The Eastern Mediterranean's Bermuda Triangle

Turkey now finds itself managing rapidly escalating crises with three Eastern Mediterranean neighbors: Israel, Cyprus and Syria. The reasons for each crisis are different, but Milliyet's ever-sharp foreign affairs analyst Semih Idiz, finds a thread that connects them all and that leaves Ankara with some significant foreign policy challenges. From a recent column (in the Hurriyet Daily News):

Turkey is facing a difficult time in the eastern Mediterranean. It is almost as if we are heading for a hot confrontation in the region. It is not clear, however, how much international support Ankara has against Greek Cyprus and Israel. What is certain is that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s popularity on the Arab street will not be of much use here.

The irony is that any confrontation between Turkey and Greek Cyprus over offshore drilling rights, or between Turkey and Israel due to Ankara’s pledge to maintain safe passage in the eastern Mediterranean, will serve the interests of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at this present juncture.

It is clear, especially since Prime Minister Erdoğan is not mincing his words about the regime in Damascus anymore, that Syria and Turkey are adversaries at this stage. That is why any development that draws Turkey’s attention away from Syria at the present time will be much appreciated by Assad who is fighting for his political survival....

....To sum up, it is clear that the waters of the eastern Mediterranean are heating up and that Turkey is facing a multi-problem environment in this region. This is quite a change from the days when Ankara was aiming for “zero problems” in its regional ties.

The rest of the column can be found here. Meanwhile, the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think tank that's considered to have good connections to the White House, has just published a brief that suggests that Ankara's increasingly sharp rhetoric, particularly regarding Israel, could become self-defeating. From the brief, written by Michael Werz and Ken Sofer:

The confrontation between Turkey and Israel, two of America’s closest allies in the region, is threatening to reverse substantial gains in U.S. foreign policy. In addition, the AKP is trying to coerce the United States into a position closer to its own when it comes to the recognition of an independent Palestinian state.

Of course, Turkey’s strategy is not smart vis-à-vis the White House or the Department of State, because they’ve broken the rules of democratic engagement. The current escalation creates unnecessary tensions; is based on unmediated, unilateral interests instead of searching for viable compromise; and has no longer-term perspective. And it goes beyond the question of whether or not Turkey’s government has a legitimate point in its criticism of Israel. The present oratory also undermines Turkey’s economic and security interests. This type of posture provides space for destabilizing actors in the region, ultimately endangering the country’s newly established political recognition in regions other than Europe.

Further, Turkey’s political and economic capital is largely dependent on its new role as pivot between the West and the Middle East. Besides its important geographic position between the two regions, it is the only country that has considerable leverage in both regions. This is what makes Turkey such an invaluable American ally and such an important voice for Middle Eastern nations. But if Turkey continues down its recent path and establishes a strong anti-Israeli posture, many in the United States and Europe will begin to review the level of trust and recognition that Turkey earned in the past year.

For the time being, the repercussions of these attacks won’t be as visible because of the Turkish prime minister’s wildly successful populism with its suggestive and simple interpretation of the world. But as a middle power in one of the most challenging political environments on the globe, Turkey has a limited amount of time to get away with this type of discourse....

....The current escalation has taken the Turkey-Israel relationship back four years. It needs to be rebuilt over time, accompanied by a more pragmatic and less selective Turkish foreign policy. But after picking up the pieces of a “zero problem policy” in shambles, Turkey has the option to develop a real neighborhood policy worthy of a democratic emerging power.

The U.S. administration needs to flank that process or risk losing a valuable ally in the Middle East to the type of shortsighted, populist foreign policy that limits the prospects for peace in the region. Turkey’s growth into a critical player on the international stage benefits not only Ankara, but Washington, Tel Aviv, and many capitals throughout Europe and the Middle East. The United States should continue to recognize and promote Turkish leadership but also make it clear that the current over-the-top rhetoric against a neighbor will diminish Turkey’s credibility in diplomatic circles.

In the short run, a breakdown in the Turkish-Israeli relationship may be politically beneficial for Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu among their hawkish constituents. But poking holes in the relationship will only lead to a sinking ship and will ultimately hurt Turkey, Israel, and the United States.

You can find the full piece here.

The Cyprus Blues Again

Following the recent presidential elections in Northern Cyprus, there seems to be a fresh breeze of pessimism blowing out of the little island that couldn't.

The April 18 elections brought into power Dervis Eroglu, a hardline nationalist who has made clear his disenchantment with the current peace negotiations being held on the island. Eroglu has committed himself to returning to the negotiation table, but the concern is that he might employ a kind of rope-a-dope strategy, revisiting previous agreements and slowing things down to the point that the negotiations could very well run out of time. In an analysis released a few days after the election, the International Crisis Group's Hugh Pope makes clear why resolving the Cyprus issue matters. Pope writes:

[If the talks stagnate], everyone loses: the Greek Cypriots will suffer Turkish troops on the island indefinitely, lose the hope of winning back territory and see compensation for property made much harder; the Turkish Cypriot zone will be absorbed further into Turkey and its original inhabitants will scatter even farther; Turkey will see its EU process freeze up completely; Greece will suffer continued indefinite, expensive tensions in the Aegean; and Europe will lose any chance of normalizing EU-NATO relations.

The full piece, which offers Pope's prescription for keeping the talks on track, can be found here.

Turkish analyst Soli Ozel also takes a look at the Cyprus situation in a piece written for the German Marshall Fund. Like Pope, Ozel sees the clock in Cyprus ticking and suggests the international community step up its involvement. From his piece:

Although nobody feels any pressure for a deadline, the end of 2010 is actually a critical threshold. In 2011, Turkey will have entered its electoral campaign season and Erdoğan will be under pressure from nationalist forces for his Cyprus policies as well. Then, at the beginning of 2012, the Greek Cypriots will have their election, usually not a good season for peace seeking
in the South.

The window of opportunity is narrow. Missing this final chance will likely stall the process. Such an eventuality will further deteriorate Turkey-EU relations. Not to mention the blockage that Cyprus presents for EU-NATO relations and European security architecture in general.

Therefore it is high time for a paralyzed, ineffectual and unimaginative European Union and the equally lethargic UN to internationalize the negotiating process and bring all the relevant parties to a Dayton style conference. The leadership for such an initiative can come from the United States as well. Although Washington has its hands full in Iraq, AfPAk, Iran, and elsewhere, tipping the scales in favor of a settlement in what is an overripe situation would be worth the trouble.

The full analysis (pdf) is here.

For some background on the election and why Eroglu won, take a look at this day after piece that I filed for the Christian Science Monitor. One interesting point that I wasn't able to get into my article was how much things have turned around in the relationship between Ankara, which very much would like to see the Cyprus issue resolved, and Northern Cyprus. As Turkish Cypriot analyst Mete Hatay put it, "It’s a very ironic situation now. The left and the yes sayers are waiting for Turkish intervention and the nationalists are opposing Turkey." The question now is how much can the Turkish government push for a solution in Cyprus before having to fend off its own nationalists?

(photo: A man sitting at the Ledra crossing in Nicosia, the divided capital of Cyprus. By Yigal Schleifer)

"What Obama Should Say to Erdogan"

Hugh Pope, the International Crisis Group's Turkey analyst -- who just returned from a two-month fellowship at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington -- has a new paper out ahead of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Monday visit to the White House. The paper, published by the Transatlantic Academy, takes a close look at two areas in which Washington has an interest in pushing Ankara along, its normalization process with Armenia and its European Union membership process, and also helpfully unpackages the debate over Turkey's perceived eastward "drift."

From Pope's paper:

On 7 December, U.S. President Barack Obama receives the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. At a time of growing mutual suspicions, a face-to-face meeting will be of great importance between two men renowned for their straight-to-the-point frankness. There is arguably no other country in the world with so many areas of common interest with the United States, and yet Turkey both rashly overrates itself and is little understood and underrated in Washington.

A steadying hand should be the two leaders’ first order of business. Just as a surprising number of Turks expend their energy analyzing Washington’s supposedly nefarious plots to split up their country, a growing number of Americans interested in Turkey are just as busy analyzing Ankara’s latest supposed conspiracies against transatlantic and U.S. interests: is it abandoning the West in favour of a neo-Ottoman dominion in the East? Is it loosening its half-century-old security anchor in NATO? Where is Erdogan’s rough-tongued criticism of Israel leading? Is the innovating prime minister’s feud with the Kemalist establishment turning him into a dictator? Do grandiose Turkish stands alongside authoritarian anti-Western regimes in the Middle East make Turkey “Islamist”? And is Turkey turning away from its U.S.-backed ambition of membership of the European Union?

The answer to all this is short: none of the above. In fact, Obama and U.S. officials can start out with grateful recognition to the Turkish chief executive for the many areas in which the Turkish policy is closely aligned with the United States. Praise is deserved for Ankara’s role in what progress has been made in Iraq, itself largely due to an about-turn in U.S. attitudes to cooperating with Turkey in 2007. Turkey has been strongly supportive in Afghanistan and might to more; it is also helpful behind the scenes in Pakistan. The U.S. could go so far as to recognize that Turkey’s goals and achievements in the region -- freer travel between itself and several states, increasing intra-regional trade, joint Cabinet meetings, and projects to knit regional infrastructure together – offer a promising path towards greater stability, security, prosperity and better governance in a traumatized Middle East. Despite its exaggerated self-image as a critical regional dynamo – in fact, Turkey is better compared to a large car with an underpowered engine – its new track record compares positively to the West’s controversial actions in the Middle East in past decades.

The U.S. and Turkey should resist what will be a temptation on both sides to spend the short time they have on their differences over Iran, Sudan or Israel/Palestine. For sure, the U.S. side needs to impress diplomatically on Prime Minister Erdogan how much his populist rhetoric in support of anti-Western bugbears is damaging Turkey’s position with its key partners and pro-Turkey constituencies in Washington and Brussels. And the U.S. should listen for any new message Erdogan might be bringing from his recent visits to Iran and Syria, and hear out his likely argument that punitive sanctions against Iran’s nuclear ambitions will do little but consolidate yet another authoritarian Middle Eastern regime. But lengthy argument over these deeply-entrenched issues will prove a red herring and has little chance of changing either side, given that the two countries’ approaches to the region are dictated by fundamentally different domestic political imperatives.

Instead, acknowledging that the Middle East is only one of several areas of overlapping U.S. interests with Turkey, Obama and the U.S. team should focus on two matters that will really test Turkey’s intentions, need urgent attention, and, in the long term, have the most game-changing potential in the region.

You can read the full paper here.

A Last "Last Chance" for Cyprus?

The International Crisis Group and its Turkey analyst, Hugh Pope, have had in recent years the thankless task of reminding the world (and the European Union, in particular) about the importance of solving the decades-old Cyprus problem. In a new report, ICG warns that time is really running out for a solution and that the island may be heading towards a permanent split. From the executive summary:

Three decades of efforts to reunify Cyprus are about to end, leaving a stark choice ahead between a hostile, de facto partition of the island and a collaborative federation between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities living in two constituent states. Most actors agree that the window of opportunity for this bicommunal, bizonal settlement will close by April 2010, the date of the next Turkish Cypriot elections, when the pro-settlement leader risks losing his office to a more hardline candidate. If no accord is reached by then, it will be the fourth major set of UN-facilitated peace talks to fail, and there is a widespread feeling that if the current like-minded, pro-solution Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders cannot compromise on a federal solution, nobody can….

….In the absence of a Cyprus settlement, both communities on the island and Turkey will experience slower economic progress, greater defence spending and reduced international credibility.

You can find the summary and the full report here.

It's easy to dismiss the Cyprus issue, but it's one that matters -- not only for the divided island, but also for Turkey, the EU and NATO. The Cyprus problem not only has the potential to derail Turkey's EU bid, but it has already worked its way into the EU, where Cyprus uses the issue to punish Turkey, and NATO, where Turkey uses it to punish Cyprus. (For more background, take a look at a piece I wrote last year for Eurasianet). One imagines that a permanent division would only see that dynamic intensify, to the detriment of both organizations' ability to function properly.

As the report mentions, some in Turkey and Northern Cyprus believe that even if there is a permanent division, the island's tiny Turkish republic could achieve a kind of "Taiwanisation" -- de facto international recognition that leads to viability as a state. That belief, the report makes clear, is mistaken:

But north Cyprus and Taiwan can hardly be compared. Less than 300,000 Turkish Cypriots cannot measure against a large, self-governing modern industrial power with 23 million people. The EU is the most powerful actor in the eastern Mediterranean, and the Greek Cypriots are probably able to block any attempt by a member state to work in any way with the self-declared Turkish Cypriot state. Even sympathetic Turkic states like Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan have failed to lay on direct flights to the main Turkish Cypriot airport, primarily because of Greek Cypriot influence in the EU.

A Setback in Cyprus

The results from Sunday’s parliamentary elections in northern Cyprus might spell trouble for the divided island’s ongoing peace negotiations, which started in 2008. The talks are supposed to lead to the creation of a single state with two zones – one Greek and one Turkish – united in a federal system. But the party that won the election, the right wing National Unity Party (UBP), has previously opposed a federal solution and has called for the island – divided since the Turkish invasion in 1974 – to be permanently split into two states.

The peace talks are currently being led, on the Turkish Cypriot side, by Mehmet Ali Talat, president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a state currently only recognized by Turkey. Talat’s Republican Turkish Party (CTP) received 29 percent of the vote, compared to the UBP’s 44 percent. Talat, elected in 2005, has been instrumental in moving northern Cyprus closer towards ending the political stalemate with the Greek-speaking side of the island. He remains in office until 2010, but he may find himself with less room to maneuver now.

"We will continue to support negotiations," UBP leader Dervish Eroglu said after the election. "No one should say we are against them. We will put forward our views and discuss them within the framework of Turkey’s foreign policy on Cyprus." Those are positive words, but in interviews in the Turkish press, Eroglu had made clear his opposition to a single state solution and his desire to maintain northern Cyprus’s close links to Turkey.

The election results might prove to be yet another headache for Turkish policymakers, who have been trying to come up over the last few years with a new approach to the Cyprus issue, since the island’s problems are also Turkey’s problems. From a Eurasianet piece I wrote last year, at the start of the peace negotiations:

While the Cyprus conflict sometimes expresses itself in petty arguments -- such as whether baklava is a Greek or Turkish invention, and whether the gooey confection known around the world as Turkish delight should in fact be called Cypriot delight -- the problem also has a larger geopolitical element. For example, when the Greek Cypriot government recently wanted to grant international companies the right to search for oil and gas in the sea around the island, Turkey protested forcefully, saying the search area was in disputed waters.

"It appears to be a stable situation, but it is really an unstable one," says Niyazi Kizilyurek, a Turkish Cypriot who is chairman of the Turkish Studies department at the Greek Cypriot University of Cyprus. "This is not only about solving the Cyprus problem."

Turkey’s troubled EU-membership drive is also inextricably tied up in the Cyprus issue. The Greek-speaking south part of the island joined the bloc in 2004, and has since used its position in Brussels to occasionally stymie Ankara’s EU bid. Turkey, meanwhile, is using its NATO membership to strike back, blocking enhanced cooperation between the EU and the defense alliance in protest of what it sees as Brussels’ being held captive to the Cypriot agenda. This has hampered EU policing projects in Kosovo and Afghanistan from getting off the ground.

"Cyprus is using the EU to punish Turkey and Turkey is using NATO to punish Cyprus. All these things are going to come up as major issues if this current round of negotiations fails. The result is that the Cyprus issue, which has always been a wedge between Turkey and the EU, will go deeper," says the [International Crisis Group’s Hugh Pope, an analyst based in Turkey]….

….Turkey’s EU bid is due for a review by Brussels in 2009 and a lack of progress on the Cyprus issue could be a major negative. Still, the last three or four years have seen Ankara take a more conciliatory approach on the issue, in the hopes of getting it resolved. "The sense is that is Turkey does this, it will be easier for it to get into the EU and accepted in international forums," says Sami Kohen, a leading columnist on Turkish foreign policy in the Milliyet newspaper.

"But the feeling in Ankara in the last few months is that if there is no agreement soon, then that’s the end of it. This is the last chance." Adds Kohen: "If Turkey sees that there is no way of convincing its friends in the EU to change the minds of the Greek Cypriots, then it will say that we will no longer continue [its EU bid] because of tiny Cyprus imposing its own policies on the EU. If it comes to that point, we might see a dramatic shift in Turkish foreign policy."

You can read the whole piece here.

Valley of the Fools

The Independent’s Nicholas Birch has an article today about Turkey’s latest political/media scandal: the on-air admission by actor Atilla Olgac that he killed ten Greek Cypriots – including a POW whose hands were tied behind his back – during the 1974 Turkish invasion of the island.

Olgac is one of the stars of the hit television series “Valley of the Wolves,” which tells the story of a group of gangsters led by Polat Alemdar, a patriotic undercover intelligence officer who infiltrates the mafia but starts operating in the murky zone where the interests of unsavory elements of the state and of organized crime meet. It's as if special agent Jack Bauer of the hit show "24" took over Tony Soprano's gang, but instead of engaging in protection rackets started bumping off enemies of the state. The violent show was even yanked off the air at one point for fear that it would stoke nationalist sentiments in Turkey to dangerous levels. (For more on the influential show, take a look at this article I wrote about it for the Christian Science Monitor in 2007.)

Olgac, known as the “tough wolf,” clearly has been spending too much time on the set. "The commander told me to kill on his orders," Olgac said during a recent tv interview. "The first kid I shot was a 19-year-old prisoner. His hands were tied behind his back. When I pointed my gun at him, he spat in my face. I shot him in the forehead." It was more of a macho boast than a confession.

Olgac quickly retracted his story, saying it was only a “scenario” that he was developing and trying out on the television audience. It was a nice try to kill the story, but things will likely not end there for him. As Birch writes:

“Ali Cakir, the Istanbul prosecutor, opened an investigation yesterday into the case, citing the Third Geneva Convention, related to the treatment of prisoners of war. Should evidence of wrongdoing emerge, the dossier will be sent to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the prosecutor said. Mr Olgac would be the first Turk to face international justice for war crimes, if indicted.”

Olgac’s story brings new attention to the issue of the estimated 2,000 missing persons in Cyprus, victims of the violence of the 1960’s and 70’s that ended up splitting the island. As noted in an earlier post and in a story I recently wrote for the Monitor, the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) – a Greek and Turkish Cypriot project to find the remains of the missing – is one of the few successful joint projects on the island.

Despite the project’s success in locating some of the missing, a complaint I heard from some of the people involved with the CMP is that Turkey has been less than forthcoming with whatever information it may have about any of the missing. That may change: After Olgac’s confession, Cyprus filed a case with the European Court of Human Rights demanding Turkey provide details of what it knows about the fate of those who disappeared.

Unearthing a Painful Past in Cyprus

My article in today's Christian Science Monitor, about a project in to unearth mass graves in Cyprus, reminders of the violence that gripped the island in the 1960's and 70's. The project, perhaps the most successful bi-communal effort in Cyprus, is being seen as an important step in helping reunify the divided island.

In a related story for Women's eNews, I profiled Sevgul Uludag, a Turkish Cypriot journalist whose brave pioneering work helped bring the mass graves issue to the top of the agenda on the island.

Photo of the Day

Mannequins wearing knock-off designer jeans in the Turkish half of Nicosia, the divided capital of Cyprus. Ever since a downtown border crossing was opened up in the city on April 3, 2008, Greek Cypriots have been coming over to the Turkish side to buy fake, yet cheap, Dolce & Gabbana and Armani jeans, while Turkish Cypriots have been going over to the other side to buy the more expensive real thing. June 1, 2008. 

(Photo by Yigal Schleifer)