition of West versus East. Its rejection of “the West within,” namely the Kemalist modernization project to create a new Turk, manifested itself in the Welfare Party’s foreign policy outlook as well. In short, the Welfare Party leadership was very much dependent on a perception of the West as colonial, unjust, oppressive and ultimately, Christian13 The polarization between Islamists and the secularists and the ascendancy of political Islam has been an important determinant on Turkey’s domestic and foreign policy. This was most clearly manifested in the Welfare Party’s attempts to establish closer ties with the Islamic world, specifically Iran and Libya, during their brief tenure in the coalition government with the True Path Party between 1996 and 1997.14 Despite its attempts to reorient the course of Turkish foreign policy, the Welfare Party’s foreign policy initiatives did not radically alter Turkey’s traditional foreign policy orientation. However, “they did intensify the conflict between the country’s secularist and Islamist political forces.”15 The secularist opposition to the Welfare Party’s policies was led mainly by the military, which sees itself as the guardian of Kemalism. The secularist/Islamist debate regarding Turkish identity was further complicated by the rising tide of nationalism in the country after the end of the Cold War. “The resurgence of ethnic conflicts in the Balkans and the Caucasus kindled nationalist sentiments in Turkey since they involved Muslim and Turkic communities with whom Turkey has long had historic and cultural ties.”16 Especially, the emergence of new Turkic nations in Central Asia and the Caucasus helped nationalists put pressure on Turkish governments for a more activist foreign policy in the region. This new Turkish nationalism, however, was different from what the Republican leaders had in mind. In order to contain communism in the early 1980s, the military government in charge heavily used

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Islam and made religious education mandatory in schools. “A mildly religious country obedient to seeular authority, coupled with patriotic zeal, was viewed as an effective barrier against the political deviation posed by the Left within and communism outside.”17 The military government’s attempts to integrate nationalism and Islam generated a different ideological orientation, which is called the ‘Turkish-Islamic synthesis.’ This orientation appealed most to the followers of the Nationalist Action Party whose ideology included the elements of both ethnic Turkish nationalism and Islam. Furthermore, attempts by successive Turkish governments and the military to contain Kurdish nationalism by promoting Turkish nationalism made Turkish identity increasingly eth-nic-oriented.18 The international dimension of Turkish identity crisis pertains to Turkey’s relations with the West, particularly with Europe, in the context of the European Union. As explained in the previous chapters, Turkey’s attempts for full membership in the EU go beyond fulfilling Turkey’s economic self-interest, but represent the last step to prove Turkey’s Europeanness. It is particularly important for Turkey’s westernized/secular elite because full membership in the EU would also confirm the success of Kemalist reforms aiming at creating a western identity for the state and people. It would also eliminate anti-West forces in the country by giving them a credible national identity. Any failure in this purpose would create an opportunity for Islamists and nationalists to pull Turkish foreign policy in the direction in accordance with their identity conceptions. In this sense, foreign policy becomes an extension of domestic identity crisis and carries the signs of power struggle among different groups with different role identities. This was the case in Turkish foreign policy throughout the 1990s. The end of the Cold War and the EU’s constant rejection of Turkey’s full membership on the one hand and the increasing political power of nationalists and Islamists on the other put an end to the westernized elite’s monopoly on political power as became clear by the electoral victory of the Islamist Welfare Party in 1995 and the Nationalist Action Party in 1999. Especially the failure of the political elite to secure Turkey’s membership in the EU led many in the country to question the validity of the Kemalist modernization project and the identity envisioned by it. Furthermore, EU officials’ emphasis on cultural factors for their rejection of Turkey’s application created an identity crisis for the Kemalist political elite because the purpose of their modernization project was to create a culturally western state and nation. Therefore, the EU’s rejection based on cultural factors also

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confirmed the failure of the Kemalist reforms. This situation in turn made the Kemalist political elite susceptible to nationalist and Islamist influences in the 1990s. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the causes of Turkish foreign policy change in the 1990s. It argues that Turkey’s foreign policy objectives in Central Asia and the Caucasus were motivated by the identity crisis caused by the EU’s rejection. It further argues that Turkish foreign policy in the area reflected the political elite’s desire to find a foreign policy alternative to Europe based on Turkish identity. The visible influence of the Nationalist Action Party in the foreign policy decision-making process regarding the Turkic republics constitutes the most important evidence of Turkey’s identity politics in the region. For the Kemalist elite, the region became a better alternative than the Middle East in search for a new identity, given the perception of the Middle East and Islam. As will be explained in the next chapter, it was the Welfare Party that emphasized the importance of Islam in Turkish national identity and tried to pull the course of Turkish foreign policy toward the Middle East based on that identity. This book operationalizes an identity crisis based on two criteria: First, I will look at how the rejection by Europe was internalized and debated among decision-makers and the public. My second concern is whether or not the attempts to diversify Turkish foreign policy was based on a simple self-interest or it was a reaction to the EU’s attitude toward Turkey and how identity was used in Turkey’s search for alternatives. The chapter uses statements by various political leaders and public figures (journalists, representatives, scholars, and the heads of various political parties) pertaining to Turkey’s relations with the region. Statements that advocate diversity in Turkish foreign policy and a new role for Turkey as a reaction to Europe’s attitude or statements that imply solidarity with the new Turkic republics based on ethnicity will be regarded as signs of Turkey’s identity-based politics. As explained before, for Turkey’s westernized Kemalist elite, cultural factors for the EU’s rejection of Turkey’s application carry very important implications. The reason behind this is that membership in the EU is also seen as the confirmation of the validity of Kemalist reforms. That is why it is important to analyze cultural factors, especially the religious ones, in the EU’s rejection because that is the only area that Turkish political leaders cannot make any change.

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A. CULTURE AND IDENTITY IN TURKISH-EUROPEAN RELATIONS Turkey’s position in the West was long defined by its geographical position vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. In fact, it was the Soviet threat that provided the main rationale for Turkey’s inclusion in Western alliances. During the Cold War, Turkey’s role was defined as a buffer state against the Soviet Union. This association was valued in Turkey too because it was perceived as the realization of “a long and deeply held Turkish aspiration to be considered as a European nation.” 19 Even though the Western powers, especially the Europeans, viewed Turkey’s inclusion cautiously at the beginning, the increased importance of security concerns encouraged them to waive their objections, especially the economic and cultural ones. This, in turn, would lead to the belief in Turkey that Turkey had been finally recognized as a European state. The end of the Cold War and the removal of the Soviet threat, however, diminished Turkey’s strategic importance for the West and “raised fundamental questions about the future of the NATO and Turkey’s role in European security and defense policy.” 20 Since it was the Cold War structures that forced the West to confirm Turkey’s European status, the collapse of these structures brought about new questions concerning Turkey’s place in the West in general. As for Turkey’s relations with the EU, the social, political and cultural incompatibilities between Turkey and Europe were magnified throughout the 1980s and the 1990s. While Turkey’s relations with the EU in the 1970s encountered economic difficulties, political and cultural problems took precedence in the following decades. Especially in the 1990s, cultural problems came to dominate Turkish-EU relations and “the discussion has been extended to Turkish culture—particularly its Islamic dimension.”21 Therefore, any attempt to analyze Turkish-EU relations in this period should take cultural factors into consideration. The European Union is in fact a political project and “promotes cultural commonality,”22 and within the European Union, issues of cultural compatibility and cultural integration have been often emphasized.23 “What the EU’s founders desired was an eventual political union among states that shared similar cultures, ideals, and institutions.”24 Jacques Delors, for example, argued that “the maintenance of regional cultural homogeneity is crucial to Europe’s ability to play a concerted global role” and ”…its unity must be based on a cultural project.”25 Since Christianity is one of the most important common bonds among the EU members, the

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statement can be interpreted as that “membership of the EU is open only to countries of a Judeo-Christian identity.”26 Analyzed from the cultural viewpoint, the rejection of Turkey’s application by the EU based on economic factors looks less convincing, especially in the face of their eagerness to admit poor Eastern European countries as members. “The real reason lies in the ascendancy of an integrationist-federalist project in Europe based on a cultural definition of the region over looser definitions tied to the economic-free trade rationale.”27 Many observers in Turkey and abroad argued that the state of the Turkish economy does not pose too great an obstacle for Turkey’s integration with the European Union “though, in the eyes of many Europeans, the free circulation of Turks may.” 28 The reason for this is that when Turkey signed the Ankara Agreement with the EU in 1963 it also opened up to the “European system of states in order to gain recognition as a European country. Ironically, in opening up to the European system of states…Turkey has revealed aspects of identity which are incompatible with European culture.” 29 The most important effect of Turkey’s opening up was the influx of Turkish immigrant workers into Europe—mainly Germany—who created a community segregated from the rest of the host society. Especially, religious practices by the Turks in various European cities increased the concerns about the compatibility of Turkish culture with that of Europe.30 A closer examination reveals that cultural issues hinder the development of a closer relationship between Turkey and Europe. Many in Europe believe that “in a cultural and historical perspective the Turks are not really Europeans and that Turkey is not integral part of Europe,”31 a perspective that goes back to the Middle Ages. During the course of European identity-creation “the ‘Turk’ and the Ottoman Empire were assigned the role of the ‘other,’ which was by definition that of the ‘non-European.’”32 During the Enlightenment period, “the Turks became the mirror of Europe… Long observation of the Turk helped to establish features which were thought to make Europeans distinctive.”33 During the course of the enlargement debate within the EU “it is only with regard to Turkey that the “cultural issue” is mentioned as a problematic factor.”34 Many in Europe believe that Turks have a different culture from Europe and would not fit into the Community. ‘Here, foremost in the minds of many Europeans is the idea that because the Turks are Muslims their values, attitudes and behavior patterns would be unsuited to smooth absorption into the Community.” 35 This point is often stressed by many EU officials and in many political circles in Europe. The Belgian

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member of the European Parliament Raymonde Dury, for example, argued that ‘even though Turkey is a vital part of Europe, its cultural identity differs from that of the Community.”36 Here, the most important concern in the minds of Europeans was Turkey’s Muslim identity. For many Europeans, the definition of European identity derives largely from its cultural and religious heritage and as a European statesman argued “Europe can best stay together if it remains white and Christian.” 37 The argument was that the EU would encounter serious problems if they accepted a large Muslim state. The most explicit statement was that of Wilfred Maartens, a former Prime Minister of Belgium, who said, “Turkey is not a candidate to become a member of the European Union, short-term or long-term.”38 The Union of European Christian Democrats also emphasized Turkey’s unsuitability to the EU due to cultural differences arguing, “the EU is in fact a civilizational project."39 The differences in perceptions pertaining to Turkey’s suitability in the European cultural arena did not occur only between Turkey and the EU but also among different groups within Turkey. The debate about national identity and the course of foreign policy that Turkey should take centered around three competing conceptions: pro-European, Islamist, and nationalist. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the Turkic republics in Central Asia and the Caucasus and the increasing electoral support for the Muslim sentiment in Turkey gave Islamists and nationalists an opportunity to press for new foreign policy orientations outside the West. Nationalists under the banner of the Nationalist Action Party (NAP) of Alparslan Turkes took an anti-EU position and argued that membership in the EU would result in losing Turkey’s national values and sovereignty.40 Instead, they advocated closer relationship with the newly emerging Turkic republics in Central Asia with whom Turkey shares close ethnic, religious, and linguistic ties.41 In a speech at the Turkish Grand National Assembly, the leader of the NAP Alparslan Turkes commented that “Turkish language is spoken by 200 million people. This means that there are 200 million Turks in the world. We should try to create unity in our alphabet with these republics. If this is realized it will make a great contribution to our ideal ‘unity in language, thought, and action.’” 42 Islamists, for their part, argued that the EU is a socio-political integration model and Turkey should not be in it: The EU is an integration model towards the creation of the United States of Europe based on Christian-Western culture.

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Turkey is a Muslim country. To become a part of this kind of integration means that we will lose our political, cultural, and social values. It means that we will transfer our sovereign rights to a Catholic European Union. Turkey can establish a new power based on Islam stretching from Central Asia, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Turkey, and the Middle East to Malaysia.43 The westernized political leaders, on the other hand, were trying to prove Turkey’s cultural suitability to Europe. Turkish President Turgut Ozal, the architect of Turkey’s application in the EU, argued that the EU’s rejection mainly stemmed from cultural prejudice against Muslim Turkey: Turkey has been and is in Europe. That is sure. We are a member of all European organizations…But is Turkey of Europe? One may say that this question should have been answered before concluding the Association Agreement. Indeed, it was answered positively at that time…Although westernizing reforms to a great extent transformed Turkey into a European country, primarily politically and economically, the question remains whether Turkey is culturally European as well…In fact, the Agreement of Ankara has already answered “yes” to the question of whether Turkey can belong to the Community as a European country.44 Ozal further argued that Turkey identified her future with that of Europe by deciding to join the European Union. In his view, Turkey’s culture, institutions, regime, and economy are all sufficiently comparable with those of Europe. For him, the real reason lays in Turkey’s religion: “Some in the West earnestly object to the membership of a country whose religion is Islam.” 45 When the EU’s decision to reject Turkey’s application came in 1989, many in the country responded it with exaggerated emotions, which Prof. Dr. Korkut Boratav calls ‘collective schizophrenia.’ He suggested that instead of acting with an inferiority complex, Turkey should seek for an answer to the question of if Turkey can be European without being in Europe. “If we once accept the fact that we can solve our problems with democracy and enlightenment on our own” he continued, “why not?”46 But the mood in the country was best described by Ilhan Selcuk, a leading Kemalist journalist: “We had been looking forward to the day we were accepted as European. We could not imagine a life outside Europe. But, we were excluded from Europe.

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[Turkish political leaders] who had been dreaming about Europe are in shock now.” 47 As explained in the previous chapter, the EU’s Luxembourg Summit was the turning point in Turkish EU relations. Despite the existence of serious problems in Turkey’s relations with the EU, for Turkish political leaders, the EU was still the only way to confirm Turkey’s European identity. However, the Luxembourg Summit made it clear that the EU, without stating explicitly, was not willing to grant membership, and thus approve Turkey’s European identity, in the near future. This decision intensified Turkey’s search for alternatives, which had been going on since 1989 when the EU rejected Turkey’s application. It is the purpose of the next section to analyze Turkish identity crisis and its implications for Turkish foreign policy. B. NATIONALISM AND TURKEY’S RELATIONS WITH CENTRAL ASIA The first sign of this new foreign policy orientation came in 1989 when the EU rejected Turkey’s application for full membership. Ali Dincer, the spokesman of the Republican Peoples Party at the Turkish Grand National Assembly, for example, argued that even though Turkey had fulfilled most of the requirements, the EU was trying to maximize its gains without fulfilling its own obligations. He suggested that “Turkey has a very important potential in the Caucasus, the Middle East and Central Asia due to its close relations with these regions. Turkey should use this weapon against the EU and other economic and political powers.”48 The foreign policy behavior of Turkey during the period between 1989–1993 suggests that Turkish governments at the time were heavily influenced by the idea that Turkey can play a major role in Central Asia. As Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel argued, Turkey can and should assume the leadership of a giant “Turkic world stretching from the Adriatic Sea to China.”49 This behavior was in most part motivated by the EU’s negative response to Turkey’s application for membership in 1989. For many Turks who were disappointed with Europe “the opportunity to assert a leadership role in a major world region which was also the birthplace of the Turkish nation seemed irresistible.” 50 In spite of common historical, cultural, linguistic and ethnic links, Turkey’s approach to the outside Turks issue had been based on the Kemalist principle of non-interference whose origins goes back to the establishment of the Turkish republic in the

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1920s. Until the fragmentation of the Soviet Union, Turkey had paid little attention to these people. Developments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, however, led Turkey to reexamine its traditional policy regarding outside Turks. Disappointed by the EU and looking for new alternatives, Turkey became actively involved in Central Asia. It was the first to recognize the independence of all of the Central Asian republics on December 16,1991. With the decline of the Soviet Union’s central authority, Turkey began to expand its political and economic ties with these new republics. As Yasemin Celik points out, “Ankara was eager to define a new role for itself in the post-cold war period” 51 by using its connections with the region. Although Turkey was aware of the potential economic advantages in the region, its initial response was affected to a large degree by ideological concerns. The rediscovery of this Central Asia populated mostly by the people of Turkic origin appealed in Turkey to some benign form of Pan-Turkism. This idea was reinforced by the European Union’s rebuff for full membership in the Union. Psychologically, the emergence of the region provided Turkish people with a sense of pride in belonging to a wider ethno-cultural entity. This new opportunity and “rising nationalist feeling in Turkey encouraged Turkish political leaders and the public alike to think in terms of Turkic solidarity and brotherhood.”52 The Turks suddenly believed that they were not alone in the world and that by embracing these other Turks, they would become politically important in the regional and global politics because of its cultural and ethnic links with the region. Erdal Inonu, the head of the Social Democrat Peoples Party (SDPP) and the state minister in the coalition government, argued that: The profound changes in our northern neighbor will have very important consequences on the Turkic republics as well as on Turkey. Despite all the uncertainties, these new developments are bringing new opportunities and visions to our foreign policy. These changes are also ushering in a new period in which Turkey’s role and political weight will be increased dramatically in the region and in the world.53 The implication of these initial expectations was that Turkish officials had in mind a ‘benign form of Pan-Turkism’ that emphasizes the establishment of a Turkic Commonwealth rather than its more extreme version that refers to the political unity of Turkic peoples—a Turkic Empire. 54 “In a burst of euphoria,

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promoted in part by the interest of the leadership of the Turkic republics,”55 Turkey started a series of intensive diplomatic visits that resulted in the signing of economic, commercial agreements as well as cultural exchanges. Certain Turkish ministries and the Nationalist Action Party were especially active in promoting the idea of cultural Pan-Turkism during the period.56 “Aspiring to become the cultural Mecca of the Turkic-speaking world, Turkey began flooding the Central Asian republics with journals, books, and television programs”57 Moreover, despite its militantly secular character, Turkey sent around twenty thousand copies of Koran and some religious officers to these republics to prevent Iran and other Islamic countries to exert influence on the region.58 Turkey’s approach to these republics during the period 1989– 1993 suggests that many foreign policy decisions regarding Turkey’s role in the region were made in most part according to “fanciful notions of ethnic solidarity” 59 rather than mutual interests. Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel visited all of the Turkic republics in the region and he included the leader of the Nationalist Action Party Alparslan Turkes, whose ideology was based on PanTurkism, in his delegation.60 Even though “he gave assurances that Turkey had no Pan-Turkic aspirations” he also added “there was nothing wrong in Turks in Turkey declaring that Central Asia was the land of their forefathers and that their culture and history originated there.”61 “He referred to Central Asia and Azerbaijan as a new community, ‘Eurasia,’ populated by Turks. While Turkey would not administer this community of Turks, it would ‘lead’ them ‘to the world.’” 62 Later when he was reminded that Russia was disturbed by his remarks he continued: A Turkish world from the Adriatic to China will not be against anybody. Why are they [Russians] bothered when we say we are brothers? This is not Pan-Turkism or chauvinism. Where is chauvinism in saying “we are brothers” to those who think the same, eat the same, and drink the same as we do?63 Other political leaders and leading academics have made similar remarks. In the opening speech of the first Turkic Summit convened on December 30–31, 1992, President Turgut Ozal argued that Turkey and the new Turkic republics should work together to “make the 21st century a Turkish century.” 64 Prof. Dr. Erol Manisali even proposed, “the formation of a Community of Turkic Republics based on military, economic, political, and cultural grounds.”65 Alparslan Turkes promoted a scheme “which would establish a High Council of Turkic Republics in which the

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Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Foreign Ministers of the member states would meet several times a year under a revolving presidency.” 66 A representative from the Nationalist Action Party, Muharrem Semsek, also suggested that Turkey would be better off by establishing closer ties with Turkic countries: “If Turkey had spent much less time and effort that it had been spending to enter the EU for these republics, it could have created a political and economic union against the EU. Only then will the 21st century be the century of the Turks.”67 The idea that Turkey should assume a new role in Central Asia as an alternative to the EU did not only come from the nationalists in the country. Disappointed by the EU’s attitude towards Turkey, many people including secular Kemalists and Islamists, suggested that Turkey should pursue a foreign policy independently of Europe and the West. The head of the nationalist/Islamist Grand Union Party, Muhsin Yazicioglu, for example, argued that because of her location and cultural ties with the new Turkic republics, “Turkey has a great opportunity to improve her economy and political position without Europe.”68 Ismail Cem, a representative from the Kemalist Republican Peoples Party, commented on the same issue in 1990: “Europe does not want us and does not want to accept us. What should Turkey do? Turkey can be an important power in the Middle East. There are 1 billion people in the world who share the same customs and religion with us. But Turkey has one more unique aspect: it is secular and democratic. We should defend this model and use it as a foreign policy weapon.” 69 Even Kamran Inan of the Motherland Party, which had made Turkey’s application for membership in the EU in 1987, argued that European Union was not the only alternative that Turkey had: “Turkey’s membership in the European Union is not a necessary condition. Today, you can go from Vienna to China by speaking Turkish. We have to develop and spread this idea and make it a fundamental principle of Turkish foreign policy. Turkey has the opportunity to establish its own union.”70 The same point made by the head of the Motherland Party, Mesut Yilmaz, who argued that Turkey’s priority should be improve relations and develop cooperation with the new republics with which “[Turkey] shares a common language, religion and race. It is not exaggeration to say that a new opportunity for Turkey to become a regional power is emerging.”71 As the head of the Democratic Left Party, Bulent Ecevit, pointed out that Turkey’s racial and religious ties with Central Asia provided Turkey with an opportunity to establish a union with these republics: “Today, Central Asian republics have these kind of tendencies and Turkey has the potential to lead these

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republics. Turkey should formulate its foreign policy according to these developments not according to membership in the EU.”72 It should be clear from the above statements that Turkey’s foreign policy in Central Asia was motivated in most part by Europe’s attitude towards Turkey. It was a search for an alternative to the European Union and was mainly based on racial identity. It was thought that Turkey would gain a lot from this relationship but the definition of interest rested on Turkish identity. At the time, Turkish brotherhood and solidarity were the main themes in Turkish foreign policy discourse. Another sign of nationalist sentiment as a potent force in Turkish foreign policy was evident in Turkey’s position on the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. Even though Turkey at first adopted a strict neutrality, it did not last long in the face of the growing pressure from the opposition political parties and the public. Huge anti-Armenian demonstrations were held in Turkey demanding “an intervention on Azerbaijan’s behalf. The government naturally could not disregard these demands from the public.”73 President Turgut Ozal during his visit to Central Asia even argued that “dropping a few shells on Armenia and sending a brigade of soldiers would be enough to stop Armenian aggression.”74 As a result, the government abandoned its previous neutrality and took a proAzerbaijani stance. One of Turkey’s most ambitious projects in the region involved the creation of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) scheme on June 25, 1992, that included Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine as members. The main goal of the BSEC was to strengthen economic cooperation among member states based on free market principles. Turkey hoped to set an alternative to the EU and diversify its foreign policy by initiating the BSEC. However, the internal and bilateral problems within and between member states constrained the successful implementation of the scheme. By the end of 1992, it was clear that Turkey had acted emotionally rather than rationally toward these republics without any careful examination of their situation. First of all, Turkey’s use of ‘Pan-Turkic’ slogans scared these republics since it carried ‘imperialist and racist’ connotations. As the first Turkic Summit showed, Central Asian leaders were especially cautious not to antagonize Russia with whom they still maintained important political and economic ties. They were also willing to establish close relations with other states that offered them support. The search for different economic and political opportunities by these states

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was hastened when it became clear that Turkey was unable to give them the economic support it had promised earlier. For their own part, the Central Asian republics remained “cautious about reducing their leverage by embracing external partnership too onesidedly.”75 Second, Turkey’s relations with Azerbaijan, which is the closest to Turkey ethnically, culturally, and linguistically, were strained when Turkey supported pro-Turkish Ebulfaz Elchibey against proRussian Heydar Aliyev, who replaced Elchibey after a coup in 1993. Aliyev criticized Turkey for intervening in the domestic affairs of Azerbaijan, and Elchibey for his extremely pro-Turkish policies. He argued that “we cannot afford to cut off our relations with Russia with whom we have been living together for 2000 years. We have economic and other interests. Like Turkey, we will establish good relations with every country.”76 He clearly indicated that Azerbaijan did not need a ‘big brother.’ Finally, it appeared that Turkey’s ethnic ties with these republics were exaggerated. According to a poll conducted by SIAR in July 1993, only 1.7 per cent of the population in Uzbekistan, 1.4 per cent in Kyrgyzstan, 2.3 per cent in Kazakhstan, and 32.9 per cent in Azerbaijan identified themselves as Turkic. However, 65.6per cent of the population in Uzbekistan, 47.3 per cent in Krygyzstan, 27.4 per cent in Kazakhstan, and 26.9 per cent in Azerbaijan identified themselves as Muslims.77 Turkey could have been acted more cautiously in her relations with these republics and cooperated with the other regional states for its own interest instead of alienating them. For example, except for a twelve kilometer border with the Azeri enclave of Nakhichevan, Turkey does not share a common border with any of the Central Asian Republics. Therefore, to benefit from the natural resources of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan, Turkey was “to some extent dependent upon regional partners in developing infrastructural ties.”78 Another mistake by Turkish political leaders was their attempt to “replace Russia as the new ‘Big Brother’” and their “desire to expand their influence in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia at the expense of Russia.”79 Especially Turkey’s policy towards Chechnya in their war against Russia provoked Russian fears. In return, “Russians were quick to play the Kurdish card in efforts to persuade Turkey not to support the Chechens.” 80 The tension between Russia and Turkey increased when Turkey learned that there was a possibility that Moscow would allow the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) to establish a parliament in exile in Moscow. Although “the conference was not officially recognized by

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the Yeltsin government…members of the Russian Duma agreed to host the third international conference of the Kurdish Parliamentin-Exile (KPE) in October 30–November 1”81 thus, giving the KPE semi-official recognition. It was soon realized that ‘a gigantic Turkic world’ dreams did not serve Turkey’s interests, but further antagonized Russia.82 The rhetoric used by the past governments was heavily criticized in the following years. For example, Turkey’s new Prime Minister Tansu Ciller, who replaced Suleyman Demirel as the head of the True Path Party (TPP) when he was elected as President in 1993, “reportedly criticized Demirel’s past use of slogans which referred to an enlarged Turkish world, noting that such pronunciations had undermined the trust between Turkey and Russia.” 83 When Turkish political leaders realized that the new regional tendencies could not constitute an alternative to the EU, they began to look for ways to solidify Turkey’s relations with the EU with the aim of full membership. Turkey’s first attempt in this direction was to convince European leaders that Turkey’s Islamic identity and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism would not constitute too great a problem in her incorporation into Europe. President Turgut Ozal argued that Turkey’s secular character is “one of the fundamental indicators of Turkey’s European character”84 and added that religious fundamentalism among Turkish workers in Europe and in Turkey is provoked by “the circles opposing Turkey’s entry into the Community…under the pretext of religious freedom, while at the same time criticizing Turkey for renouncing secularism.”85 Ozal commented that since Christianity is a social cement of integration in Europe Turkey’s return to Islam may cast further doubt on Turkey’s belonging to Europe given the historic hostility between the two religions. However, “if the religious reinvigoration in question is faithful to the One True God, I do not understand how and why it should exclude Turkey from Europe.”86 Kamran Inan of the Motherland Party emphasized the same point and argued that the problem does not arise from Turkey’s Muslim identity because Turkey is the one who wants to cooperate with Christian Europe. If this cooperation proves successful “it will set the best example that the Christian world can cooperate with a Muslim state.” 87 This is important for Europe’s stability because as Bayram F.Dayanikli of the Democratic Left Party, commented, “the exclusion of Turkey will carry cultural clashes into Europe.” 88 It was often emphasized that Turkey being the only Muslim but secular and European oriented country could:

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act as a buffer to militant Islam. Like the ‘Red Menace’ of the Cold War era, the ‘Green Peril’—green being the color of Islam —is described as a cancer spreading around the globe undermining the legitimacy of the Western values and threatening the security of the Western nations…[Turkey] is perceived by many in the West as the bastion against the Green Peril, as it was once perceived as the bastion against the Red Menace.89 Another attempt by political leaders in Ankara was the use of Turkey’s connections with the Central Asian Republics to increase Turkey’s declining geostrategic importance with the purpose of securing full membership in the EU. Worried about the increasing influence of Russia and Iran, “Western officials were particularly anxious that the Central Asians should take Turkey rather than Iran as their model.”90 They believed that Turkey, with its Westernstyle secular democratic form of government and market economy, could serve as a role model for these republics. 91 Another consideration in the West’s calculation was that adoption of the Turkish model would also inhibit Islamic forces from gaining the upper political hand by representing a non-fundamentalist option for these newly liberated Islamic societies. The EU’s external affairs commissioner, Frans Andriessen, once suggested that “the EC should lend money to these republics to buy goods from Turkey, as a way of tying them to ‘secular’ Turkey rather than ‘fundamentalist’ Iran.”92 American officials shared the similar concerns and hoped that “Turkey’s reconciliation of modern Western values with Islam will provide an attractive model for these republics.”93 It was also argued that Turkey is not only a model for these republics, but is also “a moderating and stabilizing factor in the vast region extending from the Adriatic coasts to the Chinese border in the Far East, and from North Africa to the Middle East.”94 Turkish officials opportunistically embraced these considerations and often spoke of Turkey’s greater importance between Europe and Asia. Prime Minister Tansu Ciller frequently emphasized Turkey’s potential role as a ‘bridge’ and tried to convince European leaders that it can serve as a strategic link between Europe and Asia.95 She argued shortly before the NATO summit held in Brussels in January 1994 that “Turkey is the bridge to peace, a bridge to the independent countries that have separated from Russia, a bridge for Western values in the Middle East.”96 After 1993, pro-European leaders would repeatedly underline Turkey’s significance as a bridge between East and West and the guarantor of Western values

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in the region in order to secure full admission into the EU. The argument was that if Turkey was supported by the EU it would contribute to Europe’s and the United States’ policies both in the Middle East and Central Asia and that “if Turkey fails, peace will fail in Europe.”97 Therefore, as the Undersecretary of Foreign Ministry, Onur Oymen, commented, “joining the EU would make not just another member but one of the most important members of Western Europe.”98 As one observer argues “the bridge motif has been offered as an answer to Turkey’s identity problem in general.”99 This was apparent in the words of former Foreign Minister Mumtaz Soysal: This is the most opportune time to rid ourselves of the complex of being considered Europeans…We are Turks from Turkey. Turkey is a country with one bank in Europe and the other in Asia. The same thing can be said of our geography and culture. We must realize and accept this as such and we must turn this embarrassment into a sense of superiority. 100 Later, even the most ardent advocates of Kemalism and westernization made the same point and argued that Turkey should look for alternatives in which it can assume a prominent role. Journalist Oztin Akguc from the Kemalist daily Cumhuriyet argued that “Turkey should establish close economic and political ties with Russia and Japan instead of trying to be a third class member in the European Union.” 101 Another Kemalist journalist in the same newspaper, Ilhan Selcuk, also suggested that Turkey should not be a country that could be abused and scorned by Europe. “Eurasia with ample energy sources is very important for the West and Turkey in this geography is not in the periphery but in the center. It should get ready for this role.”102 The argument was that Turkey was a cultural bridge between Eastern and Western civilizations, and because of its unique position among different geographical and historical cultures it had produced a new cultural synthesis.103 “Turkey as the model of a Western state, which combines modern capitalism and secular democracy with a moderate brand of Islam, could find a credible role for itself as a bridge between the two cultures.”104 As Ian O. Lesser points out: The notion of a bridge suggests a country balanced between East and West. In fact, Turkish attitudes remain heavily weighed toward the western political and economic system, to

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the extent that “alternative” opportunities in the Middle East and around the Black Sea are often promoted as vehicles for increasing Turkey’s value to Europe and the United States. 105 The normalization of the relations between Turkey and the EU led to the reactivation of the Association Council in 1992. On June 6, the Commission formulated its specific proposals, which primarily suggested the establishment of a customs union for industrial products by the end of 1995. The understanding on the Turkish part—or what was told to the public—was that the completion of the customs union with the EU would eventually lead to full membership. The Council’s decision in 6 March 1995 to start the customs union with Turkey in the beginning of 1996, therefore, was greeted with a great enthusiasm by both the government and the public, despite the apparent disadvantages of a customs union without being a full member. Developments in the following years, however, would show that the EU had no intention to grant full membership to Turkey. Especially, the Luxembourg Summit made it very clear for Turkish political leaders that the EU has no place for Turkey in the foreseeable future. The first reaction to the EU came from Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz, who threatened to withdraw Turkey’s application for full membership if the EU did not review its decision in six months. Deputy Prime Minister, Bulent Ecevit, on the other hand said that it is not the government’s official stance on the issue and argued that the application for full membership is “Turkey’s indispensable right.” 106 However, he criticized the EU for intervening in Turkey’s domestic and foreign policies and for placing prejudiced and false accusations on Turkey. 107 Foreign Minister Ismail Cem also commented that “Turkey can undertake a different mission in the changing world. Instead of being in the periphery country, it can gain a position in the core.” 108 The most important implication of Cem’s new foreign policy goal was to place Turkey in the center of the Caucasus and the Middle East by taking advantage of Turkey’s geographical position. Cem criticized the EU for not being able to be a “global power. The EU is an inward-looking organization, which has been approaching the changing world with conservative methods and understandings.” 109 As explained above, in the face of the rejection by the EU, Turkish political leaders increasingly emphasized that Turkey does not need Europe’s confirmation to be European and it should get used to the idea of being European without Europe. Foreign Minister Ismail Cem gave the signs of the course of Turkey’s new foreign policy when he said, “Turkey will take advantage of every

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opportunity presented to it by its history, culture, political characteristics, and the changing international system.” 110 Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit also stressed the need to improve Turkey’s relations with the United States and East Asia instead of Europe: “There are Canada, the USA, Japan, China, India, and Russia. If one door is shut to Turkey’s face, another one will open. Recently, we signed very important agreements with Russians. There is a bigger Europe in the east of Europe in terms of population and size and it is integrated into Asia. It is wrong to tie Turkey’s fate only to the EU. There are other choices.” 111 He also urged that it is the time for Turkey to get rid of European complex.112 C. IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION One may argue that instability and uncertainty in Turkish foreign policy in the 1990s occurred as a result of the shift in the structure of the international system in general. However, Turkey’s interests in the Turkic republics of the Central Asia and the Muslim nations in the Middle East suggest that Turkish foreign policy was mainly motivated by identity concerns. Turkey’s policy toward these regions was not an independent foreign policy choice, but the result of the EU’s rejection of Turkey’s application. In other words, in the face of the failure to seal Turkey’s Europeanness by joining the EU, it was a search for a new role and identity. As argued before, states, like individuals, hold multiple identities that inform them who they are and what they should do in a certain context. “If they all pressed upon us equally at every moment we surely should be confused, but fortunately most identities are activated selectively depending on the situations in which we find ourselves.” 113 The end of the Cold War permitted different identities in the system to emerge: Turkish and Muslim. These are also the main pillars of Turkey’s national identity. This situation coincided with the period when Turkey’s western identity was questioned seriously by the West. Rationalists may argue that those identities were chosen and used in light of Turkey’s interests, “but those interests presuppose still deeper identities.”114 Turkey’s links with the West in general and with Europe in particular have been the major component of the country’s external relations since the establishment of the Republic in the 1920s. From the beginning, the most important objective of the Republican elite has been to take a part in the ‘western civilization’ and gain recognition as a ‘western state.’ The Cold War structures

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helped Turkey realize most of its objectives and in the late 1940s and the 1950s Turkey participated in every Western security and political organizations, NATO being the most important. This trend continued throughout the 1960s and the 1970s as Turkey wanted to finalize its “Western/or more precisely ‘European,’ status as a member of the European Union that would complete the economic dimension of her alliance with the West. For this purpose, Turkey applied to the EU in 1959 and signed the Ankara Agreement whereby it gained an associate member status. The West somewhat accepted Turkey’s European credentials, thanks to the Cold War and the immediate Soviet danger. The inclusion of Turkey was in most part determined by strategic considerations and Turkey’s role was defined as a buffer state against the Soviet Union. While the West and the EU “wanted to bind closer to the West, a country that was deemed to be an indispensable ally in countering the strategic threat from the east,” for Turkish political elite membership in the EU “was the final objective that would make Turkey’s ‘westernization’ irreversible.”115 This was the logical conclusion of Turkey’s modernization efforts seen as “linear movement toward attachment to a greater Europe.” 116 Turkey tied itself to the West and acted as the guarantor of Western interests in its neighboring regions. As a result, Turkey alienated itself from its neighbors in the North and the South. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, altered the bipolar international system and greatly reduced Turkey’s strategic importance. The events taking place in the immediate neighborhood of Turkey coincided with Turkey’s application and the EU’s following rejection as a full member in the EU. If one reason for the rejection of Turkey’s application was its diminished strategic importance another was the incompatibility of Turkish culture, especially its Muslim identity, with that of Europe, which started to define ‘Europeanness’ more on cultural rather than economic grounds. European leaders on many occasions stated the impossibility of Turkish membership in the EU for its cultural identity differs from that of Europe, which is not willing to embrace a Muslim country of Turkey’s size. In this respect, Turkey was not a European country and would not be in the future. The EU’s new approach was apparent when it did not put Turkey on the EU agenda for enlargement and defined Turkey as ‘an associate neighboring country’ at the Madrid Summit of December 1995.117 G.L. Lewis summarizes this new tendency as follows:

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Nowadays, the objectors have stopped concentrating on economics, preferring to dwell on the Turks’ unsuitability on various other grounds; they are insufficiently democratic, they are unkind to terrorists, they were beastly to minorities, they invaded Cyprus in 1974, they are turning to fundamentalism just like the Persians and they do not share the culture of true Europeans. Of all these arguments, the last two are the current favorites.118 Located in the middle of dramatic changes and constantly rebuffed by the EU, Turkey attempted to cure its recurring identity crisis by assuming the leadership role in the Turkic Central Asian republics that gained their independence from the disintegrated Soviet Union. However, the failed attempts in this direction proved that Turkey had become so dependent on the West in the past years that it could not formulate its own foreign policy independently of the West. It also became clear that domestic opposition in the form of nationalism and political Islam placed more constrains on the formulation of Turkish foreign policy. Rather than carefully examining the possible costs and benefits of its action, Turkey acted more emotionally than rationally based on nationalist discourse whose repercussions prevented Turkey from using its unique position to its advantage. As a result Turkey turned back to the West and tried to gain its strategic importance by embracing the idea that Turkey can still serve the interests of the West as a bridge between the East and the West in terms of culture and geography and can become an attractive role model for these republics against the militant Islam. As Kemal H.Karpat puts it: The features that make Turkey attractive as a role model were all adopted from the West. In other words, the West expected to use Turkey as a relay station to transfer these acquired western values and modes of life to the newly emerging cluster of Islamic countries in the former USSR. Had these Muslim countries of Central Asia been Christian as in the case of the Baltics—or had the West found another Muslim country to act as a better model—Turkey might have been promptly discarded.119 Even though the idea of Turkey’s role between the West and the East as a ‘bridge’ was introduced as a means to overcome Turkish identity crisis, for many Turks “the European section of this ‘bridge’…seems more deeply grounded in the west than the east. Turkish public figures of the mainstream have been united in the

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view that Turkey is European and western and this cannot simply be attributed to political expediency, expecting western political and economic support.” 120 This policy was expressed in the view that belonging to west means to be part of the civilized world and as Teoman Erel argued, Turkey will try to “stick to Europe despite Europe’s dislike of her.”121 As Turkey’s official spokesman for foreign affairs, Omer Akbel, once noted “even in the worst of times, [Turkey was] the sick man of Europe, not Asia.” 122 Turkey’s unstable position in the international system and in its relations with the West and its neighbors in the 1990s have been to a large extent the result of its identity crisis and the confusion about to which part of the world it belongs. This confusion in most part was placed upon it by its geographical position and its place in different civilizations. Since the founding of the Republic, Turkish leaders have sought to place Turkey in the Western system of states through intensive modernization and westernization programs. Turkey’s relations with the West have proved that that was not enough to be accepted as a Western nation. Also, in the 1990s, westernization is not a simple act of will anymore as is evident in the rise of Islam that became a political force. As will be discussed in chapter 6, over the years, political Islam has proved to be strong enough to dominate Turkey’s foreign policy discourse. In conclusion, Turkey first “needs to make up its mind about whether or not it belongs to the West. Despite a very strong sense of national identity…many Turks seem genuinely uncertain about this.”123 If Turkey can take advantage of its synthesis of different cultures through “loose arrangements with several ‘clubs’ or regional arrangements,”124 it would be more conducive to its economic and political interests than obsessively committing itself to any one direction.

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Chapter 6 Turkey and the Muslim Middle East

After the creation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the political elite under the leadership of Ataturk undertook a massive set of reforms to modernize and westernize the country. The fundamental aim of the new political elite was to build a new identity (i.e. Western) for both the state and the people. A key feature of the state-building process involved the elimination of Islam in the definition of the new Turkish State. For this purpose, the Republican leaders secularized the state and undertook religious, social, and cultural reforms that aimed at cutting off Turkey’s ties with its Islamic past. The implication of these socio-political and structural reforms for Turkey’s relations with its Muslim Middle Eastern neighbors was that Turkey should stay aloof from Middle Eastern affairs. Except for a brief period in the 1950s, Turkey kept a low profile in the Middle East by introducing the principle of non-interference and remained distant from Middle Eastern affairs. Over the years, Turkey “has made no effort to improve either bilateral or multilateral cooperation, although its historical disposition and geographic location would seem to compel it.”1 Even during the period of rapprochement in the mid–1960s when Turkey started having problems with its Western allies and the national interest dominated the political agenda, Turkey’s actions towards the Middle East remained limited, and later in the 1990s, further deteriorated. The purpose of this chapter is to explain Turkey’s rather cool and unstable relations with the Arab Middle East despite “the profound cultural and historical ties which, one would assume, unite them.”2 However, “histo ry and religion, the two should be common denominators, are in fact the ones that distance Turkey from the Middle East.”3 The set of factors that have conditioned and still continue to condition Turkey’s relations with the Middle East includes historical misconceptions, political and social developments within Turkey, and Turkey’s alignment with the West and mainly with

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Israel. The chapter evaluates these factors in the context of the Turkish State’s identity and how it conditioned Turkey’s relations with the Middle East. It further argues that even when the national interest required Turkey to maintain close relations with its Arab neighbors in the 1960s, the definition of the interest was based on the identity that the founders of the Turkish Republic had tried to build half a century ago. A. TURKS AND ARABS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: THE DEVELOPMENT OF MISPERCEPTIONS AND IMAGES As Herrmann and Fisherkeller put it “the study of images…is a valuable avenue down which to pursue international relations theory” 4 since they can generate and affect the political attitudes and behaviors of actors.5 Images can be defined as “a subject’s cognitive construction or mental representation of another actor [or himself) in the political world.”6 Human beings form images early in life and “view each other through the mirror of [these] images. People belonging to different national, ethnic, racial, religious or ideological groups are likely to see each other in the light of the stereotypes acquired at home, in school or in public life during their formative years.” 7 Historical experiences with others may generate positive or negative images of the self and the other and accordingly determine behavior. That is why any study in Turkish-Arab relations must include the images that the Arabs and the Turks formed about each other since “Turks and Arabs continue to view each other in the light of their acquired images.”8 The beginning of the relationship between the Turks and the Arabs goes back to the ninth century when Turks moved from Central Asia westwards to settle in the Middle East. After having converted to Islam, Turks and Arabs lived together for over a millennium, four hundred years of which was under the Ottoman Empire. As a result of the centuries of “coexistence in the Middle East,” Turks and Arabs “developed certain images and perceptions, misconceptions, and stereotypes about each other.”9 These images and stereotypes have been carried out by generations and reinforced by certain events throughout time and had very important effects on Turkish-Arab relations. Despite cultural and idiosyncratic differences between the Turks and Arabs, they managed to live together for four hundred years under the Ottoman Empire. “The religion of Islam was the greatest unifying force”10 in those years and the common bond between the

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Turks and the Arabs. However, during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, with the influence of nationalism, “the Arabs and the Turks started to think and behave differently about each other”11 because of the spread of nationalist ideas among the Arabs and the Turks. When they both started to measure their achievements not in religious but in nationalist terms, they both attempted to evaluate their common past from this nationalist perspective, which made the differences between them clearer. A survey conducted by US diplomats in Arab countries and in Iran in 1952 describes the Arab (and Iranian) attitudes toward Turkey as “one of resentment and distrust, caused by long-present historical, racial and religious factors.”12 The more nationalist Arab countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt “regard the Turks as ‘oppressors’ [or] ‘colonialists’ while the more religious minded would look upon Turks as renegades of Islam.”13 Because of the Ottoman Empire’s imperial past in the region, the Arabs “carried the image of the ‘brutal, imperialist Turk…into their relations with the new Turkish Republic.”14 Many Arabs still believe that, the Mongols who destroyed the Abbaside Empire, under which the Islamic civilization reached its peak, were ethnic Turks. From this perspective, “the Arabs would see the Turks as ‘intruders’ and worst yet, as ‘enemies’”15 and the destroyers of the Arab civilization.16 Even today, many Arabs hold an image of the Turks as “good fighters but also harsh and savage or ‘barbarous,’ as the Christian West, too, used to call them”17 and blame the Turks for their backwardness. 18 Many Arabs regard the Turks as “domineering, brutal, slow-witted,”19 “ruthless, arrogant, and quick-tempered”20 and believe that the Arabs “have a richer inner world and they are good at fine arts while they argue Turks are not.”21 Many scholars and diplomats on both sides acknowledge the fact that the Arab image of ‘brutal imperialist Turk’ still continues to affect Turkish-Arab relations.22 Another element of antipathy against Turks shared by many Arabs arises from the feeling that “Turks are not good Muslims… After all, they became Muslims about two centuries after Islam was introduced into the world by the agency of Arabs.”23 During the intense secularization and Turkification of the Young Turk era, and later in the Republican period, Turkey’s ‘Western and secular ways were disapproved of by conservative Arabs who regarded it as having abandoned Islam.”24 Especially, Turkish secularism was regarded by many Arabs as a kind of treachery against the Islamic faith and culture.25 For them, Turkey was a country, which “had renounced its Muslim past to adopt a secular constitution and

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Westernized habits of life.” 26 The use of religious elements in the Arabs’ independence movements against imperialism, while Turkey was undertaking secularizing reforms, strengthened this image. 27 Over the years, Turks had become subject to Arab criticisms ranging from being irreligious to being repudiators of Islam. For example, even many years later, “in radio broadcasts Saudi Arabia denounced the secular Turkish Republic and labeled its founder, Ataturk, ‘an enemy of Islam.’” 28 Turks, on the other hand, considered the Arabs “undisciplined, and unreliable” remembering “their poor performance in service with the Ottoman army” and “looked down upon the backwardness of the Arabs.” 29 Many Turks viewed the Arabs as “being habitually secretive, incessantly engaged in intrigues, undependable, and lacking enthusiasm for hard work.”30 Images of the “‘untrustworthy Arab’ and the ‘uncivilized, backward Arab states governed by Shariat law’”31 were common among the Turks. They were proud of their achievements toward Western civilization.32 For many Turkish observers, “since the nineteenth century, the Islamic world seemed in decay and the inflexible traditionalism of the clergy was a source of danger.”33 A prominent Turkish journalist, Ismail Bardakci, for example, wrote in 1982 in daily Tercuman, that the Arabs “could not take any lessons from the Turkish experience and that they could never comprehend Ataturk’s laicism correctly.” Bardakci further argued that the Arabs are caught in endless internal struggle and this is the main reason for “their misery against Israel.”34 The Arab revolt of 1916 reinforced the image of ‘the untrustworthy Arab’ and was seen by many Turks as an act of treason. “For the Turks, it was indeed, extremely disappointing to see the Arabs—their fellow subjects and co-religionists—siding with the enemy, leaders of the Christian West.” 35 This act would have a tremendous effect on Turkish-Arab relations in the years to come. For example, after the creation of the new Turkish State, the Republican leaders, as the former president, Celal Bayar confirmed, “were not disposed to re-establish a close relationship with a nation [the Arabs], which had stabbed the Turkish nation in the back.”36 Some 80 years later, “it is still normal for educated Turks to refer to the experiences of World War I as definitive proof of the essential untrustworthiness of the Arabs.”37 Over the years, Turks turned their back to the Middle East. Desirous of becoming a Western nation and remembering their disappointments concerning especially the Arab countries, Turks “repeated their old proverb ‘neither all the candy from Damascus, nor the face of the

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Arab’ and stayed aloof from the region.” 38 As Turkey drew closer to the West Arab alienation further increased. B. TURKEY AND THE MIDDLE EAST IN THE COLD WAR PERIOD After the creation of the new Turkish Republic in 1923 until the beginning of the Cold War, Turkey followed a policy of indifference towards the Middle East, and to a great extent, was alienated in the region. However, the beginning of the Cold War and Turkey’s alignment with the West and the fundamental political changes within Turkey—the most important being the transition to multiparty politics—changed Turkey’s foreign policy attitude towards the region. After the declaration of the Truman Doctrine in 1947, Turkey closely aligned itself with the West and devised its foreign policy accordingly. As explained in the previous chapter the membership in NATO transformed Turkey from being a ‘sympathizer’ to an ‘actual ally of the West.’ The most important result of this transformation was that Turkey would not be able to pursue its principle of noninvolvement in the Middle East. Especially in the 1950s, Turkey followed an activist foreign policy in the region and did everything possible to incorporate regional countries into Western defense systems against the Soviet Union, mostly at the expense of her relations with regional countries. Although this Western-oriented foreign policy did not encounter serious criticism from both the political elite and the public within the country—because it was in line with the policy of modernization—it became subject to harsh criticisms by the Arabs. Turkey’s decision to join the Western bloc and to side with the West in conflicts of interest between the West and the Middle Eastern nations exacerbated the existing antiTurkish feelings during the first two decades after the Second World War. Especially, Turkey’s recognition of Israel and the establishment of diplomatic links between two countries further deteriorated Turkey’s relations with the Middle East. From the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923 to the end of World War II, Turkey’s relations with the Middle East can be described as the policy of non-interference. Except for a brief period when Turkey had problems with Iraq over the issue of Mosul (1925–1926) and with Syria over the Alexandretta (Hatay) question (1939) and in 1937 when Turkey initiated the Sadabad Pact39 Turkey mostly remained distant from the Middle East.

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The first major event that required Turkey to involve in Middle Eastern affairs was the UN resolution on the partition of Palestine in 1947. Turkey first along with the Arabs opposed the resolution and voted against it. Oya Akgonenc Mughisuddin argues that Turkey’s vote favoring the Arab view was the result of “historical sentiments and religious ties between Turks and Arabs.”40 However, this argument cannot explain Turkey’s participation in the Palestine Conciliation Commission, which was opposed by the Arabs, in 1948 and its recognition of Israel immediately after its establishment. Bulent Aras, on the other hand, contends that Turkey’s negative vote was because of the fear that there would be a socialist state in Israel not because of getting the sympathy of the Arabs or showing Islamic solidarity among Muslim countries.41 This explanation seems more plausible because Turkey did not waste any time to recognize Israel immediately after American support for Israel had become clear. The most serious blow to Turkish-Arab relations came when Turkey recognized Israel on March 29, 1949.42 The recognition of Israel by Turkey was regarded by the Arabs as a further proof of Turkey’s drift away from the Islamic world and became a major point of controversy between Arab states and Turkey. “Arab states considered a Turkish recognition of Israel as an act of ‘treason.’ They perceived this act as a Turkish retaliation against the Arab Revolt of 1916.”43 With the influence of the emerging Arab nationalism, the Arabs regarded the creation of Israel as an act of Western imperialists and Turkey as the satellite of Western imperialism in the region. For many Arabs, it was also disappointing to see that Turkey, once the leader of the Muslim world, “was the first country which granted recognition to Israel.”44 From the Turkish perspective, on the other hand, “the decision was made to emphasize Turkey’s Westernness and objective attitude in the [Middle East].” 45 For the Turkish political elite, the recognition of Israel was a pragmatic decision that arose from her ties with the Western powers. Turks also resented the Arab reaction and argued that it is “another manifestation of deep rooted Arab animosity.”46 Regardless of the Arab reaction Turkey established full diplomatic links with Israel and relations improved further between two countries. On February 8, 1949, the Turkish Minister, Necmettin Sadak, said that “Israel is a fact. More than 30 countries have recognized it.” Referring to the Armistice talks ending 1948–9 Arab-Israeli war, he added: “Arab representatives, too, were talking to the Israeli representatives.” 47 In June 1954, Turkish Prime Minister, Adnan Menderes, even suggested that “it was time they (Arabs) recognized Israel’s right to survive.”48

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Egyptian President Nasser, in a speech two months later, criticized Turkey’s relations with Israel and asserted that “Turkey, because of its Israeli policy, is disliked in the Arab world.”49 The Democrat Party under the leadership of Adnan Menderes, which took power in 1950 elections, opened a new era in Turkish domestic and foreign policy. The Menderes government encouraged by the American aid had “an ambition to make Turkey a little America.” 50 Additionally, its fierce opposition to communism and the Soviet Union led the Menderes government to believe that the best way to contain communism and to prove Turkey’s strategic value to its Western allies was to pursue an activist foreign policy in the Middle East. “While political radicalism and pan-Arab nationalism swept the Arab world during the 1950s, Turkey zealously pursued a policy of protecting Western interests even when this offended the Arab states.” 51 For Turkey, any alliance in the Middle East without participation of Western states, including Great Britain, France or the United States, would be impossible to maintain. Even in 1948, Foreign Minister of Turkey, Necmettin Sadak, suggested that: two Arab politicians had told him that Turkey should be the leader of the Middle Eastern group and that the Arab states ‘would be so to speak Turkish satellites.’ They had also said that although Turkey had given up the religious caliphate she should resume the political caliphate of the Middle East. Sadak had replied that Turkish policy looked towards the West and was firmly based on the alliance with Britain and the understanding with the Americans. Thus, Turkey could not play a more constructive role in the area unless relations between the British and the Arab world were improved.52 However, the problem with such a policy was that it ignored the interests, priorities and perceptions of the Arab states. “Turkey consistently failed to appreciate that for the Arabs Britain and France were colonial powers, from which other Arab territories still [were] attempting to gain their independence.”53 It also failed to understand that Israel, not the Soviet Union, constituted the biggest threat to the Arabs. Moreover, most Arabs showed a strong inclination to establish close relations with the Soviet Union in order to balance American influence and gain support against Israel.54 Turkey, after becoming a member in NATO, saw itself “as the NATO vehicle in the region and certainly made the running, well ahead of Britain, for instance, in trying to galvanize the Middle East

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into an anti-Soviet alliance.”55 For Turkey, there was no conflict between her role in the Middle East and her potential role in NATO. “She was willing to play the Middle Eastern role asked of her by the West as soon as she became a member of NATO.”56 The idea that Turkey should be a bridge that links NATO to the Middle East gained acceptance in official circles in the country: Turkey regarded her Middle East policy as extension of her pro-Western policy aiming at creating a defense system against the Soviet Union and communism. As a member of the Western alliance, Turkey felt that it was supposed to act in cooperation with the West “in conflicts involved by the Soviet Union, Israel and the Arabs.”57 Turkey would have a leading role in defense projects designed mainly by Great Britain to prevent the penetration of the Soviet Union into the Middle East as well as to control “the spread of nationalist and socialist ideologies in the area.”58 Consequently, Turkey embraced the British proposal to establish a Middle East Defense Organization (MEDO) with a great enthusiasm despite the strong Arab reaction to such a pact. In 1951, the Secretary General of the Arab League, Azam Pasha, visited Turkey “in order to discuss the scope and nature of the proposed defense organization and apparently counseled against it.”59 Turkish Foreign Minister, Fuad Koprulu, stated that “the defense of the Middle East is absolutely necessary for the economical and strategic defense of Europe…and Turkey will perform in an effective fashion her role in the Middle East.”60 Later, he added that “the principal objective of the MEDO should be psychological—obtaining the friendship and political cooperation of nations in the area.” 61 In the same year, President Celal Bayar “pledged to go forward with efforts to build MEDO, if that were the policy of Turkey’s allies, despite the belief that it would be a wasted effort.”62 Turkey assumed erroneously that the Arabs would also follow a pro-Western policy in opposing the Soviet expansion and “somehow accept the British and French as their foreign policy tutor.”63 The refusal of Egypt whose participation was the key to participate in the proposed defense organization caused disappointment among all the sponsoring states, including Turkey. Egyptians, like the other Arab states, regarded the defense organization as “simply another way of being subjected to Western hegemony”64 and held Turkey responsible for it. The idea provoked anti-British demonstrations in Egypt and the other Arab states, which also carried warnings to Turkey. The newspaper of the Muslim Brotherhood, al-dawa, labeled Turkey as a “second Israel and called for its destruction.”65

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Despite the failure of MEDO, Turkey continued its efforts to build a defense organization in the Middle East. The result of Turkey’s active diplomacy in the Middle East was the signing of the Baghdad Pact on February 25, 1955, envisaged as the centerpiece of US Secretary of State Dulles’s ‘Northern Tier’ strategy, which included Turkey, Iraq, Great Britain, Iran and Pakistan as members. Again, the initial plan of creation such a pact centered on the possibility of Egypt’s support and participation. However, the Egyptians, determined to end the British rule in the country, refused to participate. President Nasser of Egypt “opened a campaign against it, claiming that the purpose of the Pact was to divide the Arab world and to place the Middle East under the control of the West and of Turkey.”66 For Egypt and Syria, the Baghdad Pact “was a new instrument of Western imperialism, which was designed to recolonize the Arab world. Turkey looked at the Pact and her other ties with the West as necessary for her security, economic development, and a boost to her Westernization efforts.”67 Kemal Karpat argues that: there is hardly any other alliance in the recent history of foreign affairs as unnecessary, ineffectual and harmful to all parties as the Baghdad Pact. Indeed it caused immense harm to the Western interests in the area, it precipitated the Arab countries’ alignment with the Soviet Union, it stimulated the rise of radical ideologies, and cast Turkey in the image of docile tool of Western powers.68 The Pact created profound and long lasting conflicts in the Arab world, which felt threatened by it, and it forced them to take protective measures. Syria’s took an aggressive attitude toward Turkey and compelled her to sign a military agreement for a unified command with Egypt on October 20, 1955. The Baghdad Pact also offended Israel since it included anti-Israeli themes.69 Despite the open Arab resentment over Turkey’s policies in the region Turkey continued its active foreign policy. Over the years, Turkey stood against the Non-Aligned group at the Bandung Conference in 1955, sided with the West during the 1956 Lebanese crisis,70 and pushed for Western intervention in Syria in 1957— because of her increasing alignment with the Soviet Union and stationed troops on the Turkish-Syrian border—and later in Iraq in 1958 following the military coup that overthrew King Faisal in that country. “It seemed that every decision made and every action taken by Turkish policymakers [regarding the issues in the Middle East] was to demonstrate Turkey’s pro-Western position.”71

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Turkey soon realized that it was a mistake to initiate such a Pact with an Arab country. The Turkish government failed to understand the “sense of discomfort or even threat which other, more radical or less Western-oriented Arab regimes would feel as the pact was expanded.” 72 Turkey’s stance on the other issues involving Middle Eastern countries and the West and her efforts to create a defense organization to protect Western interests in the region “caused Turkey’s credibility to sink even further in the eyes of the Arabs and provoked opposition at home…[The] Turkish government alienated the Arabs by meeting the requirements of its Western allies.”73 After the withdrawal of Iraq from the Pact after the 1958 Revolution, the Pact lost its effectiveness and its name was changed to Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) and finally, lost its importance after the withdrawal of Iran from the organization following the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979. Turkey’s activist role in the Middle East came to an end with the down-fall of the Menderes Government following the military coup in May 27, 1960. After the Revolution, the “general view in Turkey was that the Baghdad Pact had been a fiasco and the disappointment following the coup d’etat was so great that the Turkish rulers admitted with bitterness in their inner circles the impossibility of any political cooperation with the Arabs for collective defense of the Middle East.”74 After the military takeover in Turkey, the proactive Turkish foreign policy was abandoned until the late 1980s and the early 1990s. As Philip Robins pointed out “for the next three decades Turkish policy toward the region was markedly more cautious, even to the point of meekness.”75 For the rest of the cold war period, Turkish foreign policy in the region was guided by “the principles of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of the Middle East and non-interference in conflicts between Middle Eastern states.”76 Turkey remained distant from the Middle East and tried to separate her interests from those of the United States and NATO. “This was a reaction against the foreign policy failures of the 1950s when Turkey adopted an active role toward the region.” 77 The unwillingness of the Turks toward any involvement in the region was demonstrated when Turkish President Cemal Gursel, Ayub Khan of Pakistan and the Shah of Iran proposed the formation of the Regional Cooperation for Development (RCD) in a joint communiqué in 1964. Initially, Ankara did not show much enthusiasm for this scheme. Commenting over Turkey’s reluctance, The Economist in August 1964 argued that “the Turks stand in relation to the new community rather like the British in Europe. For forty years they have been westward away from

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Russia. The more ardent heirs of Kemal Ataturk have no wish to see Turkey turn, or as they would say, turn back, towards Asia on the basis of Islam.”78 Sensing Turkey’s reluctance, Ayub Khan of Pakistan in 1965 said that “however much they wanted to be a part of Europe they would never be accepted as equals by Europeans, while the new organization offered them a chance to be ‘first class Moslems and first-class Turks.’” 79 However, the strict interpretation of secularism prevented Turkey from taking part in an organization based on Islam. The military government and the successive governments established after the 1961 elections consistently confirmed Turkey’s adherence to the West. As argued in chapter 4 Turkish political leaders did not show enthusiasm to deviate from the basic principles of the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Even in the 1950s when Turkey pursued an active foreign policy in the Middle East Turkish political leaders relied on their connection with the West not with Islam and acted in the region as if Turkey were a Western country. Consequently, “Turkey's relations with the Arabs remained subordinate to her commitment to the West in general and the United States in particular.” 80 This Western-oriented foreign policy, however, was called into question in the second half of the 1960s when Turkey started to experience problems with its allies. As chapter 4 argued, the Cyprus issue showed how isolated Turkey was in the international system. Turkey was not supported either by the West or by Israel on the Cyprus issue. The Arabs, too, sided with the Greek Cypriots, and Nasser even sold weapons to them to be used against Turkish Cypriots. Additionally, on various occasions Nasser and other Third World leaders advocated the withdrawal of Turkish troops from the island. In 1965, the Syrians "promised to move onto Turkey if the latter invaded Cyprus."81 The Syrian Foreign Minister declared in the same year that “our attitude is related to Turkey's relations with Israel.”82 The above-mentioned international problems forced Turkey to revise its foreign policy toward both the West and the Middle East. In order to erase its image of Western tool in the region, Turkey tried to be more balanced in its relations with both the Arabs and the Israelis. Later, Turkey's new policy orientation turned into increasingly pro-Arab on the Arab-Israeli conflict. This new foreign policy orientation in the Middle East was also facilitated by new domestic political developments that allowed the successive Turkish governments to interpret the principle of secularism in a broader sense. As explained in chapter 4, throughout the 1960s, the influence of new political groups that emerged after the 1961

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Constitution had gone into force began to be felt on foreign policy. Benefiting from Turkey's disillusionment with the West, these groups advocated a foreign policy independent of the West and the United States and closer ties with Third World countries for reasons consistent with their role conceptions. The emergence of these domestic groups, at the time, meant the end of the consensus on foreign policy and “acted as a constraint on Turkish foreign policy-makers to reassess Turkish-American relations, and to look for alternative associations.”83 The most important of these groups was Islamists who thrived on the widespread anti-Western mood in the country and who demanded a greater expression of Islamic identity, which had been suppressed since the creation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, in both domestic and foreign policies of Turkey. The emergence of Islamists in Turkey also brought to the surface the dual character of Turkey’s identity—namely Western and Islamic—and the problems created by this duality. Even though Turkey’s national interest required closer relations with Middle Eastern countries, the official state identity institutionalized in the constitution did not allow Turkish political leaders to take full part in regional meetings or organizations, which involved religious themes, because one of the main principles of the Republic was “the refusal to enter into any international alliances or to attend any international conferences on the basis of common religion.”84 For example, Turkey rejected the idea of an Islamic Pact proposed by King Faisal of Arabia, which aimed at the unity “all Muslim around a common idea, to place Islam on solid foundations, to mobilize Muslims against communism and atheism, and to establish a Muslim Common Market,”85 on the grounds that the acceptance of an Islamic Pact would lead to abandonment of neutrality in the Middle East and of secularism. Even though Turkish political leaders were cautious to keep their relations within secular and constitutional limits they nevertheless increased Turkey’s interaction with Middle Eastern countries. Islamic ideology played a crucial role in Turkish-Arab rapprochement in the 1960s and the 1970s. Even though the founders of the Republic managed to control the influence of religion in political life, they could not completely eradicate it from social life. Since Islam constitutes an inextricable part of Turkish national identity, “religious and national identities remain closely intertwined”86 for the most part. The fact that “national identity at the level of masses has a much stronger Turkish-Islamic flavor”87 encouraged the leader of the Justice Party, Suleyman Dxemirel, who came to power after the elections in 1965 and who was

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supported by a conservative rural constituency, to adopt an increasingly pro-Arab policy in the following years. However, Turkey opposed any identification with the radical Islamist stand. In order to “forestall speculation that the country was moving towards a pro-Islamic policy, Premier Demirel found it necessary to state that Turkey would participate only in Islamic conferences of non-political character and consequently would not join Islamic pacts as proposed by Saudi Arabia.”88 One indication of this new foreign policy orientation was Turkey’s abandonment of its strict neutrality in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Turkey, for example, did not let the United States use NATO bases for shipping arms to Israel in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars. Turkey demanded from Israel the return of the territories she acquired through use of force. Later in 1975, when the UN General Assembly passed a resolution to determine “Zionism to be kind of racism Turkey voted positively as did all the Arab countries.” 89 Even though the new foreign policy adopted by Turkey by no means represented a deviation from the West, it nevertheless was a distancing from it. After Islam reentered the political domain in the 1960s and the 1970s, it became an important variable in the competition for power. When the economic difficulties of the 1970s caused by the oil crisis required a rapprochement with the Middle East Turkey “played up Islamic identity at the same time moderating its secularity.” 90 After the revival of religion in the political domain, Turkey started to experience a decline in secularism and Western orientation. Although Turkey is a secular state, its “Muslim identity has permitted it to take part in the activities of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)”91 in Rabat, Morocco, in September 1969 and has played a quite important role in the Conference throughout the 1980s. The Demirel government, again, “did not interpret Turkish secularism rigidly…and regarded the Conference, not as ‘religious,’ in which case Turkish participation would not have been compatible with Turkish secularism, but as ‘political,’ with a restricted agenda: only the fire at the Aqsa Mosque and the status of Jerusalem would be discussed.”92 The Demirel government tried to use the participation in the conference to erase the misunderstandings of the past between Turkey and her Middle Eastern neighbors. The Republican Party, nevertheless, criticized the government for having abandoned its neutrality towards ArabIsraeli conflict and the country’s secularist position. 93 Realists may argue that Turkey’s participation in the OIC was based purely on self-interest to garner the support of the Arabs for Turkey’s Cyprus policy, and later in the 1970s, to have access to

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the Middle East oil. For realists, states use international institutions to further their interests. One may conclude from this statement that states can become members of different international organizations as long as those institutions help them further their interests. This argument, however, ignores the fact that institutions are “identifiable practices consisting of recognized roles linked by clusters of rules or conventions governing relations among the occupants of these roles” 94 and therefore, institutions call for a certain role identity and require certain behaviors compatible with the roles they represent. In short, institutions constrain behavior. In the light of the above argument, then, what happens if a state “is embedded in more than one institution and each institution demands a different role and set of behavioral actions?”95 According to Michael Barnett, the result is role conflict “which occurs when there are contradictory expectations that attach to some position in a social relationship.” 96 In the case of Turkey, the question one should ask is whether Turkey benefited from its membership in both Western institutions and the OIC, which required different roles and behaviors or whether it experienced a role conflict. As explained before, Turkey participated in almost every international institution in the Western alliance. Membership in these Western institutions was motivated in most part by the desire to be accepted as a Western state and Turkey defined its interests in this context. Acceptance in these institutions also led Turkish political leaders to believe that Turkey became a Western country and Turkish foreign policy formulated in accordance with the requirements of these institutions. Turkey’s policy toward the Middle East in the 1950s was the reflection of the role that Turkey had assumed through membership in these organizations. This foreign policy was not constrained by domestic politics because of the political elite’s agreement on such a policy and the lack of political opposition at the level of masses. The situation, however, began to change in the first half of the 1960s when Turkey’s interaction with its Western allies deteriorated over the Cyprus issue. This change came at the same time as Turkish politics was undergoing fundamental transformation. The free environment created by the 1961 Constitution allowed many domestic political groups and politicians with different ideologies to emerge. As explained in chapter 4, these groups began to question the nature of Turkey’s devotion to the West and advocated a change in the direction of Turkish foreign policy. The most important of these groups was the Islamists who emphasized the Islamic character of Turkish identity

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and who advocated closer relations with Muslim Middle Eastern states. These internal and external political developments forced Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel, who had a conservative worldview, to send his foreign minister to the meeting of the first Islamic conference in Rabat in 1969. With the adoption of its Charter in Jeddah on March 4, 1972, the Islamic Conference gained a permanent status and Turkey became a member. These developments led a Western observer, James P.Brown, to conclude in 1969 that the “incipient Islamic revival in Turkey could in time incline Turkish sympathies toward the Arabs.”97 It should be noted that while Turkey’s Western identity permitted her to take part in Western institutions, her Islamic identity allowed her to participate in the OIC. It is interesting to observe that the “duality in terms of national identity has forced Turkey in the past to choose between two competing poles or to attempt to strike a tenuous balance between both of them. Turkey is the only Muslim country in the European Council and NATO, and it’s the only democratic-secular state in the Islamic Conference.” 98 It should also be noted that membership in Western institutions, for example the Council of Europe or the European Union, requires the presence of European attributes like democracy or respect for human rights, and prescribes behavior accordingly, while the OIC, which is based on Islamic solidarity, demands different behaviors from its member states. From time to time, the behaviors these institutions asked for have been in conflict. The question that should be answered, then, whether Turkey, in the face of the conflicting demands from both sides, has been able to exploit her membership in these organizations and furthered her interests or whether she has experienced a role (or identity) conflict. The following section endeavors to explain the dilemma Turkey faced throughout the 1970s and 1980s. After actively participating in the OIC meetings, Turkey attitude in the international arena appeared to be in conformity with those of the Arabs. Turkey did not, for example, permit the United States to ship aid to Israel during the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars. On June 22, 1967, Turkey voted in the UN for all resolutions, which called upon Israel to withdraw her forces from occupied Arab territories. This new foreign policy orientation was disrupted when the Turkish military intervened in politics due to increasing political violence in the country on March 12, 1971. The government formed by Nihat Erim under the control of the military regime reduced the Turkish-Arab relations to a secondary rank. “This reaction against further improvement of Turkish-Arab relations has resulted from a deep apprehension that foreign policy

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commitments entail involvement in the ideological movements in the area.”99 Relations resumed after 1972 and Turkey again did not allow the use of her military facilities to ship American materials to Israel during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, but it permitted the Soviet Union, which was aiding Egypt and Syria, to use its airspace. Turkey took an increasingly pro-Arab stance after the formation of the first National Front government between the Islamic National Salvation Party (NSP) and the Republican People’s Party (RPP). Both parties were in favor of closer relations with Middle Eastern neighbors for different reasons. The leader of the NSP, Necmettin Erbakan, had a religious, conservative worldview and had been advocating integration with the regional countries. The leader of the RPP, Bulent Ecevit, on the other hand, advocated developing a “New Security Concept” with the regional countries that would reduce Turkey’s dependence on the West. Also, because of his leftist, social philosophy, Bulent Ecevit was eager to develop Turkey’s relations with the Middle East. During the second National Front government that stayed in power until January 1978, Turkey’s economic and political relations with the Middle East further improved. Turkey’s vote at the UN for the resolution describing Zionism as kind of racism, which pleased the Arabs, was a good example in this regard. Necmettin Erbakan’s NSP was again the coalition partner in the second National Front government and advocated the closure of all NATO bases in Turkey, breaking off all diplomatic relations with Israel, giving up membership in the European Economic Community, and turning completely to the East by cooperating with the Muslim countries in matters from economy to defense. In a speech in August 1979, he argued that “he pushed his coalition partners in 1976 to the point of dissolving the coalition to consent to Turkey’s full membership in the Islamic Conference and letting the PLO to open its office in Ankara.”100 Erbakan’s efforts proved to be successful. The signs of this success was evident in Turkey’s declaration at the Seventh Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers in Istanbul in May 1976 that it had decided to approve the Charter of the Islamic Conference to become full member and in the permission given to the PLO to open an office in Ankara. After the third military intervention on September 12, 1980, Turkey’s relations with the Arabs flourished. After the military coup in the country, Turkey’s isolation in the West played an important role in the further improvement of Turkish-Arab relations. The most important decision of the military government was “to demote diplomatic relations with Israel from the level of

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charge d’affairs to the level of second secretary”101 in December 1980, after Israel decided in July 1980 to move its capital to Jerusalem. The Motherland Party (MP) under the leadership of Turgut Ozal who came to power in the 1983 general elections seemed, at first, to confirm Turkey’s pro-Arab policy and increased the concern in the West concerning Turkey’s Western orientation. The most important source of this concern was Turgut Ozal’s former association with the Islamic National Salvation Party and his acceptance of some members from that party into the MP. Additionally, President Kenan Evren’s attendance to the Fourth Islamic Summit in January 1984, the highest ranking Turkish official in an Islamic meeting ever, and his election as the chairman of the Conference’s permanent economic and commercial cooperation committee were “interpreted in the Western press as the first sign of a foreign policy change by Ozal at the expense of Turkey’s relations with the West.” 102 The above-mentioned foreign policy behaviors led many to believe that Turkey was loosing its balance in favor the Arab countries and drifting away from the West. However, a second look at Turkish foreign policy after the second half of the 1960s suggests that Turkey’s closer relations with the Arab countries did not jeopardize her relations with the West and Israel. “The new policy was not meant to result in a shift toward the Arabs at the expense of Turkey’s connections with the West.”103 Turkey’s commitment to various Western organizations and domestic constraints precluded Turkey from fulfilling many of its obligations as a member of the OIC. Arab countries let Turkey feel at times that “they would indeed be pleased if Turkey agreed to cut off its relations with Israel. This would ultimately lead to a special relationship between Turkey and the Arab world.”104 Turkey at the 1969 Rabat Conference refused pressures from other Arab countries to sever relations with Israel. Moreover, Turkey also emphasized that continuation of Israel’s existence in the region should not be questioned.105 It should also be noted that although Islam is “one of the uniting forces between the Islamic countries and Turkey…the strengthening of relations based on the common Islamic faith offered some special difficulties for Turkey, because of her secularist state system.” 106 When Turkey participated in March 1970 at the first Foreign Ministers’ Conference in Jeddah, where the charter of the Organization was adopted, Turkey did not ratify the Charter because it contained clauses that contradicted the secular character of the state and only remained in the OIC as a de facto

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member. Turkey’s reluctance stemmed from the references to Islamic solidarity that might pose a contradiction to the principle of secularism. The head of the Turkish delegation expressed Turkey’s wish not to join the permanent secretariat and presented a letter to the Secretary General, which said in part: I have the honor to inform you that the Turkish Government accepts the resolutions adopted during the Islamic Conference to the extent they are consistent with the Turkish Constitution and the guiding principles of Turkish foreign policy.107 Turkey had also asked that a reservation be added to the joint communiqué stating that Turkey could participate in the decisions in measure they conformed to the United Nations resolutions and Turkey’s foreign policy principles.108 Turkey also added a reservation to the declaration of the Seventh Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers in May 1976 that “Turkish approval would extend only to those points that remained in conformity with the secular Turkish constitution.” 109 At the same conference, Turkey continued to keep its reservation on the clause of the final communiqué, which entailed all Islamic states to break off relations with Israel. Additionally, Turkey granted to the head of the PLO office the rank of charge d’affaires, the same rank as the Israeli representative in Ankara had. Finally, Turkey’s decision to reduce relations with Israel to secondary level could hardly be defined as a political concession. Immediately after this decision, for example, Turkey abstained from voting at the UN on Resolution ES 9/1, which condemned Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights.110 The political leaders of the time also consistently emphasized Turkey’s desire to be a part of the West. Prime Minister of the military government, Bulent Ulusu, for example, “promised to expand ties with NATO and its member countries and said his country aimed at taking its place in the European Community.” 111 The head of the National Security Council, and later President, General Kenan Evren also argued that “Turkey is an integral part of democratic and free Europe and intends to remain so.”112 Furthermore, despite the initial feeling that Turgut Ozal, who had a religious background and who stayed in power from 1983 to 1987 as prime minister and then until his death in 1993 as president, might pursue more pro-Arab foreign policy, there were no signs of such a policy. On the contrary, Turgut Ozal’s sympathy “towards the West was greater than that of many of the elites who

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looked only for the West’s technological and industrial development. He had an unquestioned belief not only in these aspects but also in Western political systems and ideas such as liberalism.”113 He also had sympathy toward the Muslim world as a result of his religious belief. Ozal’s “vision of Turkey’s place in the Middle East was hugely influenced by his adherence to liberal economic views.” 114 In the light of his understanding of Islam and Western values, he often advocated Turkey’s role as a ‘bridge’ between the Middle East and the West. During his stay in power, Turgut Ozal showed no signs of deviation from Turkey’s Western-oriented foreign policy. His government was the first Turkish government to apply for full membership in the European Union and took great steps in integrating Turkey with the Western economic and political system. Sensing that Turkey might lose its strategic value to the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he, like the Menderes Government of the 1950s, pursued an activist foreign policy in the Middle East. During the Gulf Crisis, Turkey, under the leadership of Turgut Ozal, abandoned its neutrality in the Middle East, which had been the guiding principle of Turkish foreign policy in the region. Ozal believed that the Gulf Crisis might increase Turkey’s “chance to prove [its] strategic regional importance to the USA” 115 and its chance to be admitted to the European Union as a result of this crisis. “Turkey’s standing during the crisis proved its solidarity with the West.” 116 Ozal’s actions during the Gulf War and his immediate collaboration with the United States and the coalition forces by closing the Turkish-Iraqi oil pipeline instead of following a policy of wait-and-see proved that Ozal would not hesitate to abandon Turkey’s traditional foreign policy principle of non-intervention in the region. He also advocated an active involvement of Turkey in the war by sending troops to the Gulf, which was prevented in the face of a strong domestic opposition. His unilateral actions regarding Turkish policy during the war caused two foreign ministers and the Chief of Turkish Armed Forces to resign. Many argued that Turkey should have adopted a more neutralist approach in the war “retaining the possibility of playing a mediatory role between Iraq and its immediate adversaries.”117 A well-known columnist, Oktay Eksi, advised against any military action and wrote on August 9, 1990, that “if Turkey is provoked into a war with Iraq, Arabs will never forgive her…just the way they resented Turkey’s joining of the Baghdad Pact years ago.” 118 Critics of Ozal’s policies also pointed out that Turkey and Iraq had been collaborating on the Kurdish issue and they both had a joint

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interest in preventing the Kurdish problem from getting out of control. Any belligerent attitude toward Iraq, they argued, might result in worsening of Turkey’s Kurdish problem. Critics proved to be right on the issue because after the war Turkey faced a huge number of Kurdish refugees fleeing from Saddam to Turkey. Turkey’s handling of the refugee crisis was often criticized in the Western press and “the countries allied against Iraq moved in and created a safe haven for the Kurds in Northern Iraq, leaving them with de facto autonomy, a situation which for the Turks was discomforting at best.”119 The collapse of Saddam’s power in Northern Iraq was also exploited by the outlawed Kurdish organization, Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). There were signs that Saddam Hussein “had begun to arm and supply the PKK in apparent retaliation for Turkey’s close cooperation with allied forces during the Gulf Crisis.” 120 Turkey also suffered economically from cutting off its trade relations with Iraq, which totaled around $20 billion between 1990–1994. 121 Finally, Turkey’s pro-Western stance did not translate into better relations with the European Union and aroused suspicions in the Arab world about the reemergence of Turkey’s imperialistic ambitions in the region. 122 Turkey’s policy during the Gulf War again reflected its leaders’ desire to prove its strategic value to the West and to increase its chance to be admitted to the European Union, which would give final stamp of approval for Turkey’s Westerness. The political and economic costs of Turkey’s foreign policy toward Iraq suggest that Turkey’s rush to take action against Iraq, even before Saudi Arabia, which had more at stake, caused more harm than benefit to Turkey’s interests in the Middle East. C. TURKEY’S RELATIONS WITH THE MIDDLE EAST IN THE 1990s A. POLITICAL ISLAM, THE WELFARE PARTY AND TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY As explained in chapter 3, during the 1920s and 1930s, Turkish officials adopted a policy of secularism “to make religion a personal matter of individual conscience.”123 Until the founding of the Turkish Republic in October 1923, the main component of the Ottoman identity was Islam under the temporal and spiritual

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leadership of the Sultan-Caliph.124 The principal aim of the Republican leaders was to create a modern, rational state and to remove Islam from political discourse. The vast secularization program undertaken by the leaders of the new Republic almost eliminated religion from public life and political institutions; however, it “survived in family and small community life. In essence, religion became a diffuse ideology for individuals in small communities dissatisfied with the elite’s values and institutions” 125 and continued their opposition underground. Despite the state-led secularization policy, “Islam has remained a depository for regulating day-to-day social life for the masses.”126 The transition to multi-party political system in 1946 “marked the beginning of a reemphasis of Islamic values”127 and reached its peak during the reign of Democrat Party between 1950–1960. And finally, the politicization of Islam was completed with the formation of Islamic National Order Party (NOP) in 1970 under the leadership of Necmettin Erbakan. After the military coup in 12 March 1971, the Constitutional Court banned the NOP and its leader, Erbakan, escaped to Switzerland. His supporters established the National Salvation Party (NSP), which was banned again after the September 1980 military takeover. The party reemerged in 1983 under the name of Welfare Party led by again Necmettin Erbakan, who represented the Islamic movement as deputy prime minister in three government coalitions in the 1970s. 128 “Since the establishment of an Islamist Party, Turkish Islamism has been incorporated into the political system.” 129 Over the years, the party has become the “vehicle through which the pious articulated their unhappiness with the strict application of secularist principles.” 130 The re-Islamization of Turkish politics increased dramatically in the 1980s due to the military government’s policies encouraging religious revival. As Eric Rouleau noted “paradoxically, the army, which sees itself as the ‘guardian of the secular republic,’ contributed along with the conservative parties” to this process, mainly “to block the way of leftist and Kurdish organizations, which it considered more dangerous than the Islamic movement.”131 By opening new Qur’anic schools and making religious courses compulsory in primary and high schools, the military “hoped to create a more homogenous and less political Islamic community. Islam, in this radical departure from the military’s past practice, offered a way to reduce or even eliminate the cultural differences that led to polarization of Turkish society.”132 The gradual Islamization of Turkish politics, however, did not cause any fear for many Turks. “After all, they [said], what could be more natural in a world shaken by sudden and far-reaching

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change than for people to turn toward religion or seek to affirm an identity confused by a fast-paced Westernization imposed from above?”133 The increasing influence of political Islam in domestic politics began to be felt in Turkish foreign policy in the 1990s. For example “it was exclusively for Islamic appeal that Turkey took an active interest in the Balkans, and particularly in the Bosnians.” 134 Turkey also initiated a conference in October 1995 in Ankara “designed to coordinate Islamic activities in the Central Asian republics, the Caucasus, the Balkans, and even Turkey itself.” 135 At the Conference, Demirel stressed that Islam is “one of the most important bases of our solidarity” while the head of the Motherland Party, Mesut Yilmaz stated that “Islam remained the rising star of all times.” 136 Islamists benefited considerably from the Islamic discourse by their secular opponents and the media, which presented the “conflicts in Chechnya, Bosnia, and NagornoKarabakh as confrontations between Islam and Christianity.” 137 In terms of domestic politics, the initial expectations of the military on the homogenizing role of Islam proved wrong. The development of political Islam started a debate over secularism versus religion that brought to the surface “major and deep-seated divisions in Turkish society: modern versus traditional, progressive versus conservative, and rationalists versus religious.”138 For example, Prime Minister Tansu Ciller in 1995 said: “We secularists are the main obstacle on the way of Islamists while a crowd in a demonstration for Bosnia chanted: Muslims are here, where are the secularists?”139 The influence of the secularist-Islamist split, or the duality of national identity, on foreign policy first appeared in the 1960s as a result of changing domestic and international circumstances that caused a reorientation in Turkish foreign policy. At the time, political Islam in Turkey was not strong enough to challenge the state-centric national identity—i.e. Western and secular—and “Islamic groups were organized outside state control and relied on traditional ties.”140 However, in the late 1980s and the 1990s, political Islam has been transformed into an ideology that could challenge the Western identity at home and Turkey’s Western oriented foreign policy abroad. The most important indication of rising Muslim consciousness in Turkey was the expansion of the Islamic Welfare Party’s (WP) electoral strength, which was demonstrated by the results of the 1994 local and the 1995 parliamentary elections. In the local elections on March 1994, the WP won 19.7 percent of the national vote and pro-Islamist mayors came to power in twenty-nine cities, including major metropolis such as Istanbul and Ankara. However, what raised concerns for

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Turkey’s secular elite, who had previously thought that the WP’s strength was limited and their electoral victory was a remote possibility, was the results of the December 1995 general elections from which the WP emerged as the single strongest party with 21 percent of the total vote and 158 seats in the 550-member singlechamber parliament. Even though the WP’s victory was a result of a complex set of factors, secular political leaders blamed the West for their negative attitude toward Turkey’s admission to the European Union. Even before the elections, for example, Prime Minister of the coalition Tansu Ciller had warned: “The failure to admit Turkey would almost certainly ensure the Welfare Party’s victory in the elections.”141 On another occasion, she argued that the disappointment of the Turkish people with the West was one of the reasons for the emergence of Muslim sentiment in Turkey. She warned in June 1995 that “if fundamentalists win Turkey’s 1995 elections, they will turn NATO’s only Muslim country into another Iran. If Turkey falls fundamentalism will reach Europe.” 142 Referring to the 1994 local elections, Bulent Ecevit, the leader of the Democratic Left Party (DLP), also argued in 1994 that “disappointment with the allies is to a certain extent is responsible for the fundamentalist gains in the recent elections.”143 In terms of Turkish foreign policy, the WP’s strong anti-West and anti-Israel rhetoric advocating closer relationships with the Middle East countries strengthened these concerns. The WP was a political party that often emphasized Turkey’s cultural and religious differences as the main reasons for its exclusion from Europe. The following statement made by Hasan Dikici, a member of the WP, at the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA) on 6 July 1993 underlines the WP’s philosophy: The EU is an integration model based on a Christian-Western culture; it is a political integration; it is an effort to create a European State. It is a Catholic European Union established according to a Christian ideology. Turkey is a Muslim country. With the aim of increasing the material welfare of the Turkish people, to try to have a place in the European Union means to abandon our political, social, and cultural values. If Turkey joins the EU our sovereign rights will be transferred to the Catholic EU. The decision to be a member in the EU was made against the will of our nation and should be withdrawn for the future of our nation.144 The ideas of Necmettin Erbakan were not different from the above statement and gave clues about Turkey’s future role that he had

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in mind. He argued that “Turkey should cooperate with Muslim countries through which she can realize the goal of being a leader, instead of being a servant in the EU.” 145 He also accused all other political parties of imitating Western mentality and advocating full membership in the EU. “To become a member in the EU by leaving the Community of Muslim countries,” he continued, “means to lose the very essence of our identity and to accept a ‘Second Sevres.’” 146 He promised to turn Turkey into a leader in the Muslim world through the establishment of an Islamic Union that would include an Islamic United Nations, an Islamic defense organization, a common Islamic currency, and an Islamic common market.147 He argued that “the reason for the lack of solidarity among Muslim nations is the Western mentality of Turkish administrators. They [Muslim countries] need Turkey’s leadership. Turkish leaders, instead of trying to assume such a leadership role and thus serving the ‘Just Order,’ choose to serve imperialism and Zionism.”148 For Erbakan, the pro-Western secular elite’s desire to be a member in the EU based on Catholicism and Zionism prevented Turkey from playing such a leadership role: Why do Europeans want to sign a customs union agreement with Turkey? Because the WP will come to power, establish an Islamic Union that will change Turkey’s place in the world. They are happy because they think that [by signing the agreement] they separate the head of the Islamic Community from its body.149 The victory of the WP came when Turkey’s secular leaders were trying to confirm Turkey’s place among the Western family and to convince European leaders that Turkey is essentially a European country. It also highlighted the sharp division between secularists and Islamists among the public and political parties. “Some journals reported the news under such headlines as ‘The Black versus the White Turks,’ ‘The Other Turkiye Wins the Election,’ and ‘Fatih Wins Against Harbiye.’”150 The secularist-Islamist division was even clearer in the parliament. Since the WP was the largest party—but it did not have the majority to form a government by itself—President Suleyman Demirel first turned to Erbakan to form a government. Even though Erbakan made important concessions none of the other parties showed enthusiasm for joining a coalition with the WP. When Necmettin Erbakan failed in his efforts, Tansu Ciller was appointed to form a government. After a short-lived government with the Motherland Party (MP), Tansu Ciller formed a coalition government

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with Erbakan on June 28, 1996. The most significant aspect of the new government was that “for the first time, the Turkish Republic had a prime minister whose political philosophy was based on Islam.”151 The coalition government between the Islamist WP and the secular True Path Party (TPP) “highlighted the duality of Turkish identity.”152 The implications of this in Turkish foreign policy were to be felt in the following months. It also highlighted the division between pro-Western forces that try to preserve the Western identity of the Turkish State and Islamists who want to change it. While the Western-oriented Deputy Prime Minister, Tansu Ciller, was visiting European leaders to confirm Turkey’s Europeanness, Necmettin Erbakan was receiving the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood as his first foreign visitor. When Ciller was visiting Western capitals and institutions, Erbakan was heading to such radical Islamic countries as Iran and Libya, implying that Turkey is essentially a Muslim country. After he became prime minister, Erbakan first visited Iran and signed an agreement to import $20 billion worth of natural gas. Implying the US legislation that prescribes penalties for companies trading above a low limit with Iran and Libya (D’Amato Law), Erbakan said: “Turkey will not permit any third country to interfere in the growing trend of cooperation between Iran and Turkey.” 153 Moreover, in December1996, he ordered the Turkish delegation to the UN to vote against the resolution that would condemn Iran for its human rights violations along with North Korea, China, Cuba and Libya.154 He also visited Libya and other Muslim countries including Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan “both to raise the profile of Turkey’s relations with the Muslim world and show his Islamic constituency that policy under a [WP] government would not simply replicate that of his predecessors.” 155 Additionally, the WP officials often talk about the possibility of a bilateral defense cooperation between Iran and Turkey.156 Erbakan and his associates in the party also frequently ignored the reports from the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MIT), which insisted on Iran’s connection with the outlawed Kurdish organization, PKK. As a part of his ambition to reorient Turkey eastward, Erbakan also initiated projects such as the D-8 (Developing Eight), association of Muslim countries and the Economic Cooperation Organization, which gave clues about his Pan-Islamic ideology. The project of the D-8, being the most ambitious project of Erbakan to change Turkey’s traditional adherence to the West, included Turkey, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, and Pakistan as members. The goal of the scheme was to ensure

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cooperation among member states in a wide range of issues including banking, equity markets, and privatization through trade promotion, tourism and energy. Regarding Turkey’s policy toward Iraq, Erbakan advocated the lifting of the UN embargo and started negotiations for the opening of the oil pipeline that had been shut down by Turkey according to UN resolutions. He dispatched goodwill missions to that country, including his Justice Minister, Sevket Kazan who stated in October 1996 that UN sanctions on Iraq are unfair and “it is Turkey’s duty to stand by its friend.” 157 Despite his Western-oriented secular partner, Erbakan dominated the foreign policy agenda and tried to pursue a foreign policy that was consistent with his party’s ideological outlook. However, what Erbakan ignored while making promises and attempting to establish close ties with other Muslim countries was the power of the military, the guardian of Ataturk’s secular vision, which defends the Kemalist ideology and the national interest prescribed by it by every means available, including the use of force. B. THE TURKISH MILITARY: GUARDIANS OF KEMALISM According to a common view, “military organizations pursue their parochial interests…”158 However, this kind of approach that “deduces preferences from functional characteristics is too general and imprecise. Understanding variation in organizational behavior requires an analysis of cultural characteristics and how these shape behavior”159 Furthermore, it requires an examination of the perception of the role of the military in society and in the statebuilding process, and the political mechanism through which they are involved in the foreign policy making process. An analysis of Turkish foreign policy, therefore, requires an examination of the role of the military in the state-building and decision-making process. The Kemalist reforms of the 20th century were carried out by bureau-cratic-authoritarian political and military elites.160 After the adoption of Kemalism as the official state ideology, the Turkish military consolidated their power and became responsible for preventing any deviations from the Kemalist principles. The Turkish army has been one of the main forces in modernizing and westernizing the Turkish society. Ataturk and his principles (i.e. Kemalism) constitute the most important elements of the army’s corporate identity. Upon entering

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the military academy, young cadets are taught everything about Ataturk and his role in the Independence War in so much detail that at the end every cadet “identifies himself with Ataturk. He acquires the sense of ‘saving the country’ during this process.” 161 For example, every year on March 13, the day Ataturk entered the military academy in 1899, they hold a special ceremony. At the ceremony, when the cadets hear Ataturk’s name and number called out, they shout in unison: “in our hearts.”162 In the process, these young cadets are taught to see themselves superior to civilians through references to the Ottoman officials who did not do anything to save the country from the imperialist powers. These ideas were the main reasons behind the military interventions of 1960, 1971 and 1980 when the military realized that the Republic was in danger and that civilians were unable to preserve the status quo. Kemalism, as an ideology, is concerned with maintaining national unity on secular and Western grounds. This ideology gives the military political autonomy by furnishing it with the sense of “being above social dissensus, party politics, and particular interests.”163 It also provides for the justification of the military’s role as the guardian of the national interest. In the 1990s, maintaining national unity and preserving secularism have been the most important component of the national interest. In this context, any attack—internal or external—on the Kemalist ideology would threaten the very existence and identity of the military. The most important political mechanism that allows the military to participate in the decision-making process is the National Security Council (NSC), which was created after the military coup of 1960. “It was introduced into Turkish political life by the military in order to establish an institution that would ensure the Kemalist identity of the state and assure increased military participation in the process of decision making.”164 Composed of prime minister, the chief of staff, the ministers of internal and foreign affairs, and the commanders of army, navy, air force under the chairmanship of the president, the main function of the NSC is to make recommendations to the government. However, under the 1982 constitution the council of ministers “shall give priority consideration to the decisions of the NSC concerning measures that it deems necessary for the preservation of the existence and independence of the state, the integrity and indivisibility of the country, and the peace and security of society.” 165 It should be clear from the composition and the role of the NSC that the military has a heavy hand in the formulation and implementation of Turkey’s domestic and foreign policies.

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In the 1980s and 1990s, two main threats to the Kemalist identity of the state emerged: the Kurdish separatist movement in southeastern Turkey and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Since the PKK began its guerilla campaign for an independent Kurdish state in 1984, the Kurdish problem has become a major issue on Turkish political and security agenda. Along with the water issue, Iraq’s and Syria’s support for the PKK further complicated Turkey’s relations with its neighbors. In the 1990s, another challenge, the increasing influence of political Islam in Turkish political life, put the military on alert. As explained before, the separation of the religion and the state has been a major component of Kemalism, which in turn shaped the construction of the ‘national interest.’ Islamic revivalism, as a perceived threat to the official ideology, and the electoral strength of the Welfare Party increased the military’s concern about the future of the Republic and “has been the major force behind the army’s increasingly fierce and open opposition to Muslim politicians...who want to create a more Islamic nation.” 166 Especially in the second half of the 1990s, the military started to describe Islamic fundamentalism along with the PKK terrorism as the number one enemy of the state. Despite the attempts by the WP, the most important result of Islamic revivalism in Turkish foreign policy was the worsening of Turkey’s relations with radical Islamic states, especially with Iran, in the region, which supported Islamic activists in Turkey, The Turkish military has openly expressed disdain for Iran’s support for Islamic movements in Turkey. At a briefing at the TurkishAmerican Council in Washington D.C. in 1997, General Cevik Bir, then the deputy chief of staff, directly accused Iran of “sponsoring anti-Turkish terrorism as well as trying to destroy the secular Turkish State.” 167 He also described Iran as a ‘terrorist state’ charging it with attempting to export Islamic Revolution to Turkey. Later he stated: “Turkey today is faced with a radical Islamic threat. As the military, we have to speak out.”168 The opposite identity conceptions and foreign policy behaviors of the military and the WP made a clash between the two almost inevitable. The military used every economic, legal, constitutional, and political means in their campaign against Islamic fundamentalism and the WP. The top military officers, for example, sued their enemies in Turkish courts and boycotted firms that were believed to support the Islamic cause and the WP. Through the NSC, the military pressured the government to curb Islamic radicalism and purged some military officers from the army for activities that violated secular principles. As a result, Erbakan

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resigned in June 1997. During his short term in office, however, he posed the most significant challenge to Turkey’s traditional foreign policy and highlighted the problem of Turkish identity. The clash between the military and the WP suggests that their foreign policy preferences and understanding of the national interest depend for the most part on their organizational culture. Each organization’s culture shapes their identity conceptions that in turn shape their foreign policy preferences and understanding of the national interest. States, depending on the allocation of power among different groups/organizations, may represent one of the social identities in the system. The secular Kemalist ideology is the most important element of the military’s identity, which affects its perceptions of others. Kurdish separatism and Islamic fundamentalism and their sponsors in the region, then, constitute the most important threat to Kemalism and Turkey’s national interest shaped by the same ideology. For the Welfare Party, the opposite is true. They “reject both Western civilization and its local adoption through Kemalism.” 169 Because of their Islamic ideology, they believe that Turkey’s interest lies in close relations with other Muslim countries and that the most important threat comes from the West and Israel. In sum, culture and identity framework informed each of the participants in the decision-making process who is friend and who is not and led to conflicting views on the formulation and implementation of Turkish foreign policy. D. IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION It was often argued that “Turkey is the only European country in the Middle East.”170 Even though the statement “did not actually quite correspond to the country’s social and economic realities...Turkey acted as if she were a European country.” 171 However, “many people believe the opposite also to be true: ‘Turkey is the only Middle Eastern country in Europe.’”172 The policies of Turkey toward the Middle East were a reflection of this duality in Turkish national identity since the end of World War II. During the 1950s, Turkey’s policy toward the Middle East was mainly the product of its commitments to the West and Western alliance on the one hand, and modernization and westernization efforts on the other. Before the Second War, Turkey’s relations with its Arab neighbors were kept to a minimum due to the misconceptions formed throughout history and Turkish leaders’ desire to create a Western society and state. This meant the

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elimination of Islam from the definition of the state, which was also the common bond between the Turks and the Arabs. The result of Westernization efforts at home for the most part determined Turkey’s alliance with the West. As Turkey drew closer to the West Arab alienation increased. Turkey’s activist policy in the region during the 1950s, dictated by its Western commitments, reinforced the misconceptions held by both sides. During these years Turkey could not avoid the charge that it was acting in the Middle East as a tool of the Western imperialism. During the 1960s, however, the situation was different. Turkey’s deteriorating relations with the West, mainly with the United States, and the transformation of domestic politics put an end to the national consensus on the formulation and implementation of Turkish foreign policy. It was realized that even though Turkey’s political structure and constitutional framework resemble those of the West, “it, however, has many Middle Eastern characteristics, not the least of which are Muslim identity and cultural heritage.” 173 Especially, the problems inherent in rapid modernization, led to the reassertion of Turkey’s Islamic identity, which brought conservative governments to power. From then on, Turkey increasingly took pro-Arab stance in conflicts that involved the West, Israel and the Middle Eastern states. However, there were at least two obstacles to the further improvement of relations: The first was Turkey’s commitments to almost all Western organizations. Turkey was careful not to create a conflict between her policy in the Middle East and in the West. The second impediment was the opposition at home to Turkey’s deviation from the West through the assertion of religion. Secular forces, mainly the military, watched carefully the new developments in Turkish foreign policy and intervened when it deemed necessary. In sum, it appeared that Turkish foreign policy, at least since the 1960s, has been and still is determined in part by the identity debate and consequently, who dominates the foreign policy discourse.

Chapter 7 Turkey and Israel: The “Outsiders” in the Middle East

Israel is the only country in the Middle East with which Turkey has always enjoyed good, if not very close, relations since the former’s creation in 1948. Despite pressure from the Arab countries to completely cut off relations with Israel, Turkey has maintained her diplomatic ties, which were transformed into intimate security and strategic cooperation between the two countries in the 1990s. As was the case for Turkey’s relations with both the West and the Middle East, Turkey’s relations with Israel have been affected largely by history, domestic and international politics. This chapter argues that the perceptions the Jews and the Turks formed throughout their common history were transmitted into the relations between Turkey and Israel in modern times. These perceptions were reinforced when the Turkish political elite realized the newly-formed Israeli state had the same aim of modernizing and westernizing the country by introducing the principle of secularism and democratic institutions. Israel’s alliance with the West, especially with the United States, was in line with Turkey’s foreign policy objectives, and therefore, had a positive influence on Turkish-Israeli relations. It should not be surprising that any change in Turkey’s relations with the West and the Middle East would have an immediate bearing upon TurkishIsraeli relations. Aside from historical and international conditions, domestic politics has been another factor affecting Turkish-Israeli relations. This factor was ultimately tied to the different identity conceptions of the political elite and different political groups, which manifested itself mainly in the secularist/westernist and Islamist division within the country. As argued in the previous chapter, these divergent perceptions about the identity of the Turkish state and people would be felt on debates about the definition of national interest and consequently, the direction of Turkish foreign policy.

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A. TURKS AND JEWS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE The Jews and the Turks have always enjoyed good relations throughout history first with the Ottoman Empire and later, with the Turkish Republic. “Historically, the Jews never suffered persecution in Turkey, no Jewish blood had ever been spilled there by Turks” and “the Turks harbored no traditional enmity towards the Jews.”1 The relationship between the Turks and the Jews dates back to the 15 th century when the Ottoman Empire offered shelter to the Iberian and other European Jews following their expulsion from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. “The Ottoman Empire became the most secure and desirable haven” 2 for the Jews who started to settle throughout the Empire. Along with the Armenians and Orthodox Christians, “Jews in the Ottoman state enjoyed special recognition as the third millet ”3 The Jews occupied an important position and contributed to the economic and social development of the Empire. Avigdor Levy writes that: In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries they [Jews] were instrumental in developing and expanding the Ottoman economy and administration, and they continued to maintain a prominent role in these areas for long time thereafter. In return, Ottoman Jewry experienced unprecedented individual and religious freedom and long periods of material comfort, security, and prominence.4 In addition, “as ‘People of the Book’ and because of their attachment to tradition and religion, always a high mark in Ottoman eyes, Jews, as believers, enjoyed special protection.” 5 Jews also served actively in the Ottoman army during World War I and “worked to demonstrate their loyalty to the government by getting young non-Ottoman Jewish volunteers to enlist in the army to demonstrate the community’s determination to help the war effort.”6 They also contributed to financing war expenditures and throughout the empire Jewish farmers along with their Muslim counterparts donated animals, tools and carriages to local military units. Jewish charity organizations too helped people of all religions by delivering food and clothes, and thus, “earned gratitude from all elements of the population as a result”7 as well as from the government. As one Ottoman Jewish writer reminded:

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The war itself, despite all the miseries, despite all the horrors that accompanied it, did not affect the harmony which continued among the Muslim and Jewish elements…. For the Turks, the Jew was the faithful subject par excellence, incapable of treason. The reason for the constant sympathy that the Turks nourished for us must be sought in the certainty that they had of themselves being the object of our sincere respect and our profound loyalty, of which we had given multiple proofs on innumerable occasions.... The Armenians and the Greeks, who held posts of confidence in almost all the important centers of the country at the start of the war, contributed no small part by their defection to precipitating the debacle.8 Jews, especially those from Salonica, also contributed to “ideological formation of the Young Turks and their revolution of 1908.” 9 Later, they supported the Turkish War of Independence and rejected “the efforts of the Christian minorities to gain Jewish support to drive the Turks out of Istanbul and much of Anatolia.”10 Throughout the Republican history, the Jews of Turkey rejected any privileges granted to them along with other minorities in the country by the Treaty of Lausanne, and thus, fully integrated themselves into the new regime. This loyalty was greatly appreciated by the Republican regime and Ataturk: There are some of our faithful people whose destiny has been united with that of the Turks ruling them, in particular the Jews, who because their loyalty to this nation and this motherland has been confirmed, have passed their lives in comfort and prosperity until now, and will continue to live thus hereafter in comfort and happiness. 11 Turkey’s relations with the Jews inside and outside the country grew closer during World War II, when Turkey accepted many Jews fleeing the Nazi persecution. The creation of Israel in 1948 was a turning point in these relations. Even though Turkey originally opposed the partition of Palestine in 1947 due to the fear of a communist takeover in that country, it was the first Muslim country to recognize Israel at the expense of her relations with the Arabs. Turks, on the other hand, in accordance with their selfimage, argued that “Turkey was among the last Western European states to recognize Israel,”12 not the first Muslim state. Throughout the 1950s, Turkey’s relations with Israel developed significantly and Turkey let the Israelis open consulates

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throughout the country, especially in the areas close to its borders with Middle Eastern countries, apparently for intelligence gathering purposes. “The Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian problem presented no obstacles to Israel’s activities, since Turkey paid only lip service to the requirements of Muslim solidarity.”13 Turkey’s disdain for the Arabs and “glee over their downfall in the war against Israel” 14 was also a contributing factor to the development of bilateral relations between the two countries. It must be stressed that Turkey’s close ties with Israel was the by-product of her relations with the Arabs and the West. From 1949 to 1963, Turkey perceived Israel mainly as a “country which achieved rapid modernization and progress in a relatively underdeveloped area. Thus, the Israeli educational and industrial establishment, the dynamism of her people became the subject of envy and admiration in the Turkish press.” 15 Turks often compared Israel’s achievements with the failures of the Arabs. As Mim Kemal Oke points out, “looking down on Arabs even brought in its train rather praising evaluations of Israel’s ‘miracles.’ Israel’s military victories against her Arab neighbors and the various development projects she had successfully undertaken were readily applauded in Turkey by some republican circles.”16 The admiration for Israel immediately reminded the Turks of the stereotype of the untrustworthiness and laziness of the Arabs and of their betrayal to the Ottoman Empire. According to one Ottoman account: Whenever the Ottoman army came across with a vineyard in the First World War, this was the fruit of the Jewish immigrants’ labor. The Arab elements in Palestine were either the workers of these vineyards or the servants of the [Jewish] villas...or their greedily spectator...Every Turkish officer and private who served in the Second Army witnessed firstly the material misery of the so-called noble Arab race, and secondly, its spiritual misery which led them to stab the Muslim [Turkish] army at the back which was trying to defend these holy lands! The Jew on the other hand, was only interested in his occupation, and did not think of anything else but the utilization of the settlement permission the Ottoman granted them.17 Throughout the 1950s, Turkey’s relations with Israel developed dramatically. This developing relationship with Israel was an important part of Turkey’s Western-oriented foreign policy and involved direct costs in Turkey’s relations with the Arabs. “In summer 1951, for instance, Turkey sided with the West in protest

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against Egypt’s decision to prevent the passage of Israeli ships through the Suez Canal.”18 The decision caused damage on Turkish-Egyptian relations and drew harsh criticism in Egypt. Even though Turkey withdrew its ambassador from Tel Aviv after the occupation of the Sinai Peninsula by Israel in 1956, the Turks told the Israelis that it was not a hostile act toward Israel but an effort to save the Baghdad Pact. Bilateral relations between Turkey and Israel continued to improve after the incident and resulted in the signing of the Israeli-initiated ‘periphery pact’ that “sought to improve and formalize Israel’s relations with the countries beyond the ‘Arab fence.’ For Turkey, the periphery pact was a symbol of the deep distrust with which it viewed virtually the entire Arab world. In policy terms, it marked the high point of political cooperation with Israel (although formal representation with Tel Aviv was still at legation level).” 19 Since Turkish relations with Israel were influenced heavily by Turkey’s commitment to the Western alliance, “it appeared that Turkey’s relations with Israel could not be altered without a change in Turkish-Western alliance.”20 As argued in the previous chapters, this change came in 1964 when the West did not support Turkey’s Cyprus policy. In addition, the reemphasis on the other elements of Turkish identity, namely its Turkish-Islamic component, along with Turkey’s increasing need for the Middle East oil, forced the Turkish political elite to take a more pro-Arab stance in conflicts involving the West, the Arabs and Israel. As is the case for Turkey’s relations with the West, “when internal factors do play a role in Turkish-Israeli relations they usually conflict with the policies of the bureaucrats. Simply put, the ruling elite in Turkey has a Western identity, whereas the masses share an Islamic-Turkish identity.”21 Turkey’s pro-Arab policy during the 1970s and the 1980s, however, did not lead to a complete break-up of her relations with Israel despite the pressure from the Arabs. Even though Turkey often publicly condemned Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians, voted along with the Arabs at the UN, and reduced her representation to a minimum level, these actions were never strong enough to break off Turkish-Israeli relations altogether. For one thing, Turkey’s institutional commitments to the West and her official identity prevented this. “Turkey, as a NATO member and an ally of the United States, always seemed to look upon Israel favorably.”22 Turkey was trying to esteblish a balance between the Arabs and Israelis and maintain her relations with Israel without offending the Arabs. Even when Turkey’s relations with Israel were at the lowest level, there were signs that Turkey and Israel were

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maintaining their bilateral ties secretly to avoid Arab reaction. A Turkish diplomat, for example, compared Turkey’s relations with its Arab neighbors and Israel to that of a man who has both a wife and a mistress. He may feel a special attraction to his mistress, who possesses certain charms his wife lacks, but in public he must appear a dutiful husband and cannot even officially acknowledge the existence of a mistress. This is all the more true if the wife comes, as do the Arabs, from a large and prominent family and has brought a big dowry to the marriage.23 Turkey and Israel continued to develop their relations especially in the second half of the 1980s mainly in trade and intelligence. In 1986, Turkey appointed a senior diplomat with ambassadorial rank, Ekrem Guvendiren, to the head of legation in Tel-Aviv. Turkey also voted against an Arab resolution, which called for the rejection of Israeli diplomatic credentials at the UN in 1988. Turgut Ozal, then Prime Minister of Turkey, regarded relations with Israel “as a window on future events” and claimed that “for Turkey to play a role in solving the problems of the Middle East, that window must remain open.”24 The rapprochement between Turkey and Israel could not, however, be followed up because of the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories. Relations were still at the level of charge d’affaires and not restored to the ambassadorial level until December 1991. In the 1990s, the normalization of relations between the two countries grew into a strategic partnership, mainly led by the Turkish military. It marked an era in which Turkey openly pursued her relations with Israel despite strong Arab criticism. Turkey and Israel signed many agreements in the areas of free trade, culture, tourism and most importantly military training. In March 1995, a Turkish newspaper, for example, explained the situation that prevailed in Turkey at the time: Our relations with Israel were cool until recently. Like the reluctant believer caught between two mosques, we could not establish diplomatic ties with Israel because of our friends in the Muslim world, and we could not ignore it completely because of our close relationship with the United States. It was as if Israel always extended its hand but we could not shake it because we were too busy paying attention to others around us. This vicious circle is finally over. Most of the people in Turkey have overcome the ‘infidel-Muslim’ propaganda

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waged against Israel, and have stopped seeing Israel as the occupier of holy lands. Israel is reality, and we have not heard its viewpoint for many years.. .Israel is a reality of the Middle Eat no matter how much the religious fanatics deny it. We are happy to see that Turkey has enough common sense to see this reality.25 B. IDENTITY AND SELF-INTEREST IN TURKISHISRAELI COOPERATION IN THE 1990S Normalization of relations with Israel first began with the upgrade of diplomatic representation to the ambassadorial level in 1991. This was immediately followed by the visit of the Turkish tourism minister, Abdulkadir Ates, (the first visit by a Turkish minister in twenty years) in June 1992 and the signing of a treaty facilitating tourism between the two countries. A month after the signing of the Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles on September 13, 1993, Turkish foreign minister Hikmet Cetin visited Israel, the highest ranking official publicly to do so since the creation of Israel, in November 1993 and signed agreements on tourism, economic cooperation, and educational exchange programs. 26 Upon his return to Turkey, Hikmet Cetin told that “Turco-Israeli relations will develop further in all fields. We have agreed that Turkey and Israel should cooperate in restructuring the Middle East.”27 The result of these initial visits was the increasing volume of trade between Turkey and Israel. Between 1992 and 1994, the volume of trade increased 156 percent, mainly in Turkey’s favor with a 36 million dollar surplus.28 These initial visits were followed by exceptionally frequent highlevel visits between the two countries. First, Israeli Defense Ministry director-general David Ivry with a delegation of senior officials and generals came to Ankara “to examine potential areas of cooperation.”29 In January 25–27, 1994, Israeli President Ezer Weizman paid a state visit followed by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres’s official visit in April 1994. From the Turkish side, Prime Minister Tansu Ciller visited Israel in November 3–5, 1994 marking a turning point in Turkish-Israeli relations. During her visit, a free trade agreement between the two countries was negotiated, which was signed on March 14, 1996 and ratified in April 1997. Many argued that Ciller visited Israel mainly “to increase Turkey’s image in the West.” 30 Ciller “showed no hesitation whatsoever about the Zionist philosophy that had led to the creation of the state of Israel and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian

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Arabs.” 31 She praised the accomplishments of Israel and compared the founding father of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, with Ataturk, noting that “both Turkey and Israel had been blessed with unique and courageous founding fathers—Ataturk and Ben-Gurion— whose best achievements continue as guideposts for our respective nations today, leaders whose reputations have stood up in history.”32 During the state banquet in her honor, Ciller even went further by referring to Israel as the ‘Promised Land.’33 Even though there were rumors of political and security cooperation between Turkey and Israel, the Turkish military and diplomatic sources initially denied the existence of such relations. In a press release in October 1992, the military “declared that Turkish-Israeli relations did not involve anything of a military nature,” stating that “in the light of realities of the Middle East, Turkey, which is an Islamic and secular country, is careful to balance its relations with Israel and the Arab world.”34 However, in April 1996, it was made public that a ‘Military Cooperation and Training Agreement’ had been signed on February 23,1996 and completed in August 1996. Even though the content of the agreement was kept secret for the most part, it supposedly involved a joint training agreement with the Israeli air force and navy. Under the agreement, Turkey and Israel will exchange military personnel and visit each other’s military bases. Turkey also will let the Israeli pilots conduct electronic surveillance flights along Turkey’s borders with Iran, Iraq, and Syria. “Cooperation in counterterrorism and border security is stressed, including Israeli help in securing Turkey’s borders against infiltration by Kurdish separatist guerillas.”35 The second part of the agreement completed in August 1996 and signed by Prime Minister and the leader of the Welfare Party, Necmettin Erbakan, involved a $590 million deal in which the Israeli Aircraft Industries would modernize Turkey’s F-4 Phantom fighters with high-tech equipment. Even though Turkish and Israeli officials assured that cooperation between Turkey and Israel was not directed against a third party in the region, the military nature of the agreements was enough to provoke strong criticism from many regional countries arguing that these agreements “threaten both their individual and collective security” and described the agreement as “another Zionist encroachment.” 36 The reactions of Syria and Iran to the agreement were particularly hostile despite the assurance given by the Turkish government that the agreement was not directed towards any third party in the region and that Israeli jets “could only use the Turkish airspace unarmed and without electronic monitoring equipment.”37

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Taken by surprise, many observers of Middle Eastern politics questioned why Israel would sign such an agreement with Turkey while it was in the middle of peace negotiations with the Arabs, especially with Syria, which felt threatened most by this cooperation. On the Turkish side, however, the issue was more complicated than it first appeared. During the Cold War, Turkey followed a balanced, and sometimes pro-Arab, foreign policy in inter-Arab and Arab-Israeli disputes and avoided involvement in such conflicts while seeking to maintain good “if not very close political and diplomatic ties with all the Arab regimes, Iran and Israel.” 38 Even more interesting was the fact that the last part of the agreement was signed by the coalition government led by the Islamic Welfare Party. Throughout his election campaign, Erbakan promised to cut ties with Israel and when the agreements became public in April 1996 he and the other Welfare Party leaders “vowed to scrap it when they came to power.”39 However, when Erbakan finally became prime minister in June 1996, Turkey and Israel completed the final part of the agreements due to the pressure from the military, which initiated cooperation with Israel. It was clear that both Israel and Turkey were motivated by selfinterested reasons. For Israel, it was argued, allying with a Muslim country would serve her purpose to “dilute the religious component of its conflict with the Arabs and fend off charges that Zionism is somehow inherently anti-Islamic.”40 Also, from Israel’s perspective, cooperation with Turkey “would be useful for its geo-cultural integration into the region.” 41 From Turkey’s viewpoint, relations with Israel could help Turkey “gain Israel’s technology and know-how, and even more important, solve security issues such as the monitoring of the PKK activities and the upgrading of its weapons.” 42 In 1996, Turkey’s ambassador to Tel Aviv, for example, told the Jerusalem Post that Turkey has always been interested in Israel’s military experience and added: “We do not want to deal with Israel behind closed doors anymore.”43 There is also a belief in Turkey that the powerful Jewish lobby in the United States would be supportive of some of Turkey’s foreign policy objectives. The Turkish perception of the role of the American Jews is that “the Jews rule the United States” and “American Jews will support Turkey as long as Ankara maintains diplomatic relations with Israel.”44 On December 7, 1983, Prime Minister told the daily newspaper Gunes that “if the Arab countries ask for it [i.e., severing ties with Israel], we will always place emphasis on the cost-benefit issue. We know the role of the Israeli lobby in the US." A year later, he expressed the same concern to a Kuwaiti newspaper: “Turkey will maintain its relations

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with Israel. As I told our Arab friends, we are members of NATO and have close ties with the US" and “the strength of the Jewish lobby in the US is well known.”45 As should be clear from the above statements both countries “serve as one another’s conduit to other areas of the world: Israel is Turkey’s door to the West, while Turkey serves as Israel’s door to the Middle East.”46 Despite the existence of the obvious positive results, this cooperation between Israel and Turkey has also been the cause of a series of negative outcomes that may exceed the expected benefits. “Both countries have faced not only negative domestic reactions, but also the deterioration of their relations with other countries in the region and with EU countries.” 47 Turkish public opinion “would definitely not tolerate an outright alliance against its Muslim brethren and Turkey would gain little by openly supporting the Israeli war effort, which would make Turkey a target for Syrian retribution.” 48 For Israel, it would not be wise to be dragged into hostilities in Cyprus and in Turkey’s Kurdish question since it would make Israel a target for the Kurds. Indeed, Israel has always been reluctant to cooperate with Turkey on PKK terrorism and “has never condemned the PKK nor labeled it ‘terrorist.’” 49 The cooperation also led to a rapprochement between Syria and Iran that might likely to lead to a counter-alliance against Turkey and Israel. If the costs of the Turkish-Israeli cooperation could outweigh the expected benefits, why would Turkey and Israel sign such an agreement? The historical causes of the rapprochement have been already noted. Throughout history, the Jews and Turks have enjoyed good relations and formed positive images about each other. This has been stressed by Turkey’s Deputy Consul, Aydin Nurhan: As sentiments between nations are the most important factors for strategic planning, Turks and the Jewish people enjoy a wonderful heritage of brotherhood, especially beginning in 1492, an era where inquisition in Europe and tolerance in the Ottoman Empire were at their peak. Jews had bad days with Europe, and had bad days with Arabs. But none with Turks...I believe this is our common strength for a lasting peace in the region if we work hand in hand. 50 Thus, this historical affinity between the Turkish elites and Israel created by the historical process plays an important role to pull Turkey in a pro-Israeli direction. 51

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Another reason for Turkey’s open rapprochement with Israel was “Ankara’s disappointment with the results of its pro-Arab policy.”52 The main reason behind Turkey’s pro-Arab tilt in the 1970s and 1980s was to gain Arab support for Turkey’s foreign policy and economic problems. “Diplomatically, Turkey’s long-standing effort to garner Arab support on the Cyprus issue has come to naught. The Arabs roundly condemned the Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence in 1983 and the Islamic Conference Organization has never accorded the Turkish Cypriot community more than observer status.” 53 Turkey’s relations with the Arab countries did not produce the expected economic benefits either. Turkey was able to maintain economic relations mainly a limited number of the oil producing states of the region. However, because of declining oil revenues starting in the mid- 1980s, the region lost its attractiveness of the area for Turkish businesses. The percentage of Turkey’s exports to the Middle East dropped from 27 percent in 1987 to 14 percent in 1993 while imports decreased from 19 percent to 11 percent in the same period.54 Despite the existence of these self interests on both sides, a closer examination of Turkish-Israeli rapprochement in the 1990s reveals the fact that “Turkey’s and Israel’s mutual interests are linked to their mutual identities.”55 These identities strike a fragile balance between Turkey and Israel and any violation of selfperceived identity by one of the parties would endanger the future of cooperation. It is especially true for Turkey that sees itself and Israel as the only Western and civilized countries in the region. This perception, in turn, leads Turkey to believe that Israel should also affirm Turkey’s Western identity since its cooperation with Israel depends mainly on Israel’s confirmation of this fact. For example, during the 1950s when Turkey’s relations with Israel were at their peak, Israel’s Foreign Ministry’s Middle East department was in charge of relations with Turkey. “Ankara insisted on being classified together with Western Europe and Turkish desk was, indeed, moved.”56 Another example occurred when Israeli Foreign Ministry in September 1997 appointed Professor Ehud Toledano, an expert on Ottoman history, as the new Israeli ambassador to Turkey. Turkey refused the ambassador because of his previous lectures on Turkey’s role in the Armenian genocide. Finally, a speech by the Speaker of the Knesset, Dan Tichon, in January 1998, who said that Turkey was not a democracy caused a strong reaction in Turkey and turned into a diplomatic incident between two countries. All these events indicate that “Turkey’s friendship with Israel would be restricted if Turkey’s identity as a democracy

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—and hence a valid member of the West—was seriously questioned by Israel.”57 During the 1990s, when the relations started to improve between the two countries, “a mutual image was created by both sides that was used to portray a ‘self’ and an ‘other’ as being distinct”58 in the region dominated by mainly Arab states. When the rapprochement between Turkey and Israel became public, the Turkish press and the political elite that advocated such a relationship with Israel emphasized the notion that Israel and Turkey are the only countries in the region that share a common identity (i.e., Western) and that Turkey has a lot to gain from this relationship. The argument is that maximizing Turkey’s benefits from this relationship depends ultimately on the recognition of Israel’s legitimacy in the region by others in the Middle East. As Turkey’s Deputy Consul, Aydin Nurhan put it, this outcome is inevitable: “The point reached through time is that now Israel’s presence cannot be denied in the region. Against all protest and rhetoric, Israel is legitimate in the region.”59 Furthermore, attractive images of Israel were presented “to make policies of close cooperation palatable to [the public].”60 For example, “Israel defense technology becomes the best in its field, the Mosad is referred to as the most feared counter-terrorism intelligence service in the world and the Israeli Defense Forces are cited as the best-equipped army.”61 In the words of Aydin Nurhan, "[Israel’s] military might, including her undeclared nuclear capacity, is unmatched in the region and US commitment is stronger than ever for her survival.”62 This perception of Israel also leads to an image of the others (i.e., the Arabs) in the area that is often in a conflict with this self-created image. In the words of a former senior Turkish diplomat, Zeki Kuneralp, for example, “the only country in the Middle East, which is ‘like us’ is Israel.”63 The statement implies that Turkey identifies Israel as “a fellow Western country which operates according to the rules and norms of acceptable international political conduct.”64 The statement implies the “ambiguous relationship of both Israel and Turkey with Europe; both states share a deep attachment to Europe and European values yet find themselves distanced from the continent of their choice, having to exist in regions where they feel profoundly ill at ease.”65 The implication of the statement for both countries’ relations with the Arabs in the region is that the identification of both Turkey and Israel with Europe led these countries to distance themselves from the Arabs politically and culturally. In this image, “the Arabs are not expected to act according international rules, which have their origin in European history and culture…Thus, Turkey, as a geographically marginal

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state, and Israel, with its political marginality in the region, regard one another empathetically.”66 Both Israel and Turkey often put a special emphasis on their respective identities when describing each other such as two outstanding nations, and states, cherishing the respectable common values of secular pluralistic democracy and free market economy, which qualify them as part of the western world, sharing a unique position in the Middle East. In this perception, Turkey and Israel are described as two non-Arab states “whose leadership is essentially secular and Western in outlook and committed to the development of multi-party democratic institutions.”67 The Middle East dominated by the Arabs, on the other hand, is described as a strife-torn region “where one party military dictatorships and Islamic regimes predominate.”68 In the description of both Israel and Turkey, the often-made point is the constant emphasis on their ethnic, political, and cultural differences from the Arabs. Both countries view themselves as democratic, secular, and a part of Western civilization. Secularism carries important connotations and has a “prominent place in national history, identity and mythology” 69 in both countries. Another fundamental element of both nations’ identities comes from the idea that they possess a European identity despite the differences in sources of each country’s European identity. “Geographic proximity and historical interactions with Europe shaped Turkey’s European identity, while Israel’s European identity stems from a shared demographic composition due to the influx of European immigrants.”70 This self-created European identity is often used to compare themselves with the Arabs. In this self-perception, Turkey and Israel are “more civilized than other Middle Eastern states” and they are “closely affiliated with the West and the ‘civilized’ world through links with NATO, the EU and the US.”71 This perception is used to describe their distance from the Middle East and constitute another commonality between the two countries: “Neither state feels welcome or accepted in a region dominated by non-democratic Arab states” 72 and they form a psychological bond, which some observers called “a common sense of otherness.”73 Although the European identity is often emphasized in both countries, its validity is often called into question both within and outside these countries. “Although both are heavily integrated into the European economic order through their respective free trade agreements with the EU, neither has been integrated into the political order” 74 and culturally, they are not accepted as European either. Turkey and Israel are not only ‘outsiders’ in the Arab Middle

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East, they are also ‘outsiders’ in Europe.75 Therefore, “for both Turkey and Israel, not only does friendship mean they are no longer alone in a hostile region, but it also bolsters their international profiles and national self-esteem.”76 Especially for Turkey, cooperation with Israel provides a means to increase her image and regional standing and, in turn, its national pride. “It also serves to reinforce Turkey’s secular credentials in European minds and to dispel fears that Turkish foreign policy is being ‘Islamized.’”77 Ironically, the timing of the military agreement coincides with Turkey’s December 1995 elections, in which the Islamist Welfare Party of Necmettin Erbakan won the plurality of the national vote. Before he became prime minister in 1996, Erbakan had campaigned on the promise to cut ties with Israel, and in both his speeches and his party’s literature, he often blames Zionism and the Jewish state for the problems of Turkey. “He has implicitly rejected the Israel-PLO agreements and [seemed] never to have acknowledged Israel’s right to exist.” 78 Erbakan and his National Salvation Party on September 6, 1980 organized the famous Konya rally, in which he “called on Turkey to break with Israel and for all Muslims to ‘liberate Jerusalem.’” 79 At the rally, his supporters carried banners, one of which said “Death to the Jews.” 80 This incident sparked a very strong reaction in the military and is believed to be one of the most important causes of the September 1980 military coup in Turkey. After returning to politics and establishing the Welfare Party in 1987, Erbakan continued his anti-West and anti-Jewish rhetoric. He bitterly criticized Turkish politicians who supported strong ties with Israel and accused them of being Israel’s puppets. In April 1992, for example, “Erbakan criticized President Turgut Ozal for embracing Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy, and called for Ozal to distance himself from ‘pro-Zionist’ statesmen from third countries.” 81 Later, although Erbakan softened his rhetoric not to annoy Turkey’s secular majority, he nevertheless often spoke of Israel as a “cancer in the heart of the Arab and Muslim world”82 and he promised to scrap the Turkish-Israeli agreements when he came to power. As soon as Erbakan became prime minister in June 1996 in the coalition government with the True Path Party, TurkishIsraeli relations reached their low point. As part of his goal of abrogating agreements with Israel and bring Turkey into the fold of Islamic countries, he traveled to Tehran, Cairo, Tripoli and other regional capitals “where he hoped to mend damaged ties.”83 He refused to meet Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy, who was visiting Turkey in 1997, but later, agreed to meet him. When Erbakan finally met Levy in April 1997, he openly expressed “before

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the mass media his negative views of Israeli policies and told Levy that Israel should withdraw from the occupied territories, including Jerusalem, in line with long-established UN Resolutions.”84 As part of his political discourse, he and his followers often use the religious term ‘the Jewish State’ rather than political or strategic terms in describing Israel. It was around this time that the Turkish military, in April 1997, unveiled a New Concept of National Military Strategy, “which openly brands Islamic movements as ‘Enemy No. 1' along with Kurdish separatists.” 85 As General Kenan Deniz, the head of Internal Security and the Planning Department of the Chief of Staff, stated in April 1997, “according to new national security guidelines, the perception of threat has shifted from outside the country to inside: Islamic movements and divisiveness [the Kurdish issue] which consolidate each other.”86 As argued before, Kemalism as an ideology concerned mainly with maintaining national unity on secular and Western grounds gives the military political autonomy by equipping it with sense of “being above social dissensus, party politics, and particular interests.”87 It also provides for the justification of the military’s role as the guardian of national interest. In the 1990s, maintaining national unity and preserving secularism have been the most important components of national interest. Therefore, any attack on Kemalist ideology would threaten the very existence of the military. Thus, the Turkish military has much at stake in the formulation of Turkey’s domestic and foreign policies. As the Deputy Chief of Staff, General Cevik Bir, put it “the Turkish Armed Forces are an integral part of Turkey’s foreign policy.” 88 For the military that initiated cooperation with Israel, these perceived domestic threats to the official identity and the national interest were supported by the neighboring countries, mainly Iran and Syria. As Bulent Aras, points out, in Turkey, as in other countries, the discourse of the foreign policy elite tends to dramatize threats originating from imaginary or real enemies because it needs to renew itself or establish legitimacy in domestic affairs. Of course, even though the perceived threats to national interest might not be totally imaginary, they constitute material that can be manipulated by the administrative elites, with the threat frequently exaggerated.... [The] natural outcome of this situation is that foreign policy becomes an extension of domestic politics and suffers under this yoke.89

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In this reasoning, then, the military described Iran and Syria as states sponsoring Islamic fundamentalism and Kurdish terrorism. At a briefing at the Turkish-American Council in Washington D.C. in 1997, General Cevik Bir openly accused Iran “sponsoring antiTurkish terrorism as well as trying to destroy the secular Turkish state.”90 He also described Iran as a ‘terrorist state’ charging it with attempting to export the Islamic Revolution to Turkey. As should be clear, the Welfare’s Party’s electoral victory and Necmettin Erbakan’s efforts to reorient Turkey eastwards put the military on alert. While Erbakan continued to undermine Turkish-Israeli relations, the military launched a counteroffensive on Islamic fundamentalism and the Welfare Party and “declared their readiness to use force against Islamic groups.” 91 Perhaps, the most important of all in terms of foreign policy was the Turkish Chief of Staff, General Ismail Hakki Karadayi’s visit to Israel on February 24–28, 1997 without even bothering to inform the Welfare-led coalition government. During his visit, Karadayi stated that “we [Turks and Jews] have been together for the last 400 years. We have a strong bond. Both Turkey and Israel share organic, spiritual, and emotional relations.”92 This move by the military to tie Turkey closer to Israel coincided with the revelation of the New National Military Strategy, which targeted the Islamists. “What is beyond question is that the military’s vigorous pursuit of relations with Israel was in part calculated to embarrass a government whose head had called openly for a break in those ties. By forging ever closer links with Israel, the generals turned foreign policy into a domestic political football.”93 For the Turkish military, cooperation with Israel also served to “put an end to any eastward drift that might be imagined under the Erbakan government in Turkey’s foreign policy.” 94 The military’s attack on the Welfare Party and the Islamists intensified especially during the WP’s time in power from 1996 to 1997 and the armed forces had the state prosecutor ask the Constitutional Court to ban the Welfare Party, which was the leading member of the coalition government at the time. In June 1997, Erbakan resigned under pressure from the military “in what the Turkish press has termed a ‘soft coup.’” 95 C. IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION The above analysis of Turkey’s relations with Israel shows that the rapprochement between the two countries is closely related to their

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mutual identities, which in turn, define their interests. Both countries emphasize their respective identities in terms of their ethnic, cultural, and political distance from the rest of the Middle East and their links with the West. Turkey and Israel both share the same goal of integrating into the West culturally, economically and politically, however, run into series obstacles in their endeavor. They are ‘outsiders’ both in the Middle East and the West, and therefore, view themselves empathically. As for Turkey, the rapprochement with Israel represents the last resort to prove its Western identity and to boost its self-esteem. As argued in the previous chapters, the ultimate aim of the Turkish Republic since its inception has been to be a member of the West and Turkish foreign policy has been formulated accordingly. Throughout the Cold War period, Turkey has acted with the West and distanced itself from the Middle East. For Turkey, Israel was the only European country in the region that would constitute a reliable alliance partner and Turkey’s backdoor to the West. Even when Turkey encountered problems with the West, especially on the Cyprus issue, and established close relations with the Arabs in the 1960s and the 1970s it did not completely cut off her relations with Israel. The end of the Cold War marked a new era in both Turkey’s foreign and domestic policies. In terms of foreign policy, it became clear that the Europeans were not willing to accept Turkey as one of their own. This coincided with the rise of Islamist politics in domestic politics and the increasing electoral strength of the Welfare Party, which thrived on the negative aspects of Turkey’s long-established goal of becoming a European state. The revival of Islam in Turkish politics exacerbated the secularist-Islamist split whose implications would be felt on the foreign policy of Turkey in the years to come. While Islamists tried to bring Turkey closer to the Islamic bloc, the secularist military and political elites tried pull Turkey in more European and secularist lines, which was clear in the struggle between the Turkish military and the Welfare Party. Thus, the military’s efforts to tie Turkey to Israel through military, economic, and political arrangements were meant to stop the Islamization of Turkish foreign policy. The completion of the military agreements with Israel during the coalition government led by the Welfare Party added another reason: to embarrass the Islamist WP that was fiercely against any relationship with Israel. Many scholars have long stressed the pragmatic and selfinterested nature of Turkish foreign relations. However, “to merely state that successive governments have consistently pursued pragmatic ‘national interest’ in regard to neighbors in Europe and

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the Middle East insufficient to highlight the marked shifts in foreign policy or to explain how these ‘national interests’ were made in the first place.” 96 In the case of Turkish-Israeli relations, the struggle between the secularists and the Islamists (i.e., the military and the Welfare Party) shows that both the military’s and the WP’s foreign policy preferences and understanding of national interest depend in most part on their identity conceptions. The secular Kemalist ideology constitutes the most important element of the military’s corporate identity and helps them determine who is a desirable alliance partner. Any attack, Islamic fundamentalism and Kurdish separatism in this case, on that identity threatened the existence of the army. These internal threats also shaped the military’s view of external threats. Foreign policy “has become hostage to the domestic insecurity arising from the Kurdish and Islamic challenges to the homogenizing policies of Kemalism and the Kemalist establishment’s quest to become a ‘European country in the Middle East.’”97 Israel, which is regarded by the Turkish military as the only modern and Western country in the region, becomes a natural alliance partner for Turkey. For the Welfare Party, the opposite is true. Because of its Islamic identity, the WP leaders believe that Turkey’s national interest lies in close relations with other Muslim countries. And for the same reason, Israel constitutes the most dangerous threat to the security of other Middle Eastern countries in general, and to that of Turkey in particular. In sum, culture and identity framework in the Turkish case informed each of the participants in the decisionmaking process with whom to interact and with what intentions. States, depending on the allocation of power among different organizations, may represent one of the identity conceptions of these organizations in the system. In this sense, identity “provides a handle on who is considered to be a desirable alliance partner.”98

Chapter 8 Conclusion

The purpose of this study is to assess the validity of constructivism in international relations. The main argument of the dissertation is whether identity-based explanations provide a better tool than rational choice explanations in accounting for states’ foreign policy preferences and behaviors. It views states as social actors and offers a more social view of the environment in which states and other actors operate. It argues that the identities of states are crucial for understanding international politics and they must be analyzed in concrete historical settings. Rationalist models argue that states’ preferences and identities are fixed and exogenous to the system while constructivism contends that preferences and identities of states are endogenous and “the interaction between subjects reinforces or undermines their identities.”1 Since the international system in rationalist models is anarchic, states must have egoistic identities and look out for their self-interest or they risk being crushed by others in the system. In other words, states’ preferences are fixed and they bring those preferences to their interaction with others in the system. States, in this sense, use those identities “strategically, like any other resource, simply to further their own self-interests.”2 Constructivists, on the other hand, argue that states do not have any social identities before interaction and whether or not states have egoistic or cooperative identities depends on the nature of interaction with others. What both theories have in common is their systemic approach, which denies the role of domestic politics in international relations. By analyzing Turkey’s foreign policy preferences and behavior in the post-World War II period, this study argued that states construct their identities before systemic interaction and those identities inform them who is friend and who is enemy. States form their preferences based on their corporate identities and start their interaction in accordance with those identities. In this sense, as neorealists argue, preferences are exogenous to the system.

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However, my argument differs from neorealism in that once states start interaction, their identities can change depending on the nature of interaction. States, therefore, may form new identities or reinforce the existing ones, which makes them endogenous to the system. Constructivists, however, ignore identity changes at the domestic level, which can change the nature of systemic interaction. By taking into account identity changes at both domestic and systemic levels, the book offers an interactive model of international relations. It is important to analyze states’ international and domestic environments because most often, cultural and institutional contexts of those environments shape states’ identities.3 Cultural contexts do not only constrain actors or regulate their behavior but also “help to constitute the very actors whose conduct they seek to regulate.”4 Domestically, a state’s identity may be based on such factors as race, religion or cultural beliefs and values. In authoritarian societies, states’ identities would conform to the beliefs and values of a single leader or a governing body in charge. “In pluralistic political systems, however, usually no one group is able to impose its views on the rest. In order to pursue their agenda, political actors are compelled to enter into debates and negotiations with other groups, making compromises and concessions along the way.”5 Once the state’s identity is constructed, it has to be legitimated. The legitimation process often involves legal arrangements or myth creation, which over time “are reified and become ‘social facts.’ These legitimations thus become part of the political culture of the nation and can have a lasting impact on state behavior long after the circumstances that gave birth to them have passed.”6 States try to institutionalize their identities in the international system as well. This often involves recognition of their sovereignty and membership in international organizations, which confirm or transform their identities. In other words, international society can produce and reproduce a state’s identity through legal and institutional arrangements. This analysis of domestic politics is a very important contribution to both neorealism and constructivism. Their systemic approach denies the international relations theory “a clear test of their relative predictive power.. .Without a theory of interests, which requires analysis of domestic politics, no theory of international relations can be fully adequate.” 7 For neorealists, the international system determines states’ identities and interests, which are egoistic in nature. For constructivists, states do not have any identity or interest prior to systemic interaction. They define and

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redefine their identities and interests after they start their interaction with others in the system. This understanding, however, weakens the predictive power of the constructivist theory. According to constructivism, one can tell whether or not states will acquire egoistic or collective identities and interests by just looking at the nature of their interaction. However, it does not say much about what brings them together in the first place. Nor does it say what determines the nature of interaction, which in turn defines the nature of identity and interest. The interactive model presented in this book intends to fill in this gap in both constructivist and neorealist theories. It argues that states construct their identities at the domestic level. Identity construction is a bargaining process among different groups with different identity conceptions and interests. Whose identity the state will represent is closely related to the distribution of power among these groups. Once the identity constructed, then, it will inform the state with whom and with what intentions it will engage in systemic interaction. This argument has important implications for neorealist and constructivist theories in particular and the international relations theory in general. Neorealists argue that states have fixed egoistic identities and they utilize those identities to maximize their selfinterests. Consequently, the effects that changing identities may have on states’ interests and foreign policies are ignored. Constructivists, on the other hand, ignore the domestic sources of identity to show that state identities and interests are endogenous to the international system. The interactive model, however, argues that states come into systemic interaction with an already constructed identity. In this sense, it warrants the neorealist argument that state identity is exogeneous to the system. It differs from neorealism, however, in that systemic interaction can transform that identity and produce a new identity and a new set of interests, which makes it endogenous to the system. Both domestic and international factors can influence identity formation in important ways. The acceptance of a state to a society of states can further confirm the state’s identity. However, any rejection of that identity by in-group members is likely to produce an identity crisis. An identity crisis that occurred at the international level may also have important implications at the domestic level. It will be used by the excluded groups to weaken the dominant group’s political position and to present their identity as the alternative. If these groups’ efforts prove successful, they can alter the course of the state’s foreign policy altogether.

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At the domestic level, “the definition of nationhood and citizenship may be based on the ethnicity, religion and cultural identity of one of the national groups, most often the majority group.” 8 This situation often leads to the exclusion of other ethnic and religious groups from political and social life. If the national identity imposed by the dominant group is not convincing or attractive for everybody in the country, the excluded and marginalized groups will “either cling to their traditional identities and communities, or create new communities in different social settings.” 9 In the process of democratization, these groups will be more assertive of their identities in political life, thus bringing the state against society and social groups against each other. The result is an identity crisis, which depending on the distribution of political power may or may not influence the state’s foreign policy preferences, and consequently behavior. Turkey, in this regard, constitutes a unique case study in testing the validity of the constructivist approach in international relations. As Turkish President Suleyman Demirel pointed out, “Turkey belongs to many regions at the same time. She is a European, Balkan, Caucasian, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and Black Sea country at the same time.”10 Being at the threshold of different cultures imposes upon Turkey different identities. As discussed throughout the book, Turkish national identity has three distinctive elements whose effects are heavily felt on the formulation of Turkish foreign policy: Turkish, Islamist, and European. Since the establishment of the Turkish Republic, these three identities have always been in conflict with each other because each urges to follow different types of action in both Turkey’s foreign and domestic politics. “Modern Turkey, like a transgendered body with the soul of one gender in the body of another, is in constant tension...The soul of white Turkey and its Kemalist identity is in constant pain and conflict with the national body politic of Turkey.”11 In the words of Samuel Huntington, Turkey is a “torn country.” According to Huntington, a torn country is the one whose leaders typically wish to pursue a bandwagoning strategy and to make their countries members of the West, but the history, culture and traditions of their countries are non-Western. The most obvious and proto-typical country is Turkey...while the elite of Turkey has defined Turkey as a Western society, the elite of the West refuses to accept Turkey as such.12

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After the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923 under the leadership of Ataturk, the political elite launched a series of reforms to westernize and modernize the country. The most important part of this endeavor was to remove Islam from the definition of the state and to create a state and society in line with those of the West. The most important of this attempt was the exclusion of Islam from politics and to confine it to the individual. The implication of these modernizations attempts in terms of foreign policy was the change in the definition of enemies and friends. During the Ottoman Empire, the Christian West was perceived as enemy and the Muslim Middle East as friend. However, the transformation of the state’s identity from Islamic to Western reversed this and the West suddenly became a friend and a civilization to join. Since the establishment of the new Turkish Republic, the most important aim of Turkish foreign policy has been to be part of Western family of nations and accepted as a European state. Thus, the new identity of the Turkish state determined the direction of Turkish foreign policy. Many students of Turkish politics emphasize the pragmatic nature of Turkish foreign policy and argue that Turkey’s decision to join the Western alliance stemmed from the need to get protection against the Soviet Union. However, as explained in chapter 3, Turkey had decided to join the West long before the Soviet threat occurred. It was not a simple decision for protection, but a modernization project. Even when Turkey became a member of NATO in 1952, Turkish decision-makers often emphasized the contribution of membership to Turkey’s self-perceived European identity. For them, membership in Western security, economic, and political organizations was the confirmation of Turkey’s Western identity. Any domestic opposition to Turkey’s Westernoriented foreign policy was suppressed. Another proof of Turkey’s identity-based foreign policy was its relations with the Muslim Middle East. Republican leaders thought that the most important reason for Turkey’s backwardness was Islam and Eastern civilization, which were thought to be alien to Turkish culture. They were seen as the most important obstacles to Turkey’s development and the new civilization project. The natural result of this thinking was to cut off relations with Middle Eastern countries and develop ties with the West, sometimes at the expense of the regional countries. Misperceptions and images that Turks and Arabs developed about each other were also a contributing factor. Turkey’s increasing association with West further alienated the Middle East and the relations were kept to a minimum because it

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was thought that “following an active Middle Eastern policy [would] bring out the non-Western elements.” 13 Turkey consistently resisted attempts from Middle Eastern countries to form an organization based on Islamic values. Turkey also did not participate in the Organization of Islamic Conference on the grounds that the principles of the organization conflicted with Turkey’s constitution, which envisioned a secular and Western state. Turkey’s participation in the organization’s meetings in 1968 was heavily criticized by the Westernized elite in Turkey because doing so was a deviation of secular and Western values. It became only a de facto member of the organization in the late 1970s but did not sign the charter for the same reasons. The rapprochement between Turkey and her Muslim neighbors was also the result of the growing influence of Islam as a political ideology, which advocated closer relations with the Middle East. The emergence of Islam as a political ideology in the 1960s and the West’s negative attitude toward Turkey on the Cyprus issue, for first time, led to the reevaluation of the direction of Turkish foreign policy. Turkish political leaders realized that Turkey’s Western-oriented foreign policy was not serving Turkey’s interests and Turkey needed to establish more friendly relations with Eastern bloc and Middle Eastern countries. However, even then, they had no intention to cut off relations with the West. Instead of expanding relations with those countries, Turkey diversified her foreign policy within the Western camp leaning more from the United States toward Europe. The result was the signing of the Ankara Agreement with the EU, which granted Turkey associate membership in the organization. Even though the EU was an economic organization in the beginning, Turkish political leaders often emphasized the political and cultural aspects of the agreement and the EU was seen as the last step toward the realization of being accepted as a European state. For Turkish political leaders, being accepted as European had an utmost importance because it would confirm the success of Kemalist reforms. In this sense, the self-created, and somewhat accepted in the context of the Cold War, European identity defined Turkey’s foreign policy preferences and consequently interests. Political and economic development depended upon being civilized and contemporary, which could only be realized by joining Europe. Ironically, when the EU started to emphasize the cultural and political aspects of the organization in the 1980s, Turkey’s Western credentials were seriously questioned. Being European required opening up to the West politically and economically, but doing so also revealed the aspects of Turkish culture, which were not

CONCLUSION 165

suitable to Europe. Coupled with economic and political difficulties and the end of the Cold War, cultural issues contributed to worsening of Turkey’s relations with Europe. European leaders often stressed the impossibility of Turkey’s membership in the EU because it shares a different culture and civilization. This caused an identity crisis on the part of the Turkish state whose implications were to be felt on Turkey’s foreign policy in the 1990s. These developments coincided with the breakup of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the Turkic republics in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Turkey’s approach to these republics was heavily influenced by the nationalist sentiment in the country and the need to find a new role for Turkey. As explained in chapters 4 and 5, Turkish foreign policy towards these republics was a result of Europe’s attitude towards Turkey. It was an attempt to get out of the identity crisis Turkey was experiencing by finding a new role based on Turkish brotherhood and solidarity. Another brief shift occurred in the second half of the 1990s when the Islamic Welfare Party came to power in a coalition government with the True Path Party. The leader of the Welfare Party, Necmettin Erbakan, was an ardent advocate of establishing closer relations with the Muslim Middle East and cutting off Turkey’s relations with the Christian West and Israel. During his short stint in office, Turkish foreign policy was clearly in disarray and showed the signs of the identity crisis. While he was visiting the most radical Muslim states such as Iran and Libya and trying to form Pan-Islamic organizations like the D-8, his coalition partner, Tansu Ciller, was visiting Western capitals trying to convince them that Turkey is essentially a Western country. To add more to this confusion, the Turkish military was concluding military agreements with Israel, which was seen as the only Western country in the region. The military’s resentment toward political Islam and the Welfare Party’s foreign policy objectives turned into a power struggle, which resulted in the resignation of the Welfare Party government. “The Welfare Party’s Islamic agenda [sought] political power to transform society. It succeeded in becoming an ideology of opposition, but never achieved a position as an ideology of liberation and was unable to establish itself as an alternative civil society movement.” 14 As should be clear throughout the book, the shifts in Turkey’s foreign policy have been a result of the negative interaction with the West and the shifts in the power of different groups with different role identities. While the constant rejection by the EU caused a strong emotional reaction in Turkey and forced Turkish decision-makers to search for alternatives, it was also used by the

166 TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY AND TURKISH IDENTITY

opposition to pull Turkey’s foreign policy in the direction in accordance with their identity conceptions. Turkey’s approach to the West, Central Asia and the Middle East was in most part based on different identity conceptions in the country. The Turkish case confirms the constructivist argument that states do not have fixed preferences or interest. Depending on interaction with others, states define and redefine their identities and base their interests on the new definitions of their identities. Also shifts in political elites with different role identities may change the identity of the state, which can alter the nature of systemic interaction. In this case, states again redefine their preferences and interests, which may lead to a different foreign policy behavior.

Notes

NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 1 Robert O.Keohane, ed. Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 159. 2 For more information on the Neorealist-Neoliberal debate, see David A. Baldwin, ed. Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate (New York: Colombia University Press, 1993) and Keohane, Neorealism and Its Critics. 3 Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization 46 (Spring 1992): 391–425, p. 391. 4 For more information on the constructivist position in international relations, see Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization 46 (Spring 1992): 391–425, “Collective Identity Formation and the International State,” American Political Science Review 88 (June 1994): 384–396, “Constructing International Politics,” International Security 20 (Summer, 1995): 71–81, “Identity and Structural Change in International Politics,” in The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory, ed. Yosef Lapid and Friedrich Kratochwil (Boulder, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996), Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), Peter J. Katzenstein, ed. The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), Nicholas Onuf, World of Our Making (Colombia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989). 5 Jonathan Mercer, “Anarchy and Identity,” International Organization 49 (Spring 1995): 229–252, p. 229. 6 Ibid. p. 229. 7 Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It,” p. 392. 8 Ziya Onis, “Turkey in the Post-Cold War Era: In Search of Identity,” Middle East Journal 49 (Winter 1995): 48–68, p. 50. 9 Ibid. p. 50. 10 Ibid. p. 48.

168 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

11 Nilufer Gole, “The Quest for the Islamic Self within the Context of Modernity,” in Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, ed. Resat Kasaba and Sibel Bozdogan, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), p. 84. 12 Hakan M.Yavuz, “Turkish-Israeli Relations through the Lens of the Turkish Identity Debate,” Journal of Palestine Studies 27 (Autumn 1997): 22–37, p. 23. 13 David Kushner, “Westernism in Contemporary Turkey,” in Ataturk and the Modernization of Turkey, ed. Jacob M.Landau (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), p. 236. 14 Atila Eralp, “Turkey and the European Community in the Changing Post-War International System,” in Turkey and Europe, ed. Canan Balkir and Alan M.Williams (London and New York: Pinter Publishers Ldt., 1993), p.26. 15 Ibid. p. 28. 16 Onis, “Turkey in the Post-Cold War Era,” p. 53. 17 Craig R. Nation, “Preface,” in Turkey Between East and West, ed. Vojtech Mastny and R.Craig Nation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), p. xi. 18 Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations,” Foreign Affairs 72 (1993): 22–50, p. 32. 19 Altemur Kilic, Turkey and the World (Washington D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1959), p. 159.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 1 Kenneth N. Waltz, “Political Structures,” in Neorealism and its Critics, ed. Robert O.Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 70. 2 Ibid. p. 90. 3 John Gerard Ruggie, “Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis,” in Neorealism and its Critics, ed. Robert O.Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 134. 4 Waltz, “Political Structures,” p. 73–97. 5 Kenneth N.Waltz, “Anarchic Orders and Balances of Power,” in Neorealism and its Critics, ed. Robert O.Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 108. 6 Waltz, “Political Structures,” p. 87. 7 Ibid p. 91. 8 Ibid. p. 93. 9 Henry R.Nau, “Identity and International Politics: An Alternative to Neorealism.” Paper delivered at the 1993 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, The Washington Hilton, September 2–5, 1993, p. 6. 10 Waltz, “Political Structures,” p. 94. 11 Waltz, “Anarchic Orders and Balances of Power,” p. 103.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 169

12 Joseph M.Grieco, “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism,” in Neorealism and Neoliberalism, ed. David A. Baldwin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 127–128. 13 Mlada Bukovansky, “American Identity and Neutral Rights from Independence to the War of 1812,” International Organization 51 (Spring 1997): 209–243, p. 209. 14 Alexander Wendt, “The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory,” International Organization 41 (Summer 1987): 335–370, p.335. 15 Alexander Wendt and Daniel Friedheim, “Hierarchy under Anarchy: Informal Empire and the East German State,” International Organization 49 (Autumn 1995): 689–72l, p. 692. 16 Jeffrey T. Checkel, “The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory,” World Politics 50 (January 1998): 324–348, p. 326. 17 Walter Carlsnaes, “The Agency-Structure Problem in Foreign Policy Analysis,” International Studies Quarterly 36 (1992): 245–270, p. 246. 18 David Dessler, “What is at Stake in the Agent-Structure Debate?” International Organization 43 (Summer 1989): 441–473, p. 459. For more information on this point, see Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984) and Alexander Wendt, “The Agent-Stucture Problem.” 19 Dessler, “What is at Stake in the Agent-Structure Debate?” p. 459. 20 Ibid. p. 459. 21 Ibid. p. 459. 22 Ted Hopf, “The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory,” International Security 23 (Summer 1998): 171–200, p. 173. 23 Checkel, “The Constructivist Turn,” p. 328. 24 Ibid. p. 326. 25 Ronal L. Jepperson, Alexander Wendt and Peter J. Katzenstein, “Norms, Identity, and Culture in National Security,” in The Culture of National Security, ed. Peter J.Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 59. 26 Hopf, “The Promise of Constructivism,” p. 174. 27 Ibid p.174. 28 Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization 46 (Spring 1992): 391–425, p. 396. 29 Ibid. p. 396. 30 Alexander Wendt, “Constructing International Politics,” International Security 20 (Summer 1995): 71–81, p. 73. 31 Ibid. p. 73. 32 Ibid. p. 73. 33 Ibid. p. 73. 34 Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It,” p. 396. 35 Wendt, “Constructing International Politics,” p. 73.

170 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

36 37 38 39 40 41

42

43 44 45 46 47

48

49 50 51 52

53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It,” p. 397. Wendt, “Constructing International Politics,” p. 74. Hopf, “The Promise of Constructivism,” p. 178. Jepperson, Wendt, and Katzenstein, “Norms, Identity, and Culture,” p. 42. Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It,” p. 396. Ibid. p. 398. For more information on national role conceptions and identity, see Stephen Walker, ed. Role Theory and Foreign Policy Analysis (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1987), K.J.Holsti, “National Role Conception in the Study of Foreign Policy,” International Studies Quarterly 14 (September 1970): 233–309, Michael N. Barnett, “Institutions, Roles, and Disorder: The Case of the Arab States System,” International Studies Quarterly 37 (1993): 271–296, and Glenn Chafetz, Hillel Abramson, and Suzette Grillot, “Role Theory and Foreign Policy: Belarussian and Ukrainian Compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime,” Political Psychology 17 (1996): 727–757. Alexander Wendt, “Collective Identity Formation and the International State,” American Political Science Review 88 (June 1994): 384–396, p. 385. Ibid. p. 385. Ibid. p. 385. Ibid. p. 385. Ibid. p. 385. Alexander Wendt, “Identity and Structural Change in International Politics,” in The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory, ed. Yosef Lapid and Friedrich Kratochwil (Boulder, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996), p. 51. Naeem Inayatullah and David L. Blaney, “Knowing Encounters: Beyond Parochialism in International Relations Theory,” in The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory, ed. Yosef Lapid and Friedrich Kratochwil (Boulder, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996), p. 71. Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It,” p. 402. Wendt, “Collective Identity Formation,” p. 386. Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It,” p. 400. Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It,” p. 400, “Identity and Structural Change,” p. 52–53, and “Collective Identity Formation,” p. 386. Wendt, “Identity and Structural Change,” p. 54. Wendt, “Collective Identity Formation,'' p. 388 and “Identity and Structural Change,” p. 54. Wendt, “Identity and Structural Change,” p. 54. Ibid. p. 55. Ibid. p. 55. Ibid. p. 56. Wendt, “Collective Identity Formation,” p. 390. Wendt, “Identity and Structural Change,” p. 57.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 171

61 Wendt, “Collective Identity Formation,” p. 391. 62 Ibid. p. 391. 63 Ronal L.Jepperson, Alexander Wendt and Peter J. Katzenstein, “Norms, Identity, and Culture in National Security,” p. 59. 64 Ibid. p. 23. For more information on identity, see Jonathan Mercer, “Anarchy and Identity,” International Organization 49 (Spring1995): 229–252, Marilynn B. Brewer, “The Social Self: On Being the Same and Different at the Same Time,” PSPB 17 (October 1991): 475–482, Susan T. Fiske and Shelley E. Taylor, ed. Social Cognition (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1991), Nathan Teske, “Beyond Altruism: IdentityConstruction as Moral Motive in Political Explanation,” Political Psychology 18 (1997): 71–91, William Bloom, Personal Identity, National Identity and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), Kenneth R. Hoover, The Power of Identity: Politics in a New Key (Chatham, New Jersey: Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 1997) and Louis Kriesberg, Terrell A. Northrup and Stuart J. Thorson, Intractable Conflicts and Their Transformation (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1989). 65 Brewer, “The Social Self,” p. 476. 66 Wendt, “Collective Identity Formation.” 67 Brewer, “The Social Self,” p. 476. 68 Ibid. p. 476. 69 Geir Honneland, “Identity Formation in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region,” Cooperation and Conflict 33 (1998): 277–297, p. 281. 70 Terrell A. Northrup, “The Dynamic of Identity in Personal and Social Conflict,” in Intractable Conflicts and Their Transformation, ed. Louis Kriesberg, Terrell A. Northrup, and Stuart J. Thorson (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1989), p. 55. 71 Honneland, “Identity Formation in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region,” p. 281. 72 Ibid. p. 281. 73 Ibid. p. 281. 74 Thomas Risse-Kappen, “Collective Identity in a Democratic Community: The Case of NATO," in The Culture of National Security, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 367. 75 Ibid. p. 367. 76 Michael N. Barnett, “Identity and Alliance in the Middle East,” in The Culture of National Security, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 403–404 77 Jutta Weldes, “Constructing National Interests,” European Journal of International Relations 2 (1996): 275–318, p. 279. 78 Alexander Wendt, “Constructing International Politics,” p. 72. 79 Weldes, “Constructing National Interests,” p. 280. 80 Checkel, “The Constructivist Turn,” p. 341. 81 Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It,” p. 404. 82 Ibid. p. 405.

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83 Sujata C. Pasic, “Culturing International Relations Theory: A Call for Extension,” in The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory, ed. Yosef Lapid and Friedrich Kratochwil (Boulder, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996), p. 87. 84 Inayatullah and Blaney, “Knowing Encounters,” p. 72. 85 Ibid. p. 73. 86 Weldes, “Constructing National Interests,” p. 280. 87 Ibid. p. 280. 88 Roxanne Lynn Dotty, “Foreign Policy as Social Construction: A PostPositivist Analysis of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy in the Philippines,” International Studies Quarterly 37 (1993): 297–320, Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North-South Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), and Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). 89 Thomas U. Berger, “Norms, Identity, and National Security in Germany and Japan,” in The Culture of National Security, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 325. 90 In authoritarian societies, the state’s foreign policy preferences and interests would conform to the role identity of the individual or the governing body in charge. 91 Glenn Chafetz, “The Struggle for a National Identity in Post-Soviet Russia,” Political Science Quarterly 111 (1996–97): 661–688, p. 665. 92 Jepperson, Wendt and Katzenstein, “Norms, Identity, and Culture in National Security,” p. 62. 93 Peter J. Katzenstein, “Introduction: Alternative Perspectives on National Security,” in The Culture of National Security, ed. Peter J.Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 22. 94 Jepperson, Wendt and Katzenstein, “Norms, Identity, and Culture in National Security,” p. 66. 95 Ibid. p. 61. 96 Ibid. p. 60. 97 Chafetz, “The Struggle for a National Identity,” p. 665. 98 Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), p. 131. 99 Ibid. p. 132. 100 Barnett, “Identity and Alliance in the Middle East,” p. 411. 101 Ibid. p.411. 102 Ibid. p.413. 103 Ibid. p. 412. 104 Thomas Banchoff, “German Identity and European Integration,” European Journal of International Relations 5 (1999): 259–289, p. 261. 105 Anthony D. Smith, “The Origins of Nations,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 12 (July 1989): 340–367. 106 Bloom, Personal Identity, p. 58. 107 Ibid. p. 39. 108 Wendt, “Collective Identity Formation.” 109 Meltem Muftuler-Bac, Turkey’s Relations with a Changing Europe (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1997).

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 173

110 Dotty, “Foreign Policy as Social Construction,” p. 303.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 3 1 Sibel Bozdogan and Resat Kasaba “Introduction,” in Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, ed. Sibel Bozdogan and Resat Kasaba (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), p. 3. 2 S.N.Eisenstadt, “The Kemalist Regime and Modernization: Some Comparative and Analytical Remarks,” in Ataturk and Modernization of Turkey, ed. Jacob M. Landau (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), p. 9. 3 Caglar Keyder, “Wither the Project of Modernity: Turkey in the 1990s,” in Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, ed. Resat Kasaba and Sibel Bozdogan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), p. 37. 4 Ibid. p. 37. 5 Ibid. p. 37. 6 Eisenstadt, “The Kemalist Regime and Modernization,” p. 9. 7 S.N.Eisenstadt, “The Kemalist Revolution in Comparative Perspective,” in Ataturk: Founder of a Modern State, ed. Ali Kazancigil and Ergun Ozbudun (Hamden: Archon Books, 1981), p. 135. 8 Enver Z. Karal, “The Principles of Kemalism,” in Ataturk: Founder of a Modern State, ed. Ali Kazancigil and Ergun Ozbudun (Hamden: Archon Books, 1981), p. 12. 9 Ergun Ozbudun and Ali Kazancigil, “Introduction,” in Ataturk: Founder of a Modern State, ed. Ali Kazancigil and Ergun Ozbudun (Hamden: Archon Books, 1981), p. 3. 10 Serif Mardin, Turk Modernlesmesi 5th Edition (Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, 1997), p. 10. 11 Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 43. The same thing was the case for Christians. They too viewed the Ottoman Empire as a rival culture that should be destroyed. See Iver B. Neumann, and Jennifer M. Welsh, “The Other in European Self-Definition: An Addendum to the Literature on International Society,” Review of International Studies 17 (1991): 327–348. 12 Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 43. 13 Mardin, Turk Modernlesmesi, p. 10. 14 Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 45. 15 Ibid. p. 45–6. 16 Ibid. p. 46. 17 Mardin, Turk Modernlesmesi, p. 11. 18 Erik J. Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London and New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 1995), p. 23. 19 Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 53–4. 20 Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History, p. 23. 21 Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 59.

174 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

60

Ibid. p. 61. Mardin, Turk Modernlesmesi, p. 11. Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History, p. 59. Ibid. p. 46. Ibid. p. 46. Ibid. p. 53. Serif Mardin, “Religion and Secularism in Turkey,” in Ataturk: Founder of a Modern State ed. Ali Kazancigil and Ergun Ozbudun (Hamden: Archon Books, 1981), p. 196. Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History, p. 59. Mardin, Turk Modernlesmesi, p. 12. Ibid. p. 13. M.Sukru Hanioglu, The Young Turks in Opposition (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 17. Mardin, “Religion and Secularism in Turkey,” p. 197. Quoted in Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 122. Feroz Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 28. Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History, p. 71. Hanioglu, The Young Turks, p. 14. Mardin, Turk Modernlesmesi, p. 89. Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History, p. 71. Ibid. p. 71. Mardin, Turk Modernlesmesi, p. 91–2. Hanioglu, The Young Turks, p. 18. Mardin, Turk Modernlesmesi, p. 93. Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History, p. 90. Ibid. p. 91. Hanioglu, The Young Turks, p. 3. Ibid. p. 17. Ibid. p.17. Ibid. p.18. Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History, p. 125. Ali Kazancigil, “The Ottoman-Turkish State and Kemalism,” in Ataturk: Founder of a Modern State, ed. Ali Kazancigil and Ergun Ozbudun (Hamden: Archon Books, 1981), p. 50. Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey, p. 31. Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History, p. 132. Ibid. p.132. Karal, “The Principles of Kemalism,” p. 31–2. David Kushner, “Self-Perception and Identity in Contemporary Turkey,” Journal of Contemporary History 32 (1997): 219–233, p. 221. Ibid. p.221. Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History, p. 133. Andrew Davison, “Secularization and Modernization in Turkey: The Ideas of Ziya Gokalp,” Economy and Society 24 (May 1995): 189–224, p. 190. Karal, “The Principles of Kemalism,” p. 26.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 175

61 Cengiz Aktar, Turkiye’nin Batililastirilmasi (Istanbul: Ayrinti Yayinlari, 1993), p. 42. 62 Karal, “The Principles of Kemalism,” p. 26. 63 Ibid. p. 26. 64 Ibid. p. 27. 65 Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History, p. 48. 66 Ergun Ozbudun and Ali Kazancigil, “Introduction,” p. 3. 67 Karal, “The Principles of Kemalism,” p. 32. 68 Ibid. p.13. 69 Osman Okyar, “Ataturk’s Quest for Modernism,” in Ataturk and Modernization of Turkey, ed. Jacob M.Landau (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), p. 51. 70 Dankwart A. Rustow, “Ataturk as an Institution Builder,” in Ataturk: Founder of a Modern State ed. Ali Kazancigil and Ergun Ozbudun (Hamden: Archon Books, 1981), p. 89. 71 Feroz Ahmad, “The Political Economy of Kemalism,” in Ataturk: Founder of a Modern State, ed. Ali Kazancigil and Ergun Ozbudun (Hamden: Archon Books, 1981), p. 145. 72 Karal, “The Principles of Kemalism,” p. 28. 73 Ibid. p. 11. 74 Takeshi Hayashi, “The Modernization of Japan and Turkey: Some Comparisons,” in Ataturk: Founder of a Modern State, ed. Ali Kazancigil and Ergun Ozbudun (Hamden: Archon Books, 1981), p. 228. 75 Karal, “The Principles of Kemalism,” p. 12. 76 Resat Kasaba, “Kemalist Certainties and Modern Ambiguities,” in Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, ed. in Resat Kasaba and Sibel Bozdogan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), p. 29. 77 Patrick B. Kinross, Ataturk: A Biography of Mustafa Kemal, Father of Modern Turkey (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1965), p. 497. 78 Levent Koker, Modernlesme, Kemalizm ve Demokrasi (Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, 1995), p. 152–3. 79 Kinross, Ataturk, p. 438. 80 Ibid. p. 438. 81 Michael Winter, “The Modernization of Education in Turkey,” in Ataturk and the Modernization of Turkey, ed. Jacob M. Landau (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), p. 187. 82 Kinross, Ataturk, p. 469. 83 Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 262. 84 Ibid. p. 264. 85 Atartuk. Quoted in Lewis, p. 263. 86 Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 262. 87 Ibid. p. 263. 88 Ibid. p. 271. 89 Ibid. p. 273.

176 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

90 Sabri Akural, “Kemalist Views on Social Change,” in Ataturk and Modernization of Turkey, ed. Jacob M. Landau (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), p. 131. 91 Ataturk. Quoted in Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 272. 92 Akural, “Kemalist Views on Social Change,” p. 144. 93 Kasaba, “Kemalist Certainties and Modern Ambiguities,” p. 24. 94 Ataturk. Quoted in Karal, “The Principles of Kemalism,” p. 15. 95 Kinross, Ataturk, p. 538. 96 Udo Steinbach, “The Impact of Ataturk on Turkey’s Political Culture since World War II.,” in Ataturk and Modernization of Turkey, ed. Jacob M.Landau (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), p. 85. 97 Eisenstadt, “The Kemalist Regime and Modernization,” p. 14. 98 Okyar, “Ataturk’s Quest for Modernism,” p. 46. 99 Kinross, Ataturk, p. 446. 100 Kazancigil, “The Ottoman-Turkish State and Kemalism,” p. 51. 101 Ergun Ozbudun, “The Nature of the Kemalist Political Regime,” in Ataturk: Founder of a Modern State, ed. Ali Kazancigil and Ergun Ozbudun (Hamden: Archon Books, 1981), p. 84. 102 Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 262. 103 Ibid. p. 262. 104 Vakur Versan, “The Kemalist Reform of Turkish Law and its Impact,” in Ataturk and the Modernization of Turkey, ed. Jacob M. Landau (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), p. 247. 105 Kasaba, “Kemalist Certainties and Modern Ambiguities,” p. 28. 106 Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 296. 107 Kinross, Ataturk, p. 439. 108 Yavuz, M. Hakan, “Turkish-Israeli Relations through the Lens of the Turkish Identity Debate” Journal of Palestine Studies 27 (Autumn 1997): 22–37, p. 23. 109 Vladimir I. Danilov, “Kemalism and World Peace,” in Ataturk: Founder of a Modern State, Ali Kazancigil and Ergun Ozbudun (Hamden: Archon Books, 1981), p. 110. 110 Quoted in Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 264. 111 G.L.Lewis, “Ataturk’s Language Reform and Modernization,” in Ataturk and the Modernization of Turkey, ed. Jacob M.Landau (ed), (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), p. 198. 112 Mahmut Bali Aykan, “The Palestinian Question in Turkish Foreign Policy from the 1950s to the 1990s,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 25 (1993), p. 92. 113 Nilufer Gole, “The Quest for the Islamic Self within the Context of Modernity,” in Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, ed. Resat Kasaba and Sibel Bozdogan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997): 81–94, p. 84. 114 Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 586. 115 Okyar, “Ataturk’s Quest for Modernism,” p. 52. 116 David Kushner, “Westernism in Contemporary Turkey,” in Ataturk and the Modernization of Turkey, ed. Jacob M.Landau (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), p. 234.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 177

117 Okyar, “Ataturk’s Quest for Modernism,” p. 52. 118 Kasaba, “Kemalist Certainties and Modern Ambiguities,” p. 17. 119 Ibid. p.17.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 4 1 Oral Sander, Turkiye’nin Dis Politikasi (Ankara: Imge Kitabevi, 1998), p. 69. 2 Ibid. p. 69. 3 Ibid. p. 69. 4 Ibid. p. 70. 5 Meltem Muftuler-Bac, Turkey’s Relations with a Changing Europe (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 3. 6 Ferenc A.Vali, Bridge Across the Bosphorus (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1971), p 36. 7 George S.Harris, Turkey: Coping with Crisis (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985), p. 181. 8 Muftuler-Bac, Turkey’s Relations, p. 53. 9 Atila Eralp, “Turkey and the European Community in the Changing Post-War International System,” in Turkey and Europe, ed. Canan Balkir and Alan M.Williams (London and New York: Pinter Publishers Ldt., 1993), p. 24. 10 Muftuler-Bac, Turkey’s Relations, p. 53. 11 Vali, Bridge Across the Bosphorus, p. 37. 12 E.Athanassopoulou, “Western Defence Developments and Turkey’s Search for Security in 1948,” Middle Eastern Studies 32 (April 1996): 77–108, p. 101 13 Ibid. p. 83. 14 Ibid. p. 83. 15 Mehmet Gonlubol, “NATO, USA, and Turkey,” in Turkey’s Foreign Policy in Transition: 1950:1974, ed. Kemal H.Karpat (Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1975): 13–50, p. 27. 16 Ibid. p. 25. 17 Ibid. p. 25. 18 Yasemin Celik, Contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy (Westport, Connecticut, London: Praeger, 1999), p. xii. 19 Kemal Karpat, “Introduction,” in Turkey’s Foreign Policy in Transition: 1950:1974, ed. Kemal Karpat (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975), p. 6. 20 Vali, Bridge Across the Bosphorus, p. 124–5. 21 Gonlubol, “NATO, USA, and Turkey,” p. 30. 22 Feroz Ahmad, Turkish Experiment in Democracy: 1950–1975 (London: C. Hurst & Company, 1977), p. 401. 23 Celik, Contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy, p. 47. 24 Gonlubol, “NATO, USA, and Turkey,” p. 23. 25 Bruce Kuniholm, “Turkey and the West since World War II,” in Turkey Between East and West: New Challenges for a Rising National

178 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55

56

57 58 59 60

Power, ed. Vojtech Mastny and Craig Nation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), p. 53. Ibid. p. 54. Celik, Contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy, p. 47. Kuniholm, “Turkey and the West since World War II,” p. 54. Gonlubol, “NATO, USA, and Turkey,” p. 17. Celik, Contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy, p. 49. Quoted in Gonlubol, “NATO, USA, and Turkey,” p. 18. Ibid. p. 18. George S. Harris, “Turkey and the United States,” in Turkey’s Foreign Policy in Transition: 1950–1974, ed. Kemal H.Karpat (Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1975), p. 60. Ferenc A.Vali, Bridge Across the Bosphorus, p. 158. Ibid. p. 120. Ibid. p. 159. Gonlubol, “NATO, USA, and Turkey,” p. 29. Vali, Bridge Across the Bosphorus, p. 164. Ahmad, Turkish Experiment in Democracy, p. 389. Quoted in Vali, Bridge Across the Bosporus, p. 159. Gonlubol, “NATO, USA, and Turkey,” p. 30. Celik, Contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy, p. 48. Karpat, “Introduction,” p. 9. Ahmad, Turkish Experiment in Democracy, p. 487. Vali, Bridge Across the Bosphorus, p. 125. Ibid. p. 86. Gonlubol, “NATO, USA, and Turkey,” p. 23. Kuniholm, “Turkey and the West since World War II," p. 57. Celik, Contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy, p. 62. Muftuler-Bac, Turkey’s Relations, p. 11. Earlier European Economic Community (EEC). For convenience, from now on, the European Community will be referred by its new name, the European Union, except for the usage in quotations. Muftuler-Bac, Turkey’s Relations, p. 3. Ibid. p. 3. Eralp, “Turkey and the European Community,” p. 24. Quoted in Selim Ilkin, “A History of Turkey’s Association with the European Community,” in Turkey and the European Community, ed. Ahmet Evin and Geoffrey Denton (Opladen: Leske+Buldrich, 1990), p. 35. For a detailed account of Turkey’s application for membership in the EC, see Mehmet Ali Birand, Turkiye’nin Gumruk Birligi Macerasi, 1959–1996 (Istanbul: Milliyet Yayinlari, 1996). Ilkin, “A History of Turkey’s Association,” p. 35. Eralp, “Turkey and the European Community,” p. 27. Ziya Onis, “Turkey in the Post-Cold War Era: In Search of Identity,” Middle East Journal 49 (Winter 1995): 48–68, p. 53. Quoted in Mehmet Gonlubol et. al., Olaylarla Turk Dis Politikasi: 1919–1995, 6th Edition (Ankara: Cem Ofset Ltd., 1996), p. 481–2.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 179

61 62 63 64 65 66

67

68 69

70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

91

Ibid. p. 482. Ilkin, “A History of Turkey’s Association,” p. 36. Muftuler-Bac, Turkey’s Relations, p. 5. Gonlubol et. al., Olaylarla Turk Dis Politikasi, p. 483. Muftuler-Bac, Turkey’s Relations, p. 5. Heinz Kramer, “Turkey and the European Union: A MultiDimensional Relationship with Hazy Perspectives,” in Turkey Between East and West, ed. Vojtech Mastny and R. Craig Nation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996): 203–232, p. 204. Roswitha Bourguignon, “The History of the Association Agreement Between Turkey and the European Union,” in Turkey and the European Community, ed. Ahmet Evin and Geffrey Denton (Opladen: Leske+Budrich, 1990), p. 52. Bruce Kuniholm, “Turkey and the West,” Foreign Affairs 70 (Spring 1991): 34–48, p. 43. Esra Cayhan, Dunden Bugune Turkiye-Avrupa Birligi Iliskileri ve Siyasi Partilerin Konuya Bakisi (Istanbul: Boyut Kitaplari, 1997), p. 294. Cumhuriyet, January 8, 1998. Ilkin, “A History of Turkey’s Association,” p. 39. Kramer, “Turkey and the European Union,” p. 207. Suleyman Demirel. Quoted in Ilkin, “A History of Turkey’s Association,” p. 42. Vali, Bridge Across the Bosphorus, p. 74. Eralp, “Turkey and the European Community,” p. 29 and Calis, Saban, “The Turkish State’s Identity and Foreign Policy DecisionMaking Process,” Mediterranean Quarterly (Spring 1995): 135–155, 147–154. Bourguignon, “The History of the Association Agreement,” p. 55. Gonlubol et. al, Olaylarla Turk Dis Politikasi, p. 483. Ibid. p. 484. Ilkin, “A History of Turkey’s Association,” p. 38. Ibid. p. 40. Ibid. p. 40. Ibid. p. 40. Ibid. p.40–1. Eralp, “Turkey and the European Community,” p. 30. Ibid. p. 30. Ibid. p. 31. Gonlubol et. al., Olaylarla Turk Dis Politikasi, p. 601. Eralp, “Turkey and the European Community,” p. 32. Muftuler-Bac, Turkey’s Relations, p. 61. Quoted in David Kushner, “Westernism in Contemporary Turkey,” in Ataturk and the Modernization of Turkey, ed. Jacob M.Landau (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), p 238. Ibid. p. 239.

180 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

92 Ihsan Dagi, “Democratic Transition in Turkey, 1980–83: The Impact of European Diplomacy,” Middle Eastern Studies 32 (April 1996): 124–141, p. 124. 93 Muftuler-Bac, Turkey’s Relations, p. 63. 94 Ihsan Dagi, “Insan Haklari ve Demokratiklesme: Turkiye-Avrupa Birligi Iliskilerinde Siyasal Boyut,” in Turkiye ve Avrupa: Batililasma, Kalkinma, Demokrasi, ed. Atila Eralp (Ankara: Imge Kitabevi, 1997), p. 140. 95 Muftuler-Bac, Turkey’s Relations, p. 82. 96 Ibid. p. 83. 97 Dagi, “Insan Haklari ve Demokratiklesme,” p. 142. 98 Eralp, “Turkey and the European Community,” p. 33. 99 Dagi, “Insan Haklari ve Demokratiklesme,” p. 143. 100 Onis, “Turkey in the Post-Cold War Era,” p. 53. 101 Ibid. p. 53. 102 Economist, 1998, p. 61. 103 Sabri Sayari, “Turkey: The Changing European Security Environment and the Gulf Crisis,” Middle East Journal 46 (Winter 1992): 9–21, p. 12. 104 Cumhuriyet, December 19, 1997. 105 Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 224. 106 Ibid. p. 224. 107 Ibid. p. 224. 108 Kramer, “Turkey and the European Union,” p. 208. 109 Ibid. p. 208. 110 Cumhuriyet, April 15, 1998. 111 Cumhuriyet, December 22, 1997. 112 Fotis Moustakis, “Turkey’s Entry into the EU: Asset or Liability?” Contemporary Review 273 (September 1998): 128–135, p. 11. 113 Ibid. p. 11. 114 Onis, “Turkey in the Post-Cold War Era,” p. 59. 115 Erol Manisali, Turkiye-Avrupa Iliskileri (Istanbul: Cagdas Yayinlari, 1998), p. 18. 116 Moustakis, “Turkey’s Entry into the EU," p. 9. 117 Cumhuriyet, July 22, 1998. 118 Zaman, July18, 1998. 119 Zaman, March 12,1998. 120 Zaman, February 17, 1998. 121 Zaman, March 7, 1998. 122 Cumhuriyet, December 19, 1997. 123 Ibid. 124 Hurriyet, September 5, 1997. 125 Cumhuriyet, June 21, 1998. 126 Ian Lesser, Bridge or Barrier? Turkey and the West After the Cold War (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1992), p. 9. 127 Cumhuriyet, May 28, 1998. 128 Cumhuriyet, February 11, 1998.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 181

129 Sayari, “Turkey: The Changing European Security Environment,” p. 10. 130 James Nathan, “Turkey on Edge,” International Relations 13 (August 1997): 15–25, p. 19. 131 Lesser, Bridge or Barrier? p. 24. 132 Suleyman Demirel, “Turkey and NATO at the Threshold of a New Century,” Perceptions: Journal of International Affairs 4 (March-May 1999). 133 Since membership in the WEU is based on membership in the European Union Turkey cannot be a full member; but now it holds an associate member status in the organization. 134 Sayari, “Turkey: The Changing European Security Environment,” p. 12. 135 Hurriyet, January 30, 1997. 136 Hikmet Sami Turk, “NATO’s Evolution in the 21st Century and Turkey,” Center for Strategic & International Studies (Speeches and Transcripts), (April 26, 1999). Internet Address: www.csis.org. 137 Ian Black, “Turkey Blocks NATO Deal on EU Force,” The Guardian (December 15, 2000). Internet Address: www.guardian.co.uk/eu/ story. 138 Turk, “NATO’s Evolution.” 139 Cumhuriyet, December 28, 1997. 140 Cumhuriyet, December 28, 1997. 141 Turgut Ozal, Turkey in Europe and Europe in Turkey (Nicosia: K. Rustem & Brother, 1991), p. 342–3. 142 Cumhuriyet, December 23, 1997.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 5 1 Cumhuriyet, January 8, 1998, 2 David Kushner, “Self-Perception and Identity in Contemporary Turkey,” Journal of Contemporary History 32 (1997): 219–233, p. 222. 3 Dogu Ergil, “Identity Crises and Political Instability in Turkey,” Journal of International Affairs 54 (Fall 2000): 43–62, p. 47. 4 Ibid. p. 47. 5 Ibid. p. 48. 6 Hakan M. Yavuz, “Cleansing Islam from the Public Sphere,” Journal of International Affairs 54 (Fall 2000): 21–42, 22. 7 Ibid. p. 24. 8 Ergil, “Identity Crises and Political Instability,” p. 48. 9 Yavuz, “Cleansing Islam from the Public Sphere,” p. 25. 10 Resat Kasaba and Sibel Bozdogan, “Turkey at a Crossroad,” Journal of International Affairs 54 (Fall 2000): 1–20, p. 6. 11 Ibid. p. 12. 12 Yavuz, “Cleansing Islam from the Public Sphere,” p. 26. 13 Ibid. p. 35.

182 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

14 Sabri Sayari “Turkish Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era: The Challenges of Multi-Regiondism,” Journal of Internatianal Affairs 54 (Fall 2000): 169–182, p. 181. 15 Ibid. p. 181. 16 Ibid. p. 181. 17 Ergil, “Identity Crises and Political Instability,” p. 55. 18 Ibid. p. 58. 19 Meltem Muftuler-Bac, Turkey’s Relations with a Changing Europe (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 3. 20 Sayari, Sabri, “Turkey: The Changing European Security Environment and the Gulf Crisis,” Middle East Journal 46 (Winter 1992): 9–21, p. 10. 21 Metin Heper, “Political Culture as a Dimension of Compatibility,” in Turkey and The West: Changing Political and Cultural Identities, ed. Metin Heper, Ayse Oncu and Heinz Kramer (London and New York: I.B.Tauris & Co Ldt. Publishers, 1993): 1–18, p. 1. 22 Michael Wesley, “The Politics of Exclusion: Australia, Turkey and Definitions of Regionalism,” Pasific Review 10 (1997): 523–555, p. 536. 23 Muftuler-Bac, Turkey’s Relations, p. 11. 24 Ziya Onis, “Turkey in the Post-Cold War Era: In Search of Identity,” Middle East Journal 49 (Winter 1995): 48–68, p. 54. 25 Wesley, “The Politics of Exclusion,” p. 535. 26 Ibid. p. 536. 27 Ibid. p. 528. 28 Heper, “Political Culture,” p. 4. 29 Muftuler-Bac, Turkey’s Relations, p. 23. 30 Ahmet O. Evin, “Turkey-EU Relations on the Eve of IGC: The Social and Cultural Dimension,” in Turkey and European Union: Nebulous Nature of Relations, Hacettepe University (Ankara: Hacettepe University 1996): 35–56, p. 43. 31 Heinz Kramer, “Turkey and the European Union: A MultiDimensional Relationship with Hazy Perspectives,” in Turkey Between East and West, ed. Vojtech Mastny and R.Craig Nation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996): 203–232, p. 226. 32 Ibid. p. 226. Also see Iver B. Neumann and Jennifer M. Welsh, “The Other in European Self-Definition: An Addendum to the Literature on International Society,” Review of International Studies 17 (1991): 327–348. 33 M.E.Yapp, “Europe in the Turkish Mirror,” Past and Present (November 1992): 134–155, p. 152–3. 34 Kramer, “Turkey and the European Union,” p. 210. 35 Heper, “Political Culture,” p. 4. 36 Muftuler-Bac, Turkey’s Relations, p. 12. 37 James Nathan, “Turkey on Edge,” International Relations 13 (August 1997): 15–25, p. 19. 38 Ibid. p. 19.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 183

39 Turkish Grand National Assembly Minutes of Records (TBMM), 1997, p. 95. 40 M. Talat Uzunyaylali, Avrupa Toplulugu, Turkiye ve Islam (Istanbul: Dogu Ajans Yayinlari, 1990), p. 120. 41 TBMM, 1991, p. 569. 42 Ibid. p. 587. 43 TBMM, 1993, p. 44 and 1992, p. 89. A detailed examination of the Welfare Party’s foreign policy preferences will be given in Chapter V of this book. 44 Turgut Ozal, Turkey in Europe and Europe in Turkey (Nicosia: K.Rustem & Brother, 1991), p. 316 and 344. 45 Ibid. p. 282. 46 Cumhuriyet, January 8, 1998. 47 Cumhuriyet, April 26, 1998. 48 TBMM, 1992, p. 377. 49 Gareth Winrow, Turkey in Post-Soviet Central Asia (London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1995), p. 17. 50 R.Craig Nation, “The Turkic and Other Muslim Peoples of Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Balkans,” in Turkey Between East and West, ed. Vojtech Mastny and R. Craig Nation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996): 97–130, p. 105. 51 Yasemin Celik, Contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy (Westport, Connecticut, London: Praeger, 1999), p. 122. 52 Winrow, Turkey in Post-Soviet Central Asia, summary. 53 TBMM, 1991, p. 562. 54 Winrow, Turkey in Post-Soviet Central Asia, p. 16–7. 55 Ibid. p. vii. 56 Ibid. p. 26. 57 Eric Rouleau, “The Challenges to Turkey,” Foreign Affairs 72 (Nov.Dec., 1993): 110–126, p. 112. 58 Murat Yetkin, Ates Hattinda Aktif Politika (Istanbul: Alan Yayincilik, 1992), p. 288. 59 Nation, “The Turkic and Other Muslim Peoples,” p. 105. 60 Some scholars argue that the Nationalist Action Party and his leader Alparslan Turkes are more popular in these republics than they are in Turkey. See Yetkin, Ates Hattinda Aktif Politika, p. 289. 61 Winrow, Turkey in Post-Soviet Central Asia, p. 18. 62 Gareth Winrow, “Regional Security and National Identity: The Role of Turkey in Former Soviet Central Asia,” in Turkey: Political, Social and Economic Challenges in the 1990s, ed. Cigdem Balim et. al. (New York and Kol: E.J. Brill, 1995): 22–41, p. 34. 63 Cumhuriyet, April 5, 1992. 64 Sabah, November 1, 1992. 65 Winrow, Turkey in Post-Soviet Central Asia, p. 18. 66 Winrow, “Regional Security and National Identity,” p. 34. 67 TBMM, 1995, p. 393–4. 68 Ibid. p. 401. 69 TBMM, 1990, p. 303–6.

184 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

81 82

83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107

TBMM,1991, p. 276. Ibid. p. 570. Ibid. p. 294. (Cornell, 1998:60). Winrow, Turkey in Post-Soviet Central Asia, p. 5. Nation, “The Turkic and Other Muslim Peoples,” p. 105. Sabah, July 3,1993. Milliyet, September 25, 1993. Nation, “The Turkic and Other Muslim Peoples,” p. 105. Suha Bolukbasi, “Ankara’s Baku-Centered Transcaucasia Policy: Has It Failed?” Middle East Journal 51 (Winter 1997): 80–94, p. 81. Robert Olson, “The Kurdish Question and Chechnya: Turkish and Russian Foreign Policies since the Gulf War,” Middle East Policy 4 (March 1996): 106–118, p. 111. Ibid. p. 113. Turan Aydin and Olgan Bekar, Turkey’s Middle and Long Term Interests and Turco-Russian Relations (Ankara: Turkiye Ekonomik ve Sosyal Etudler Vakfi, 1997). Winrow, Turkey in Post-Soviet Central Asia, p. 26. Ozal, Turkey in Europe and Europe in Turkey, p. 281. Ibid. p. 282. Ibid. p. 290. TBMM, 1988, p. 491. TBMM, 1997, p. 110. Muftuler-Bac, Turkey’s Relations, p. 265. Winrow, Turkey in Post-Soviet Central Asia, p. 24. Andrew Mango, “The Turkish Model,” Middle Eastern Studies 29 (October 1993): 726–757. Keramat Poorsoltan, “Western Asia in Turmoil and Rivalry Between Iran and Turkey,” Contemporary Review 262 (May 1993): 225–229, p. 226. Ibid. p. 226. Mehmet Ogutcu, “Islam and the West: Can Turkey Bridge the Gap?” Futures 26 (1994): 811–829, p. 823. The Middle East, 1994:6–9. Ibid. p. 6. Muftuler-Bac, Turkey’s Relations, p. 256. Ibid. p. 256. Kushner, “Self-Perception and Identity,” p. 232. Ibid. p. 232. Cumhuriyet, April 26, 1998. Ibid. Ogutcu, “Islam and the West,” p. 817. Ibid. p. 816. Ian O.Lesser, Bridge or Barrier? Turkey and the West After the Cold War (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1992), p. 5. Cumhuriyet, December 19, 1997. Cumhuriyet, July 5, 1998.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 185

108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116

117

118 119

120 121 122 123 124

Zaman, May 5, 1998. Ibid. Zaman, January 20,1998. Cumhuriyet, December 19, 1997. Hurriyet, July 19, 1998. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 230. Ibid. p. 231. Kramer, “Turkey and the European Union,” p. 204. Nation, Craig R., “Preface,” in Turkey Between East and West, ed. Vojtech Mastny and R. Craig Nation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996): ix-xiii, p. x. Sadi Erguvenc, “Turkey; Strategic Partner of the European Union,” in Turkey and European Union: Nebulous Nature of Relations (Ankara, Hacettepe University, 1996): 1–21, p. 7. Muftuler-Bac, Turkey’s Relations, p. 13. Kemal Karpat, “The Ottoman Rule in Europe From the Perspective of 1994," in Turkey Between East and West, Vojtech Mastny and R. Craig Nation (Boulder: Westview Press, Inc., 1996): 1–44, p. 2. Kushner, “Self-Perception and Identity,” p. 232. Ibid. p. 232. Nathan, “Turkey on Edge,” p. 25. David Barchard, Turkey and the West (London, Boston and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), p. 87. Onis, “Turkey in the Post-Cold War Era,” p. 59.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 6 1 Mehmet Ali Birand, “Is There a New Role for Turkey in the Middle East?” in Reluctant Neighbor: Turkey’s Role in the Middle East, ed. Henri J. Barkey (Washington D.C.: US Institute of Peace Press, 1996): 171–178, p. 171. 2 Kemal Karpat, “Turkish and Arab-Israeli Relations,” in Turkish Foreign Policy in Transition, 1950–1974 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975), p. 108. 3 Sadi Erguvenc, ‘Turkey; Strategic Partner of the European Union,” in Turkey and European Union: Nebulous Nature of Relations (Ankara, Hacettepe University, 1996): 1–21, p. 4. 4 Richard K. Herrmann and Michael P. Fischerkeller, “Beyond the Enemy Image and Spiral Model: Cognitive-Strategic Research after the Cold War,” International Organization (Summer 1995): 415–450, p. 415. 5 Noel Kaplowitz, “National Self-Images, Perception of Enemies, and Conflict Strategies: Psychopolitical Dimensions of International Relations,” Political Psychology 11 (1990): 39–82, p. 42. 6 Herrmann and Fisherkeller, “Beyond the Enemy Image,” p. 415.

186 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

7 Kemal Karpat, “Images of Turks and Arabs in School Textbooks,” Studies on Turkish-Arab Relations 2 (1987): 17–19, p. 17. 8 Ibid. p. 18. 9 Oya Akgonenc Mughisuddin, “Perceptions and Misconceptions in the Making of Foreign Diplomacy: A Study of Turkish-Arab Attitudes until the End of the 1970s,” Turkish Review of Middle East Studies 7 (1993): 147:169, p. 161, p. 151. 10 Ibid. p. 161. 11 Ibid. p. 148. 12 George McGhee, The US-Turkish-NATO Middle East Connection (New York: St. Martin Press, 1990), p. 187. 13 Karpat, “Images of Turks and Arabs,” p. 17. 14 Mahmut Bali Aykan, “The Palestinian Question in Turkish Foreign Policy from the 1950s to the 1990s,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 25 (1993): 91–110, p. 91. 15 Mughisuddin, “Perceptions and Misconceptions,” p. 152–3. 16 Omer Kurkcuoglu, “Arab and Turkish Public Opinion Attitudes Towards Questions Of the Two Nations,” Studies on Turkish-Arab Relations 2 (1987): 22–43, p. 25. 17 Ibid. p. 23. 18 Mim Kemal Oke, “Arabic Studies in Turkey: Themes, Approaches and Sources,” Studies on Turkish-Arab Relations 2 (1987): 44–63. 19 Ferenc A. Vali, Bridge Across the Bosporus (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1971), p. 274. 20 Mughisuddin, “Perceptions and Misconceptions,” p. 154. 21 Kurkcuoglu, “Arab and Turkish Public Opinion,” p. 23. 22 Mahmut Bali Aykan, “A Reply to Yasar M. Geyikdagi,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 26 (1994): 749:751, p. 750. 23 Kurkcuoglu, “Arab and Turkish Public Opinion,” p. 23. 24 Aykan, “The Palestinian Question,” p. 91. 25 Vali, Bridge Across the Bosporus, p. 273. 26 Hamit Batu “The Cultural Bond,” Studies on Turkish-Arab Relations 6 (1991): 125–129, 126. 27 Oral Sander, Turkiye’nin Dis Politikasi (Ankara: Imge Kitabevi, 1998), p. 219. 28 Meltem Muftuler, “Turkey: A New Player in Middle Eastern Politics,” Mediterranean Quarterly 6 (Fall 1995): 110–120, p. 114. 29 Vali, Bridge Across the Bosporus, p. 273–4. 30 Mughisuddin, “Perceptions and Misconceptions,” p. 155. 31 Aykan, “The Palestinian Question,” p. 92. 32 Vali, Bridge Across the Bosporus, p. 173. 33 David Barchard, Turkey and the West (London, Boston and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), p. 12. 34 Oke, “Arabic Studies in Turkey,” p. 49. 35 Kurkcuoglu, “Arab and Turkish Public Opinion,” p. 27. 36 Philip J.Robins, Turkey and the Middle East (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1991), p. 19. 37 Ibid. p. 19.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 187

38 Altemur Kilic, Turkey and the World (Washington D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1959), p. 188. 39 The Pact, which was of little significance for both Turkey and the other signatories, included Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Afghanistan. 40 Mughisuddin, “Perceptions and Misconceptions,” p. 163. 41 Bulent Aras, Filistin-Israil Baris Sureci ve Turkiye (Istanbul: Baglam Yayincilik, 1997), p. 131. 42 Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognize Israel. 43 Mughisuddin, “Perceptions and Misconceptions,” p. 163. 44 Ayhan Kamel, “Turkey’s Relations with the Arab World,” Foreign Policy 4 (Ankara, June 1975): 91–107, p. 95. 45 Yasemin Celik, Contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy (Westport, Connecticut, London: Praeger, 1999), p. 140. 46 Mughisuddin, “Perceptions and Misconceptions,” p. 163. 47 Kurkcuoglu, “Arab and Turkish Public Opinion,” p. 37. 48 Robins, Turkey and the Middle East, p. 76. 49 Ibid. p. 76. 50 Ramazan Gozen, “Patterns in Turkish Foreign Policy Behavior Towards the Middle East,” Foreign Policy 19 (Ankara, 1995): 70–100, p. 73. 51 Soli Ozel, “Of Not Being a Lone Wolf: Geography, Domestic Plays, and Turkish Foreign Policy in the Middle East,” in The Powder Keg in the Middle East: The Struggle for Gulf Security, ed. Geoffrey Kemp and Janice Gross Stein (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1995), p. 163. 52 E. Athanassopoulou, “Western Defence Developments and Turkey’s Search for Security in 1948," Middle Eastern Studies 32 (April 1996): 77–108, p. 89. 53 Robins, Turkey and the Middle East, p. 25. 54 Ali L. Karaosmanoglu, “Turkey’s Security and the Middle East,” Foreign Affairs 62 (Fall 1983): 157–175, p. 163. 55 Robins, Turkey and the Middle East, p. 25. 56 Feroz Ahmad, Turkish Experiment in Democracy: 1950–1975 (London: C. Hurst & Company, 1977), p. 392. 57 Gozen, “Patterns in Turkish Foreign Policy,” p. 73. 58 Karpat, “Turkish and Arab-Israeli Relations,” p. 115. 59 Ibid. p. 116. 60 Ibid. p. 116. 61 Andrew Mango, “Turkish Policy in the Middle East,” in Turkish Foreign Policy: New Prospects, ed. Clement H. Dodd (Cambridgeshire: The Eothen Press, 1992): 55–69, p. 61. 62 Ibid. p. 61. 63 Karpat, “Turkish and Arab-Israeli Relations,” p. 115. 64 Aysegul Sever, “The Compliant Ally? Turkey and the West in the Middle East, 1954–58," Middle Eastern Studies 34 (April 1998): 73– 90, p. 74. 65 Karpat, “Turkish and Arab-Israeli Relations,” p. 116.

188 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

66 Ismail Soysal, “Turkish-Arab Diplomatic Relations after the Second World War (1945 1986)," Studies on Turkish-Arab Relations 1 (1986), p. 254. 67 Mughisuddin, “Perceptions and Misconceptions,” p. 126. 68 Karpat, “Turkish and Arab-Israeli Relations,” p. 116. 69 Ibid. p. 119. 70 Even though the Menderes Government denounced Israel at Baghdad Pact meetings and withdrew its ambassador from Israel, “the Turks tried to explain away their withdrawal of the ambassador as being, not an act against Israel, but a move needed to salvage the prestige of the Baghdad Pact from the tense anti-Israeli atmosphere prevailing in the Middle East. They informed the Israelis that Turkey would remain friendly, and diplomatic relations were renewed.” See Aykan, “The Palestinian Question,” p. 93. 71 Celik, Contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy, p. 140–1. 72 Robins, Turkey and the Middle East, p. 20. 73 Aykan, “The Palestinian Question,” p. 93. 74 Mango, “Turkish Policy in the Middle East,” p. 64. 75 Robins, Turkey and the Middle East, p. 27. 76 Celik, Contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy, p. 141. 77 Philip J. Robins, “Avoiding the Question,” in Reluctant Neighbor. Turkey’s Role in the Middle East, ed. Henri J.Barkey (Washington D.C.: US Institute of Peace Press, 1996): 179–203, p. 179. 78 Ahmad, Turkish Experiment in Democracy, p. 410. 79 Ibid. p. 410. 80 Karpat, “Turkish and Arab-Israeli Relations,” p. 114. 81 Ibid. p. 127. 82 Ibid. p. 127. 83 Gozen, “Patterns in Turkish Foreign Policy,” p. 77. 84 Michael B. Bishku, “Turkey and its Neighbors since 1945,” Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 15 (Spring 1992): 51–71, p. 53. 85 Karpat, “Turkish and Arab-Israeli Relations,” p. 128. 86 Barchard, Turkey and the West, p. 25. 87 Hakan M.Yavuz and Mujeeb R.Khan, “Turkish Foreign Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Duality and the Development, 1950–1991,” Arab Studies Quarterly 14 (Fall 1992): 69–94, 72. 88 Karpat, “Turkish and Arab-Israeli Relations,” p. 128. 89 Ismail Soysal, “The Middle East Peace Process and Turkey,” Turkish Review of Middle East Studies 8 (1994/95): 69–98, p. 69. 90 Robins, Turkey and the Middle East, p. 42. 91 Barchard, Turkey and the West, p. 46. 92 Aykan, “The Palestinian Question,” p. 95. 93 Karpat, “Turkish and Arab-Israeli Relations,” p. 131. 94 Michael N. Barnett, “Institutions, Roles, and Disorder: The Case of the Arab States System,” International Studies Quarterly 37 (1993): 271–296, p. 272. 95 Ibid. p. 271.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 189

96 Ibid. p. 276. 97 Mahmut Bali Aykan, Ideology and National Interest in Turkish Foreign Policy toward the Muslim World: 1960–1987, Unpublished Ph.D Dissertation, (University of Virginia, 1988), p. 2. 98 Yavuz and Khan, “Turkish Foreign Policy,” p. 70–1. 99 Karpat, “Turkish and Arab-Israeli Relations,” p. 133. 100 Aykan, “The Palestinian Question,” p. 98. 101 Ibid. p.101. 102 Ibid. p. 103. 103 Ibid. p. 105. 104 Kamel, “Turkey’s Relations with the Arab World,” p. 103. 105 Meliha Benli, Turkey’s Attitude Towards the Organization of the Islamic Conference (1969–1984), Unpublished M.A. Thesis, (Ankara: Middle East Technical University, 1986), p. 8. 106 Ibid. p. 24. 107 Mevhibe Yuksel, “Turkey and the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC)," Foreign Policy (Ankara, 1991): 67–71, p. 69. 108 Ibid. p. 70. 109 Aykan, “The Palestinian Question,” p. 99. 110 Ibid. p. 102. 111 David Kushner, “Westernism in Contemporary Turkey,” in Jacob M. Landau (ed), Ataturk and the Modernization of Turkey (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984): 233–244, p. 236. 112 Ibid. p. 236. 113 Gozen, “Patterns in Turkish Foreign Policy,” p. 75. 114 Ibid. p. 78. 115 Robins, Turkey and the Middle East, p. 71. 116 Meltem Muftuler-Bac, “Turkey’s Predicament in the Post-Cold War Era,” Futures 28 (1996): 255–268, p. 260. 117 Robins, Turkey and the Middle East, p. 72. 118 Ibid. p. 72. 119 Patricia Carley, “Turkey’s Place in the World,” in Reluctant Neighbor: Turkey’s Role in the Middle East, ed. Henri Barkey (Washington D.C.,: US Institute of Peace Press, 1996):3–12, p. 10. 120 Sabri Sayari, “Turkey: The Changing European Security Environment and the Gulf Crisis,” Middle East Journal 46 (Winter 1992): 9–21, p. 20. 121 Sabri Sayari, “Turkey and the Middle East in the 1990s,” Journal of Palestine Studies 26 (Spring 1997): 44–56, p. 45. 122 This suspicion was not baseless. Turgut Ozal publicly talked about Turkey’s historical right on Iraq’s oil-rich regions of Mousul and Kirkuk, which contained a considerable Turkish population. 123 Sencer Ayata, “The Rise of Islamic Fundamentalism and its Institutional Framework,” in The Political and Socioeconomic Transformation of Turkey, ed. Atila Eralp, Muharrem Tunay and Birol Yesilada (Westport, Connecticut, London: Praeger, 1993): 51–68, p. 51.

190 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

124 Feroz Ahmad, “Politics and Islam in Modern Turkey,” Middle Eastern Studies 27 (January 1991): 3–21 p. 3. 125 Ayata, “The Rise of Islamic Fundamentalism,” p. 3. 126 M.Hakan Yavuz, “Political Islam and the Welfare (Refah) Party in Turkey,” Comparative Politics 30 (October 1997): 63–82, p. 64. 127 Jeremy Salt, “Nationalism and the Rise of Muslim Sentiment in Turkey,” Middle Eastern Studies 31 (January 1995): 13–27, p. 14. 128 For detailed information on the Welfare Party and Necmettin Erbakan, see Yavuz, “Political Islam,” Riza Zelyut, Muaviye’den Erbakan’a Din ve Siyaset (Istanbul: Yon Yayincilik, 1996), and Soner Yalcin, Hangi Erbakan? (Ankara: Oteki Yayinevi, 1995). 129 Nilufer Gole, “Secularism and Islamism in Turkey: The Making of Elites and Counter Elites,” Middle East Journal 51(Winter 1997): 46– 58, p. 47. 130 Henri J.Barkey, “Turkey, Islamic Politics, and the Kurdish Question,” World Policy Journal 13 (Spring 1996): 43–52, p. 47. 131 Eric Rouleau, “Turkey: Beyond Ataturk,” Foreign Policy (Summer 1996): 70–87, p. 77. 132 Yavuz, “Political Islam,” p. 67. 133 Eric Rouleau, “The Challenges to Turkey,” Foreign Affairs 72 (Nov.Dec., 1993): 110–126, p. 119. 134 Rouleau, “Turkey: Beyond Ataturk,” p. 78. 135 Ibid. p. 78. 136 Ibid. p. 78. 137 Ibid. p. 78. 138 Yavuz, “Political Islam,” p. 64. 139 Ibid. p. 64. 140 Ibid. p. 64. 141 Barkey, “Turkey, Islamic Politics, and the Kurdish Question,” p. 43. 142 Fred Coleman, “Will Turkey be the next Iran,” U.S. News & World Report 116 (June 1994), p. 51. 143 Ibid. p. 51. 144 TBMM (The Turkish Grand National Assembly Minutes of Records), 1993, p. 44–6 145 Necmettin Erbakan, Turkiye’nin Meseleleri ve Cozumleri (Ankara: Semih Ofset Matbaacilik, 1991), p. 11. 146 Ibid. p. 14. 147 Ibid. 148 Ibid. p. 36. 149 TBMM, 1995:408–9. 150 Yavuz, “Political Islam,” p. 31. Fatih and Harbiye are the two largest provinces of Istanbul. While Fatih’s population is largely conservative poor, Harbiye’s population is consisted of Westernized and wealthy people. See Yavuz, ibid. 151 Ibid. p. 63. 152 Ibid. p. 63.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 191

153 John Lloyd, “Turkey’s closeness to the Islamic bloc causes problems for the West, But it need not shatter our confidence in it,” New Statesman, August 30, 1996. 154 Hurriyet, December 15, 1996. 155 Philip J. Robins, “Turkish Foreign Policy under Erbakan,” Survival 39 (Summer 1997): 82–100, p. 90. 156 Gencer Ozcan, Onbir Aylik Saltanat: Siyaset, Economi ve Dis Politikada Refahyol Donemi (Istanbul: Boyut Yayincilik, 1998), p. 196. 157 Richard Myddelton, “Turkey Pushes East,” The Middle East, October 1996. 158 Elizabeth Kier, “Culture and French Military Doctrine Before World War II," in The Culture of National Security, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996): 186–215, p. 200. 159 Ibid. p. 200. 160 S.N. Eisentadt, “The Kemalist Regime and Modernization: Some Comparative and Analytical Remarks,” in Ataturk and Modernization of Turkey, ed. Jacob M. Landau (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984): 3–15, p. 14. 161 Mehmet Ali Birand, Emret Kamutanim (Istanbul: Milliyet Yyainlari, 1986), p. 99. 162 Ibid. p. 91. 163 Umit Cizre Sakallioglu, “The Anatomy of the Turkish Military’s Autonomy,” Comparative Politics (January 1997): 151–166, p. 154. 164 Saban Calis, “The Turkish State’s Identity and Foreign Policy Decision-Making Process,” Mediterranean Quarterly (Spring 1995): 135–155, p. 144. 165 Ibid. p. 144. 166 Zeynep Alemdar, “Ideology Behind Turkish Army,” Washington Post, June 14, 1997. 167 Michael M.Gunter, “The Silent Coup: The Secularist-Islamist Struggle in Turkey,'' Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 21 (Spring 1998): 1–12, p. 5.’ 168 Christopher Dickey, “The General’s quite coup: Fed up with Islam, military wants a new government,” Newsweek, April 28, 1997. 169 Haldun Gulalp, “Modernization Policies and Islamist Politics in Turkey,” in Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, ed. Resat Kasaba and Sibel Bozdogan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997): 52–63, p. 58. 170 Bernard Lewis quoting Marshall Slim at a conference held in Istanbul on September 9, 1979. Seyfi Tashan, “Contemporary Turkish Policies in the Middle East: Prospects and Constraints,” Foreign Policy 17 (Ankara, June 1985): 7–21, p. 12. 171 Batu “The Cultural Bond,” p. 127. 172 Tashan, “Contemporary Turkish Policies,” p. 12. 173 Yavuz and Khan, “Turkish Foreign Policy,” p. 71.

192 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

NOTES TO CHAPTER 7 1 Amikam Nachmani, Israel, Turkey, and Greece: Uneasy Relations in the East Mediterranean (London: Frank Cass, 1987), p. 45–6. 2 Avigdor Levy, “Preface,” in The Jews of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Avigdor Levy (New Jersey: The Darwin Press, 1994), p. xiii. 3 Kemal Karpat, “Turkish and Arab-Israeli Relations,” in Turkish Foreign Policy in Transition, 1950–1974 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975), p. 113. 4 Levy, “Preface,” p. xiii. 5 Karpat, “Turkish and Arab-Israeli Relations,” p. 113. 6 Stanford J. Shaw, The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic (New York: New York University Press, 1991), p. 231. 7 Ibid. p. 231. 8 Ibid. p. 231. 9 Karpat, “Turkish and Arab-Israeli Relations,” p. 113. 10 Shaw, The Jews of the Ottoman Empire, p. 244. 11 Ibid. Dedication. 12 George E. Gruen, “Turkey’s Relations with Israel and its Arab Neighbors: The Impact of Basic Interests and Changing Circumstances,” Middle East Review 17 (Spring 1985): 33–43, p. 35. 13 Nachmani, Israel, Turkey, and Greece, p. 8. 14 Ibid. p. 8. 15 Karpat, “Turkish and Arab-Israeli Relations,” p. 114. 16 Mim Kemal Oke, “Arabic Studies in Turkey: Themes, Approaches and Sources,” Studies on Turkish-Arab Relations 2 (1987): 44–63, p. 49. 17 Ibid. p. 49. 18 Philip J. Robins, Turkey and the Middle East (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1991), p. 76. 19 Ibid. p. 77. 20 Karpat, “Turkish and Arab-Israeli Relations,” p. 123. 21 M.Hakan Yavuz, “Turkey’s Relations with Israel,” Foreign Policy (Ankara, 1991), p. 45. 22 Meliha Benli Altunisik, “Turkish-Israeli Rapprochement in the Post Cold War Era,” Middle Eastern Studies 30 (April 2000), p. 174. 23 Gruen, “Turkey’s Relations with Israel and its Arab Neighbors,” p. 35. 24 Meltem Muftuler, “Turkey: A New Player in Middle Eastern Politics,” Mediterranean Quarterly 6 (Fall 1995): 110–120, p. 116. 25 Anat Lewin, “Turkey and Israel: Reciprocal and Mutual Imagery in the Media, 1994–1999," Journal of International Affairs 54 (Fall 2000), p. 245. 26 M.Hakan Yavuz, “Turkish-Israeli Relations through the Lens of the Turkish Identity Debate,” Journal of Palestine Studies 27 (Autumn 1997): 22–37, p. 28. 27 Ibid. p. 28. 28 Altunisik, “Turkish-Israeli Rapprochement,” p. 174. 29 Yavuz, “Turkish-Israeli Relations,” p. 28.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 193

30 Ramazan Gozen, “Patterns in Turkish Foreign Policy Behavior Towards the Middle East,” Foreign Policy 19 (Ankara1995): 70–100, p. 88. 31 Alan Makovsky, “Israeli-Turkish Relations: A Turkish ‘Periphery’ Strategy?” in Reluctant Neighbor: Turkey’s Role in the Middle East, ed. Henri J.Barkey (Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996), p. 151. 32 Ibid. p. 152. 33 Ibid. p. 152. 34 Altunisik, “Turkish-Israeli Rapprochement,” p. 174. 35 Yavuz, “Turkish-Israeli Relations,” p. 29. 36 Peter Feuilherade, “Arabs slam new Israel-Turkey accords,” The Middle East, (June 1996), p. 12. 37 Aysegul Sever, “The Arab-Israeli Peace Process and Turkey since the 1995 Interim Agreement” Turkish Review of Middle East Studies (1996–97), p. 124. 38 Sabri Sayari “Turkey and the Middle East in the 1990s,” Journal of Palestine Studies 26 (Spring 1997): 44–56, p. 44. 39 Ibid. p. 49. 40 Makovsky, “Israeli-Turkish Relations,” p. 152. 41 Bulent Aras, “Turkish-Israeli-Iranian Relations in the Nineties: Impact on the Middle East,” Middle East Policy 7 (June 2000): 151– 164, p. 154. 42 Ibid. p. 154. 43 Feuilherade, “Arabs slam new Israel-Turkey accords,” p. 14. 44 Yavuz, “Turkish-Israeli Relations,” p. 29. 45 Yavuz, “Turkey’s Relations with Israel,” p. 49. 46 Lewin, “Turkey and Israel,” p. 247. 47 Aras, “Turkish-Israeli-Iranian Relations,” p. 162. 48 Dov Waxman, “Turkey and Israel: A New Balance of Power in the Middle East,” The Washington Quarterly 22 (Winter 1999): 25–33, p. 26. 49 Makovsky, “Israeli-Turkish Relations,” p. 166. 50 Aydin Nurhan, “Turkey and Middle Eastern Stability: Iraq, Iran, Israel and the Kurdish Question,” Vital Speeches 63 (December 1996): 130–135, p. 135. 51 Robins, Turkey and the Middle East, p. 83. 52 Altunisik, “Turkish-Israeli Rapprochement,” p. 174. 53 Makovsky, “Israeli-Turkish Relations,” p. 149. 54 Altunisik, “Turkish-Israeli Rapprochement,” p. 175. 55 Lewin, “Turkey and Israel,” p. 248. 56 Nachmani, Israel, Turkey, and Greece, p. 46. 57 Lewin, “Turkey and Israel,” p. 257. 58 Lewin, “Turkey and Israel,” p. 239. 59 Nurhan, “Turkey and Middle Eastern Stability,” p. 135. 60 Lewin, “Turkey and Israel,” p. 252. 61 Ibid. p. 241. 62 Nurhan, “Turkey and Middle Eastern Stability,” p. 135.

194 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

91 92 93 94 95 96

97 98

Robins, Turkey and the Middle East, p. 82. Ibid. p. 82. Ibid. p. 82. Ibid. p. 82. Gruen, “Turkey’s Relations with Israel and its Arab Neighbors,” p. 33. Ibid. p. 33. Lewin, “Turkey and Israel,” p. 246. Ibid. p. 246. Ibid. p. 246, 251. Waxman, “Turkey and Israel,” p. 29. Makovsky, “Israeli-Turkish Relations,” p. 169. Waxman, “Turkey and Israel,” p. 29. Ibid. p. 29. Ibid. p. 29. Ibid. p. 29. Makovsky, “Israeli-Turkish Relations,” p. 167. Gruen, “Turkey’s Relations with Israel and its Arab Neighbors,” p. 37. Ibid. p. 37. Philip J. Robins, “Turkish Foreign Policy under Erbakan,” Survival 39 (Summer 1997): 82–100, p. 83. National Review, 1999, p. 33. Lewin, “Turkey and Israel,” p. 242. Yavuz, “Turkish-Israeli Relations,” p. 30. Ibid. p. 31. Ibid. p. 31. Umit Cizre Sakallioglu, “The Anatomy of the Turkish Military’s Autonomy,” Comparative Politics (January 1997): 151–166, p. 154. Yavuz, “Turkish-Israeli Relations,” p. 31. Aras, “Turkish-Israeli-Iranian Relations,” p. 152. Michael M. Gunter, “The Silent Coup: The Secularist-Islamist Struggle in Turkey,” Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 21 (Spring 1998): 1–12, p. 5. Yavuz, “Turkish-Israeli Relations,” p. 31. Muzaffer Sahin, MGK: 28 Subat Oncesi ve Sonrasi (Kayseri: Ufuk Kitapevi, Not Dated), p. 15. Yavuz, “Turkash-Israeli Relations,” p. 31. Ibid. p. 31. Ibid. p. 31. M.Yavuz and Mujeeb R.Khan, “Turkish Foreign Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Duality and the Development, 1950–1991," Arab Studies Quarterly 14 (Fall 1992): 69–94, p. 82. Yavuz, “Turkish-Israeli Relations,” p. 33. Michael N.Barnett, “Identity and Alliance in the Middle East,” in The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996): 400–447, p. 446.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 195

NOTES TO CHAPTER 8 1 Sanjoy Banerjee, “Reproduction of Subjects in Historical Structures: Attribution, Identity, and Emotion in the Early Cold War,” International Studies Quarterly 35 (1995): 19–37, p. 22. 2 Peter J.Katzenstein, “Introduction: Alternative Perspectives on National Security,” in The Culture of National Security, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996): 1–32. 3 Ronal L.Jepperson, Alexander Wendt and Peter J.Katzenstein, “Norms, Identity, and Culture in National Security,” in The Culture of National Security, ed. Peter J.Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996): 33–75, p. 58. 4 Katzenstein, “Introduction,” p. 22. 5 (Berger, 1996:327). Berger, Thomas U., “Norms, Identity, and National Security in Germany and Japan,” in The Culture of National Security, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996): 317–356, p. 327. 6 Ibid. p. 327. 7 Katzenstein, “Introduction,” p. 14. 8 Dogu Ergil, “Identity Crises and Political Instability in Turkey,” Journal of International Affairs 54 (Fall 2000): 43–62, p. 46. 9 Ibid. p. 48. 10 Suleyman Demirel, “Turkey and NATO at the Threshold of a New Century,” Perceptions: Journal of International Affairs 4 (March-May 1999). 11 M. Hakan Yavuz, “Cleansing Islam from the Public Sphere,” Journal of International Affairs 54 (Fall 2000): 21–42, p. 21. 12 Samuel Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilizations,” Foreign Affairs 72 (1993): 22–50, p. 42. 13 Meltem Muftuler-Bac, “Turkey’s Predicament in the Post-Cold War Era,” Futures 28 (1996): 255–268, p. 258. 14 Yavuz, “Cleansing Islam,” p. 35.

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Index

Abbasid Empire, 112 Abdulhamit II, 41, 52 Additional Protocol, 71, 73 Afghanistan, 65, 67, 74 Aegean Sea, 82 Agents; 14; and structure; 14–15 Ahmed III, 36 Alexandretta question, 115 Aliyev, Heydar, 100 Alter, 24; and ego, 24 Amity, 18 Anarchy, 1, 11–14, 158 Ankara Agreement, 5, 69, 72, 93, 95, 106, 164 Arab League, 118 Arabs, 53, 65, 111–115, 118, 121, 123–127, 129, 139, 142–149, 156, 158, 166; Arab Revolt (1916), 118, 116, 119 Arab-Israeli conflict, 122–123, 125, 144 Arabic script, 49 Armenia, 104; Armenian Problem, 78; Armenians, 142 Association Agreement, 68, 70–71, 74, 77, 95 Association Council, 75, 104 Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal, 4–5, 7–8, 34, 42, 47, 50–52, 113–115, 120– 121; Kemalist revolution, 4, 33, 46, 50;

Kemalism, 4, 6, 8, 35, 44–46, 50, 53–54, 86, 99, 104, 136, 139, 154–155, 157; Kemalist reforms, 50, 135, 164 Ayan (rural notables), 37 Ayub Khan, 120 Azam Pasha, 118 Azerbaijan, 98, 100–101 Baghdad Pact, 5, 118–119, 145 Balkans, 131 Ball, George, 62 Bandung Conference (1955), 65, 119 Bayar, Celal, 113, 118 Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC), 100 Bosnia, 131 Caliphate, 46–47, 51, 130 Capabilities, 11; distribution of, 11, 14, 17 Carlowitz, Treaty of (1699), 35 Cem, Ismail, 83, 99, 105 Central Asia, 6, 55, 88, 91, 94 96– 98, 100, 102–103, 105, 108, 111, 131, 165 Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), 120 Chechnya, 104, 131 China, 82,99, 105, 134 Ciller, Tansu, 84, 101, 131–132, 134, 147, 165 Civil Code, 48 Civil Service Academy, 42

215

216 INDEX

Civilization, 4, 51, 108, 162, 165; Western, 4, 37–38, 42, 45, 71, 86, 104, 113, 152; Islamic Eastern, 4, 35, 50, 104, 112, 162; European, 7, 34, 43, 46, 49; Turkish, 44; Middle Eastern, 49–52, 112 Cold War, 1, 5, 7–9, 32, 57, 67, 78– 80, 88–91, 102, 106–107, 115, 148, 156, 164 Common Foreign and Security Policy, 85 Common Market, 73–74 Constitutional Court, 130, 156 Constructivism, 1, 14–18, 20, 22, 166; structural (systemic), 24, 28, 158–160 Council of Europe, 5, 52, 57, 76 Cooperation, 1 Court of Justice, 82 Cuban Missile Crisis, 7, 61, 85 Culture, 9, 22, 25, 43, 139, 153, 157, 159, 164–165; culture and identi- ty in Turkish European relations, 9, 78, 91– 93, 102, 104; common, 29, cultural identities, 41, 107; religious, 46; Turkish, 49, 162; Christian, 68; Arab-Islamic, 68; European, 93 Custom union, 81 Custom Union Agreement, 80 Cyprus, 7, 123, 145; crisis, 61–63, 65–67, 68, 82, 85, 107, 121, 123, 150, 156, 164 Damad Ibrahim Pasha, 36 D’Amato Law, 134 Delors, Jacques, 91 Demirel, Suleyman, 66–67, 83–84, 96, 98, 101, 122, 124, 131, 134, 161

Democrat Party, 58–59, 166, 130 Democratic Left Party, 99, 102, 132 Détente, 65 Developing Eight (D-8), 135, 165 Domestic politics, 26 Eastern Bloc, 59–61, 77, 84, 93, 164 Ecevit, Bulent, 74, 82–83, 105, 125, 132 Economic Cooperation Organization, 135 Egypt, 112, 118–119, 144 Elchibey, Ebulfaz, 100 Enlightenment, 93 Enmity, 18 Erbakan, Necmettin, 9, 55, 74, 125–126, 130, 133, 135, 137, 148–149, 153–156, 165 Eraz, Yalim, 78 Erim, Nihat, 66, 125 Erkin, Feridun Cemal, 69 European Commission, 82 European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), 81 European Council, 124 European Parliament, 75, 77–78, 85 European Union, 5, 55, 58, 67–70, 72, 74–75, 77, 81, 83, 85–86, 89, 91–94, 97–99, 102 104–107, 126, 128–129, 132–133, 150, 153, 164 Evren, Kenan, 126, 128 Fez, 48, 52 Feyzioglu, Turhan, 69 First contact, 24 Fourth Islamic Summit, 126 France, 34, 56, 117; French Revolution, 33 Germany, 82, 93 Global Mediterranean Policy, 74 Gokalp, Ziya, 40 Grand National Assembly, 51, 94, 96, 132

INDEX 217

Grand Union Party, 99 Great Britain, 23, 34, 56, 58, 117– 118 Greece, 63, 69, 74, 76, 78, 81–82, 142 Gulf War, 8, 128–129 Gurion, David-Ben, 147 Gursel, Cemal, 120 Halefoglu, Vahit, 71 Hallstein, Walter, 70 Hatt-i Humayun (1856), 38 High Council of Turkic Republics, 98 Honneth, Axel, 26 Hungary, 83 Huntington, Samuel, 6, 84, 161 Huseyin, Saddam, 129 Ideas, 4, 17, 22, 25 Identification, 4, 20; individual, 4; Identity, 1, 22, 29, 105, 111, 140, 147, 151–153, 156, 158–164, 166; collective, 1, 19, 21, 27, 31–32, 160; selfish, 19, 28; social, 3, 19, 22, 30, 158; state, 3; ethnic and reli- gious, 4; egoistic, 13, 28, 30, 158, 160; and interests, 15; formation, 15,18, 30–31; confusion, 19; construction; 19, 25, 160; corporate, 19, 24, 27–31, 78, 136, 159; continuum, 20, 27, 28, 31; personal, 22; common, 23, conceptions, 25, 137–139, 140, 157, 168; crisis, 26 27, 29 32, 89, 160; national, 27, 29, 31, 161; content of, 28; sources of, 8;

European, 76, 78–80; Judeo-Christian, 93; racial, 99; Islamic, 121, 122, 140 Images, 111, 151–152, 162 In-group, 23; members, 27, 32, 160 Inonu, Erdal, 97 Inonu, Ismet, 58, 61–62, 66, 68 Interaction, 14; process of ; 14; context, 20; systemic, 25–29, 31, 159–160, 166; interactive, 27 Interactive model, 24, 159–160 Interdependence, 29 Intersubjective; 15 social context, 15; understandings, 15–17; mean- ings, 18; structure, 21 Iran, 25, 55, 88, 98, 102, 112, 118, 120, 132, 134, 148–149, 155, 165; Islamic Revolution in, 25, 28, 67, 74, 120, 137, 155; the Shah in, 28; foreign policy of, 28; Islamic government in, 28 Iraq, 17, 23, 112, 115, 118, 129, 148 Islam, 4–5, 28, 34, 37, 46–47, 50, 52–53, 77, 86–86, 89–91, 104, 109, 112–113, 120–122, 128, 131, 137, 145, 162, 165; Islamists, 6, 41, 61, 72, 73, 89, 94,99, 121–122, 124, 133–134, 156–157; Pan-Islamism, 6, 41, 43, 52, 135, 165; Islamic funda- mentalism, 7, 11, 102, 107, 131–132, 137– 139, 154–155, 160; Islamic sentiment in Turkey, 9, 33, 88; Islamic law (Seriat), 41, 47, 53, 113;

218 INDEX

political, 107–108, 129, 131, 132, 137 Islamic Conference, 9 Islamic Pact, 122 Islamic Union, 133 Islamic United Nations, 133 Israel, 8, 111, 115–116, 118–119, 125–128, 140, 144–146, 149– 157, 165 Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles, 147 Israeli Defense Forces, 152 Ittihat-i Osmani Cemiyeti (Ottoman Unity Society), 42 Ittihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Committee of Union and Progress), 42, 44 Janissaries, 37 Japan, 82, 104–105 Jerusalem, 123, 126 Jews, 140–142, 150, 153–155 Johnson Letter, 63, 66 Johnson, Lyndon, 62, 85 Joint Parliamentary Committee, 66 Jupiter Missiles, 61–62 Just Order, 133 Justice Party, 66, 71, 122 Kazakhstan, 101 Kazim Karabekir, 53 King Faisal, 123, 122 Kohl, Helmut, 82 Knesset, 151 Knowledge, 18 Korean War, 59 Kurds, 7, Kurdish problem, 7, 78, 82, 129, 137; Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), 7, 101, 129, 134, 137, 153–154; Kurdish separatist movement, 11, 131, 137–139, 148, 154, 157; Kurdish nationalism, 55, 89; Kurdish Parliament-in Exile, 101;

Kurdish terrorism, 155 Kyrgyzystan, 101 Lebanon, 112 Lebanese crisis, 119 Lebensraum, 83 Liberals, 1 Libya, 55, 88, 165 Luxembourg Summit, 82–84, 95, 104 Madrid Summit, 107 Mahmut II, 37, 40 Malaysia, 134 Menderes, Adnan, 116 Middle East, 3, 6, 9, 32, 56, 59, 65, 74, 91, 96, 99, 103–105, 109– 111, 113–115, 117–125, 128, 130, 139–140, 142–144, 146, 149, 151–153, 156–157, 162–165 Middle East Defense Organization, 118 Military Cooperation and Training Agreement, 148 Military coup, 67, 74, 76, 126, 136 Military government, 61, 76, 89, 128; Turkish military, 88, 131, 135, 137, 140, 146, 148 149, 154, 165; identity of, 139 Modernization, 4; in Turkey, 4, 34–36, 46, 52, 54, 57, 59, 66, 86, 88–89, 109, 115, 139, 140, 144, 162 Mosul problem, 115 Motherland Party, 76, 99, 126, 131 Muslim Brotherhood, 118, 134 Nagorno-Karabakh, 100, 131 Nakhichevan, 100–101 National Front Government, 125– 126 National interest, 20 National Intelligence Agency, 134 National Order Party, 130

INDEX 219

National Salvation Party, 73, 125– 126, 130, 153 National Security Council (NSC), 128, 136–137 Nationalism, 6; in Turkey, 9, 35, 74, 86, 88–91, 94, 96–97, 107, 112; Arab nationalism, 44, 112, 117 Nationalist Action Party, 89–91, 94, 97–98 NATO, 5, 7–8, 52, 57–68, 83–85, 91, 103, 106, 115, 117, 120, 122, 124, 128, 132, 145, 149, 153, 162 Neoliberal Institutionalism, 14 Neorealism, 1, 7, 11, 14–15, 21, 23, 32, 85, 123, 159–160 New Concept of National Military Strategy, 154–155 New Security Concept, 125 Nizam-i Cedid, 36 Noble Rescript of the Rose Chamber (1839), 38 Non-Aligned group, 119 Norms, 14–15, 22; intersubjective, 15 North Korea, 134 Northern Tier Strategy, 118 OECD, 57 Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), 123–127, 150, 164 Orient, 49 Ottoman Empire, 3–4, 8, 40, 42, 45, 72, 93, 111, 130, 141–144, 162; reforms in, 5, 35, 37 Ottomaism, 41–44 Out-group, 23 Ozal, Turgut, 76–77, 95, 98, 100, 102, 126, 128–129, 146, 154 Pakistan, 118, 120, 134 Palestine, 115, 142–147 Palestine Conciliation Commission, 116

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 126–127 Pan-Turkism, 97, 100 Passarowitz, Treaty of (1718), 35 Peres, Shimon, 147 Periphery Pact, 145 Power, 14; distribution of, 14 Preferences, 23, 27, 32 Process, 1, 11; systemic, 1, 31, 33; interactive, 27 Practices, 15; social, 15, 18; strategic, 21; behavioral and rhetorical, 21, 29 Rabat Conference, 127 Rapid reaction force, 84 Rational choice, 1, 11, 158 Rationality assumption, 14–15 Reflected appraisals (reciprocity), 26 Regional Cooperation for Development (RCD), 124 Relative gains, 13 Representations, 25 Republican People’s Party, 46, 50, 58, 72, 74, 96, 99, 123, 125 Role, 18, 123; identities, 25, 29, 31; conflict, 125 Sadak, Necmettin, 116 Saffet Pasha, 38 Said, Edward, 27 Saudi Arabia, 113, 122, 130 Security community, 17 Self, 22; and the other, 23, 27–28 Self-help, 11 Selim III, 36–37 Seventh Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers, 126–127 Seyh-ul-Islam, 47 Shah of Iran, 120

220 INDEX

Social Democrat Peoples Party (SDPP), 97 Social construction, 19 Soviet Union, 7, 9, 55, 57–58, 62, 65, 67, 75, 77, 84, 91, 94, 96, 106–108, 115, 117 118, 125, 162, 165 Spain, 64 Stalin, 59 State Economic Enterprises (SEE), 81 State egoism, 1 State Planning Organization (SPO), 72, 80 Syria, 112, 115, 119,121, 148, 155 Structure, 1, 11, 13; social, 1, 14, 17–18; material structure, 1; political, 11, 15; anarchic, 13, of identity and interest, 17, 19; sys-temic, 21 Suez Canal, 144 System, 1, 11; structure of, 13; systemic identity formation; 30 Tanzimat (reorganization), 37–41 Third World, 65, 121 Treaty of Lausanne, 142 True Path Party, 88, 101, 134, 154, 165 Truman Doctrine, 57, 115 Turanism, 44, Pan-Turanism, 52, 55 Turkes, Alparslan, 98 Turkey, 1; and secularism, 3, 11, 34, 49– 50, 86–88, 102, 104, 112–113, 120, 123, 130, 132–134, 136, 140–141, 154; Turkey’s western identity, 3, 9, 33, 45, 57, 83, 86, 95, 124, 132, 145, 151, 156, 162; and the Middle East, 3, 7, 109; and Europe, 3, 8, 74–75; and the United States, 3, 8;

the Independence War, 3, 7–8, 45, 56, 71; foreign policy of, 5, 6, 23, 32–33, 56–57; national identity of, 5–6, 55, 67– 68, 71, 86, 88 89, 106, 122, 124, 127, 132, 134, 161; identification with the West, 7, 32; construction of identity in, 8, 35, 109; identity crisis in, 9, 67, 80, 86, 89–91, 107, 165; westernization in, 9, 11, 34, 35, 36, 41, 44, 47, 52, 57, 59, 72, 77, 78, 83, 104, 109, 113, 119, 139, 140, 162; statism in, 50, democratization in, 58, 75, 76 Turkic Commonwealth, 97 Turkic peoples, 43, 74, 88, 97; Turkic Republics, 55, 91,94, 107 Turkic Summit, 98, 100 Turkish-American Council, 137, 155 Turkish Armed Forces, 129, 155 Turkish-Islamic synthesis, 89 Turkish-Israeli Military Agreements, 11, 157 Turkish model, 103 Turkish Workers’ Party, 73 Turkism, 44 Ulema, 36–37 Ulusu, Bulend, 75, 128 Union of European Christian Democrats, 94 United Nations, 65, 115, 125, 127– 128, 134–135, 145–146 UN General Assembly, 122 United States, 17, 23, 56–62, 65– 69, 74, 82, 104–105, 117, 120– 122, 129, 128, 134, 140, 140, 146, 149, 153, 164; identity of, 18 Uzbekistan, 101

INDEX 221

Walt, Stephen, 23 Waltz, Kenneth N., 11 War Academy, 42 Wendt, Alexander, 1–3, 17, 22, 24, 26–28 Welfare Party, 6, 9, 54, 88–91, 130, 132, 134, 137–139, 148–149, 153–157, 165 Weizman, Ezer, 147 West, 3, 35, 38, 46–47, 56, 58, 65, 67, 69, 77, 85, 91, 103, 119–121, 126–128, 140, 145, 149, 151, 162–165; cultural and positivist ideas of, 4, 77, 109, 156 Wester European Union (WEU), 84 World War I, 49, 53, 113, 141 World War II, 34, 52, 56, 84, 115, 139, 147, 164 Yilmaz, Mesut, 82–83, 104, 131 Young Ottomans, 40–43 Young Turks, 42, 44–45, 52, 112, 142 Yugoslavia, 64 Zionism, 122, 126, 133, 147–149, 153–154 Ziya Pasha, 40