Turkey’s Apologists and Syria’s
Can you yell, “Stop the presses!” in the computer age? We were going to interrupt our train of thought on Afghanistan and the Taliban to consider how Turkey’s cancellation of a longstanding NATO exercise because of Israeli participation should have turned even Turkey’s apologists into skeptics of the Islamist-leaning Turkish government’s long-term intentions toward Israel, NATO and the West.
Can you yell, “Stop the presses!” in the computer age? We were going to interrupt our train of thought on Afghanistan and the Taliban to consider how Turkey’s cancellation of a longstanding NATO exercise because of Israeli participation should have turned even Turkey’s apologists into skeptics of the Islamist-leaning Turkish government’s long-term intentions toward Israel, NATO and the West.
The apologists have said Turkey is just balancing its secular, constitutional, 20th Century side with its history. And, anyhow, they continue, the increasing anti-Western, anti-American and anti-Israel (veering into anti-Semitic) venom from the Turkish government and media isn’t actually Turkey’s fault. Secular Turkish politicians are all corrupt and the Europeans won’t let Turkey into the EU. As for anti-Americanism, well, it was the Bush Administration, after all. Canceling the exercise isn’t Turkey’s fault either because everyone knows about Gaza, and Israeli tourists stopped coming to Turkey and Israel might have been reconsidering its security relationship with Ankara.
We interrupt that discussion to point out that not only should Israel reconsider its relations with Ankara, but the United States and NATO might appropriately consider doing the same.
Turkey’s foreign minister and 10 other cabinet ministers were in Aleppo this week to meet with their Syrian counterparts and sign a Turkey-Syria “strategic cooperation” agreement. Noting joint military activities last spring, the Syrian defense minister announced upcoming “armed exercises.” Turkey’s defense minister said contact groups would be established to improve defense ties, and according to the Turkish press, “the contact groups will work on the fight against terrorism, military exercises and logistics.”
It isn’t the combination of Turkish and Syrian military capabilities that is worrisome, but the fact that Syria is Israel’s enemy, Lebanon’s enemy, Hezbollah’s back door and the bane of the Iraqi government and the American troops there-which should make it America’s adversary.
Syria’s only patron is Iran despite American posturing about a new relationship with Damascus. To the extent that Turkey envisions a strategic alignment with Syria, it is strategically aligned with Iran, which is an enemy of democracy, tolerance, modernity and countries that represent those values. This is our problem with Turkey. We wrote previously:
Turkey has moved increasingly sharply from pro-Western to pro-Iranian. Some of it has to do with the Iraq war; some of it is old politics-Istanbul (now Ankara), Tehran, Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad are historic centers of regional power (it helps to think in centuries, not years). Muslim-but-not-Arab Turkey has moved to enhance its position in the Middle East at the expense of Arab Cairo and Arab Baghdad. Its key friend is Muslim-but-not-Arab Shiite Iran. Sunni-populated-but-Alawi-ruled Arab Syria has thrown in with the Shiite Persians.
Israel’s deputy foreign minister told Israel Radio that Turkey was a “very important strategic anchor in the Mideast…All of us want a tolerant Turkey that is part of Western civilization and certainly an antithesis of the Iranian model.” Really? The Associated Press reported that a notice on the Turkish military website said the NATO drill had been cancelled after “international negotiations conducted by the Turkish Foreign Ministry.” With whom was not specified, but maybe it is time for the apologists to consider that Turkey may not see itself as the “antithesis of the Iranian model” but rather the apotheosis.