Angry Turks and troubled US ME policy
Saturday, 3 November 2007
Syed Fattahul Alim
Turkey is a key ally of the USA as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). It is also an exception among the Muslim countries in that it recognises Israel as well as noncommittal about the Palestinian cause. Since the birth of modern Turkey with Mustapha Kemal Ataturk as its founding father, Turkey severed its relation with its imperial past. It turned more to the West to draw its inspiration to build a secular and democratic society. As part of its Westward tilt, Turkey even romanised its alphabet. But has Turkey, now that it has already gone around with the Occident for more than eight decades, been able to claim its due place in the comity of the Western nations? Do the European countries really consider Turkey as one of them? Is America, despite Turkey's allegiance to it, sensitive and sympathetic to that country's distinctive culture and history? The recent resolution in the US Congress terming the killing of a large number of Armenians during the fag end of the Ottoman Empire as an act of genocide angered the general public in Turkey. Add to this the recent skirmishes between Turkish border security forces and the guerrillas belonging to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). It is worthwhile to mention here that Kurds are now a strong US ally and a partner of the Iraqi coalition administration tailored by America. What should then one expect to be the cumulative effect of all these factors on the Turkish mind?
A recent survey conducted by the prestigious US-based Pew Research Center has shown that only 9 per cent of the Turks have a favourable view of America. Now the Turkish government, too, has visibly lost its patience. Do all these developments points to any new shift in the pattern of US priorities and partnership in Middle East and Europe?
Yigal Schleifer, correspondent of The Christian Monitor, analyses in the following the new trends in the Turkish equation in the US scheme of things in the region.
The US has hailed Turkey as moderate Islamic democracy, the kind it would like to see develop elsewhere. It's a key NATO ally, with US aircraft stationed there.
Yet, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's arrival in Ankara Friday to defuse tensions over Kurdish rebels operating in Iraq, she was facing a nation that is now the most anti-American in the world, according to one survey. In the meetings with Ms. Rice, and next Monday in Washington with President Bush, Turkey's prime minister is expected to press the US to take steps against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels in Iraq.
That might help soften attitudes here toward the US. But given the depth of anti-American feeling that has developed in just the past few years, few expect Turkish public opinion to turn quickly.
In a recent global survey by the Pew Research Center, only 9 percent of Turks held a favourable view of the United States (down from 52 percent in 2000), a figure that placed Turkey at the rock bottom of the 46 countries surveyed.
"People have become accustomed to this plot line of America being a threat to Turkish national security. This was inconceivable five years ago, but now it has come to be the prevailing view," says Ihsan Dagi, a professor of international relations at Ankara's Middle East Technical University.
That perception has been reinforced in the past two years by some of Turkey's most popular books and films which portray the US and Turkey at odds - if not at war. Turkey's all-time box office champ, 2006's "Valley of the Wolves," saw a ragtag Turkish force square off heroically against a whole division of bloodthirsty American soldiers in northern Iraq.
"Metal Storm," a bestselling political fantasy book from the year before, went even further, describing an all out war between Ankara and Washington in the not so distant future (the year 2007, to be exact), in which Turkey ultimately prevails with the help of Russia and the European Union.
Analysts say the public's mood represents a trend that has worrying implications for the future health of the ties between the two NATO allies.
"The public is really convinced that the United States is no longer a friend and ally. That is really frustrating," says Professor Dagi.
Real life events have also done little to improve America's image in Turkey. The recent passage by a US congressional committee of a resolution recognizing the mass killing of Armenians in the final days of the Ottoman Empire as a genocide - something Turkey strongly rejects - set public opinion aflame.
At the same time, the renewed attacks on Turkish forces by PKK guerrillas have only strengthened the widespread belief that Washington is doing little to get rid of the PKK in northern Iraq. Ankara has been building up its troops on the Iraqi border and threatening an invasion, something Washington strongly opposes.
"The clearest fact is that the real threats against Turkey come not from its neighbours, but from its 'allies' and each new development brings Turkey face to face with its Western allies," Ali Bulac, a columnist for the liberal-Islamic Zaman newspaper, recently wrote. "The United States ... is taking its place on the stage as the force behind the PKK."
Why Turks no longer love the U.S.
Says Gunduz Aktan, a former Turkish ambassador who is currently a parliamentarian with the right-wing Nationalist Action Party (MHP): "The entire Turkish public opinion now is one of frustration and exasperation and a kind of acute expectation of the US to do something meaningful and concrete (on the PKK issue) and to understand the problem that we have in Turkey."
But experts say Turkey's growing anti-Americanism also has a domestic element. The success of the Islamic-rooted ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has forced Turkey to confront the issue of how to reconcile secularism with Islam, while the renewal of PKK violence has again brought to the surface the decades-long struggle to square a strong national Turkish identity with the country's diverse ethnic identities.
"Turkey is caught right now between East and West, between Islam and secularism, between Kurdish and Turkish nationalism," says Omer Taspinar, director of the Turkey program at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "Since the cold war ended, we are living in an era where all the problems that defined the Turkish Republic in the early years are back, and Turkey is blaming the West for this."
The Rice visit and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's trip to the White House on Nov. 5 are part of an effort to stave off any further deterioration in US-Turkish relations. "I will openly tell him [President George Bush] that we expect concrete, immediate steps against the terrorists," Mr. Erdogan recently told parliamentarians from his party. "The problem of the PKK terrorist organization is a test of sincerity for everybody," he said. "This test carries great importance for the region and in determining the fate of our future relations."
Observers inside and outside Turkey say Ankara could play a role in easing regional tensions by dropping its objections to speaking directly with the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq and its leader, Massoud Barzani.
But METU's Dagi says that without American action on the PKK front, there is little Ankara can do to defuse the public's growing dislike of the US.
"The government has somehow been taken hostage by this public mood," he says. "The first thing is to deal with this mood, and in that America has to contribute something."
US Intelligence budget
How much the US spends to maintain its huge spy network that girdles the globe? David Montero of csmonitor provides a glimpse into that shady world.
Anyone wondering, in this age of global terrorism, how much money the US intelligence community spends on spy services was given an answer on Tuesday: $43.5 billion in 2007, according to Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence.
The publication of the figure is a rare display of transparency. Government officials normally refuse to divulge intelligence budgets on the grounds of national security, as The New York Times reports this week.
The intelligence budget has twice before been made public: in 1997 and 1998, the C.I.A. disclosed that its budget was $26.6 billion and $26.7 billion, respectively. But since the September 11 attacks the Bush administration has refused to make similar disclosures, fighting legal challenges from several advocacy groups.
The figure does not include billions of dollars spent by military services on intelligence, the Times points out. This is only a partial accounting of intelligence spending, The Washington Post says.
It includes salaries for about 100,000 people, multibillion dollar secret satellite programs, aircraft, weapons, electronic sensors, intelligence analysts, spies, computers and software.
The Post puts the $43.5 billion tab into perspective:
For comparison, last year's intelligence spending was about half the $91 billion President Bush is proposing to spend over the coming year on the Agriculture Department, and somewhat more than the $35 billion budget of the Homeland Security Department.
The figure nonetheless is still likely to add fuel to the controversy of how the government spends its money in the war on terrorism. That's because what counts is who got most of the $43.5 billion.
A Defense Intelligence Agency presentation in May of 2007 showed for the first time, according to a June 2007 investigative report by Salon.com, that 70 percent of the US intelligence community's work is done by contractors. That means that, just as civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan are increasingly hired to provide security and perform other quasimilitary functions, so too are civilians contracted to do intelligence work.
The figures revealed last week helps confirm that the US government is paying more money to contractors to do intelligence work than at any other time in history, reports Salon.com.
Turkey is a key ally of the USA as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). It is also an exception among the Muslim countries in that it recognises Israel as well as noncommittal about the Palestinian cause. Since the birth of modern Turkey with Mustapha Kemal Ataturk as its founding father, Turkey severed its relation with its imperial past. It turned more to the West to draw its inspiration to build a secular and democratic society. As part of its Westward tilt, Turkey even romanised its alphabet. But has Turkey, now that it has already gone around with the Occident for more than eight decades, been able to claim its due place in the comity of the Western nations? Do the European countries really consider Turkey as one of them? Is America, despite Turkey's allegiance to it, sensitive and sympathetic to that country's distinctive culture and history? The recent resolution in the US Congress terming the killing of a large number of Armenians during the fag end of the Ottoman Empire as an act of genocide angered the general public in Turkey. Add to this the recent skirmishes between Turkish border security forces and the guerrillas belonging to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). It is worthwhile to mention here that Kurds are now a strong US ally and a partner of the Iraqi coalition administration tailored by America. What should then one expect to be the cumulative effect of all these factors on the Turkish mind?
A recent survey conducted by the prestigious US-based Pew Research Center has shown that only 9 per cent of the Turks have a favourable view of America. Now the Turkish government, too, has visibly lost its patience. Do all these developments points to any new shift in the pattern of US priorities and partnership in Middle East and Europe?
Yigal Schleifer, correspondent of The Christian Monitor, analyses in the following the new trends in the Turkish equation in the US scheme of things in the region.
The US has hailed Turkey as moderate Islamic democracy, the kind it would like to see develop elsewhere. It's a key NATO ally, with US aircraft stationed there.
Yet, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's arrival in Ankara Friday to defuse tensions over Kurdish rebels operating in Iraq, she was facing a nation that is now the most anti-American in the world, according to one survey. In the meetings with Ms. Rice, and next Monday in Washington with President Bush, Turkey's prime minister is expected to press the US to take steps against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels in Iraq.
That might help soften attitudes here toward the US. But given the depth of anti-American feeling that has developed in just the past few years, few expect Turkish public opinion to turn quickly.
In a recent global survey by the Pew Research Center, only 9 percent of Turks held a favourable view of the United States (down from 52 percent in 2000), a figure that placed Turkey at the rock bottom of the 46 countries surveyed.
"People have become accustomed to this plot line of America being a threat to Turkish national security. This was inconceivable five years ago, but now it has come to be the prevailing view," says Ihsan Dagi, a professor of international relations at Ankara's Middle East Technical University.
That perception has been reinforced in the past two years by some of Turkey's most popular books and films which portray the US and Turkey at odds - if not at war. Turkey's all-time box office champ, 2006's "Valley of the Wolves," saw a ragtag Turkish force square off heroically against a whole division of bloodthirsty American soldiers in northern Iraq.
"Metal Storm," a bestselling political fantasy book from the year before, went even further, describing an all out war between Ankara and Washington in the not so distant future (the year 2007, to be exact), in which Turkey ultimately prevails with the help of Russia and the European Union.
Analysts say the public's mood represents a trend that has worrying implications for the future health of the ties between the two NATO allies.
"The public is really convinced that the United States is no longer a friend and ally. That is really frustrating," says Professor Dagi.
Real life events have also done little to improve America's image in Turkey. The recent passage by a US congressional committee of a resolution recognizing the mass killing of Armenians in the final days of the Ottoman Empire as a genocide - something Turkey strongly rejects - set public opinion aflame.
At the same time, the renewed attacks on Turkish forces by PKK guerrillas have only strengthened the widespread belief that Washington is doing little to get rid of the PKK in northern Iraq. Ankara has been building up its troops on the Iraqi border and threatening an invasion, something Washington strongly opposes.
"The clearest fact is that the real threats against Turkey come not from its neighbours, but from its 'allies' and each new development brings Turkey face to face with its Western allies," Ali Bulac, a columnist for the liberal-Islamic Zaman newspaper, recently wrote. "The United States ... is taking its place on the stage as the force behind the PKK."
Why Turks no longer love the U.S.
Says Gunduz Aktan, a former Turkish ambassador who is currently a parliamentarian with the right-wing Nationalist Action Party (MHP): "The entire Turkish public opinion now is one of frustration and exasperation and a kind of acute expectation of the US to do something meaningful and concrete (on the PKK issue) and to understand the problem that we have in Turkey."
But experts say Turkey's growing anti-Americanism also has a domestic element. The success of the Islamic-rooted ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has forced Turkey to confront the issue of how to reconcile secularism with Islam, while the renewal of PKK violence has again brought to the surface the decades-long struggle to square a strong national Turkish identity with the country's diverse ethnic identities.
"Turkey is caught right now between East and West, between Islam and secularism, between Kurdish and Turkish nationalism," says Omer Taspinar, director of the Turkey program at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "Since the cold war ended, we are living in an era where all the problems that defined the Turkish Republic in the early years are back, and Turkey is blaming the West for this."
The Rice visit and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's trip to the White House on Nov. 5 are part of an effort to stave off any further deterioration in US-Turkish relations. "I will openly tell him [President George Bush] that we expect concrete, immediate steps against the terrorists," Mr. Erdogan recently told parliamentarians from his party. "The problem of the PKK terrorist organization is a test of sincerity for everybody," he said. "This test carries great importance for the region and in determining the fate of our future relations."
Observers inside and outside Turkey say Ankara could play a role in easing regional tensions by dropping its objections to speaking directly with the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq and its leader, Massoud Barzani.
But METU's Dagi says that without American action on the PKK front, there is little Ankara can do to defuse the public's growing dislike of the US.
"The government has somehow been taken hostage by this public mood," he says. "The first thing is to deal with this mood, and in that America has to contribute something."
US Intelligence budget
How much the US spends to maintain its huge spy network that girdles the globe? David Montero of csmonitor provides a glimpse into that shady world.
Anyone wondering, in this age of global terrorism, how much money the US intelligence community spends on spy services was given an answer on Tuesday: $43.5 billion in 2007, according to Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence.
The publication of the figure is a rare display of transparency. Government officials normally refuse to divulge intelligence budgets on the grounds of national security, as The New York Times reports this week.
The intelligence budget has twice before been made public: in 1997 and 1998, the C.I.A. disclosed that its budget was $26.6 billion and $26.7 billion, respectively. But since the September 11 attacks the Bush administration has refused to make similar disclosures, fighting legal challenges from several advocacy groups.
The figure does not include billions of dollars spent by military services on intelligence, the Times points out. This is only a partial accounting of intelligence spending, The Washington Post says.
It includes salaries for about 100,000 people, multibillion dollar secret satellite programs, aircraft, weapons, electronic sensors, intelligence analysts, spies, computers and software.
The Post puts the $43.5 billion tab into perspective:
For comparison, last year's intelligence spending was about half the $91 billion President Bush is proposing to spend over the coming year on the Agriculture Department, and somewhat more than the $35 billion budget of the Homeland Security Department.
The figure nonetheless is still likely to add fuel to the controversy of how the government spends its money in the war on terrorism. That's because what counts is who got most of the $43.5 billion.
A Defense Intelligence Agency presentation in May of 2007 showed for the first time, according to a June 2007 investigative report by Salon.com, that 70 percent of the US intelligence community's work is done by contractors. That means that, just as civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan are increasingly hired to provide security and perform other quasimilitary functions, so too are civilians contracted to do intelligence work.
The figures revealed last week helps confirm that the US government is paying more money to contractors to do intelligence work than at any other time in history, reports Salon.com.