Turkey, by any account, is one of the most interesting states in the world. It’s an eastern tip of Europe, and the westernmost point of Asia. I’ve been lucky to visit six times, for conferences, but always to include some of the most significant site-seeing in the world.
I recall wandering around the Asian side of Istanbul and seeing the world’s best strategist, Edward Luttwak, a close friend, who insisted I come look at a foundation stone in which was carved “ROMA”, reminding us that in the fourth century, this was where the emperor Constantine moved the capital of the Roman empire to.
Vandals were anyway sacking old Rome and the new site was secure. That is, until the Ottomans, under 21-year-old Sultan Mehmed I, pushed their boats over the mountain, astonishing the Romans, and on Friday May 23, 1453, Constantinople — after more than a millennium — became Istanbul. Luckily, the smartest of the philosophers and scientists had fled to the original Rome, sparking the Renaissance in Italy with their learning.
If you visit Izmir on the Asian western coast, you will find not only a bustling ancient Islamic port, but the finest Hellenic ruins. The three-floor library at Ephesus, off Izmir’s coast, is almost intact and is a world wonder. It’s also said to be where Mary, the mother of Jesus, came to die.
Turkey is a Nato ally, and an important one. The Bosporus between European and Asian Turkey is the most critical choke point in the world. Success has many fathers, and I know several American naval officers who claimed that in 1962, they were the ones noting that Russian ships were deeply drafted going out, and a few weeks later coming back light in the water, thus leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the closest the world came to nuclear war: US President John Kennedy demanded that Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev withdraw the missiles from Cuba or we would bomb the hell out of Russian sites within our reach.
Khrushchev blinked; Kennedy in hubris idiotically began sending “advisers” to Laos, thus, resulting in what became our greatest defeat thirteen years later, when Hanoi mopped up the last western-sponsored resistance to its rule over Indochina.
The delicate Turkish balancing act is now being put to the test by the Middle East civil war. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan must juggle more cards than any other world leader.
There are still Nato (read United States) air force bases critical to our strategic world position, but the balance of forces has changed. Erdogan feels justified in seizing near-dictatorial power domestically.
Anyway, the Turkish dream of joining the European Union was buried once he began shucking off his country’s 20th century traditions — dressing and behaving like westerners, begun by modern Turkey’s founder, Kemal Ataturk, in 1922. He couldn’t have it both ways any more: being a good Nato westernising republic as wars broke out eastwards in Syria and Iraq.
On July 15, elements in the Turkish army attempted a coup against the increasingly autocratic Erdogan, who is convinced it was masterminded by an Imam in a Pennsylvania compound, Fethullah Gulen, who has followers throughout Turkey — in the army, government and academia.
Turks believed that the United States masterminded the coup and demanded that Gulen be extradited.
President Barack Obama, a constitutional lawyer, responded that due process must be respected and proof of Gulen’s direct complicity be proven. He can’t bend the laws as Erdogan does.
It’s also simple for me to believe the opposite: surely the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency are capable of monitoring Gulen, precisely to know if he is violating his American residency.
Vice-President Joe Biden has apologised that we didn’t offer support for the Turkish government more quickly following the coup. The problem is that Erdogan so swiftly rounded up opponents suspected of participation, never bothering with due process, that it was a bit difficult for us to know what to do in the aftermath of the attempted coup. It’s even widely suspected that he fostered (or turned a blind eye to) coup preparations, knowing he could crush it and use it to tighten his rule.
Making it more complicated, the ethnically separate Kurds, straddling western Turkey and Northern Syria and Iraq, have longed and rightfully (if right is to have any meaning in the jungle of world politics) for their own republic.
The Kurds, thus, become another card for outsiders to use, especially Russia. It is also apparent that Erdogan is using the coup to rein in the Kurds, demanding that they not go beyond the Euphrates river and consolidate their hold on traditionally Kurdish lands.
Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin have much in common, both stripping their internal opponents of their free press, and hobbling remaining institutional centres of opposition.
Erdogan has had friendly meetings with Putin, and has tried to bluff us by threatening to switch sides. It’s an empty bluff. Nato planes are ruling the skies to protect Turkish incursions into Syria.
Turkey and the United States need each other. It’s America’s most difficult alliances, but an absolutely necessary one.
W. Scott Thompson is Professor Emeritus of International Politics, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the United States