a wa shington instit u te str ategic r eport

THE NEW TURKEY AND US POLICY

SONER CAGAPTAY

THE NEW TURKEY AND US POLICY

str ategic r eport 11 | Ja NUa rY 2 013

THE NEW TURKEY AND US POLICY

SONER CAGAPTAY

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this publica-

tion may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or

mechanical including photocopy recording or any information storage and retrieval

system without permission in writing from the publisher

copy 2013 by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

1828 L Street NW Suite 1050

Washington DC 20036

Design 1000colorsorg

Cover The stylized signature of Sultan Mahmud II of the Ottoman Empire written

in expressive calligraphy reads ldquoMahmud Khan son of Abduumllhamid is forever victori-

ousrdquo The calligraphic arts held a prestigious status under the Ottomans

the author wishes to thank

Vanessa and tony Beyer in particular

as well as Yvonne and Michael silverman for their

dedication to his work and the mission

of the turkish research program

at the Washington institute

THE NEW TURKEY AND US POLICY

str ategic r eport 11 | Ja NUa rY 2 013

THE NEW TURKEY AND US POLICY

SONER CAGAPTAY

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this publica-

tion may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or

mechanical including photocopy recording or any information storage and retrieval

system without permission in writing from the publisher

copy 2013 by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

1828 L Street NW Suite 1050

Washington DC 20036

Design 1000colorsorg

Cover The stylized signature of Sultan Mahmud II of the Ottoman Empire written

in expressive calligraphy reads ldquoMahmud Khan son of Abduumllhamid is forever victori-

ousrdquo The calligraphic arts held a prestigious status under the Ottomans

the author wishes to thank

Vanessa and tony Beyer in particular

as well as Yvonne and Michael silverman for their

dedication to his work and the mission

of the turkish research program

at the Washington institute

str ategic r eport 11 | Ja NUa rY 2 013

THE NEW TURKEY AND US POLICY

SONER CAGAPTAY

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this publica-

tion may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or

mechanical including photocopy recording or any information storage and retrieval

system without permission in writing from the publisher

copy 2013 by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

1828 L Street NW Suite 1050

Washington DC 20036

Design 1000colorsorg

Cover The stylized signature of Sultan Mahmud II of the Ottoman Empire written

in expressive calligraphy reads ldquoMahmud Khan son of Abduumllhamid is forever victori-

ousrdquo The calligraphic arts held a prestigious status under the Ottomans

the author wishes to thank

Vanessa and tony Beyer in particular

as well as Yvonne and Michael silverman for their

dedication to his work and the mission

of the turkish research program

at the Washington institute

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this publica-

tion may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or

mechanical including photocopy recording or any information storage and retrieval

system without permission in writing from the publisher

copy 2013 by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

1828 L Street NW Suite 1050

Washington DC 20036

Design 1000colorsorg

Cover The stylized signature of Sultan Mahmud II of the Ottoman Empire written

in expressive calligraphy reads ldquoMahmud Khan son of Abduumllhamid is forever victori-

ousrdquo The calligraphic arts held a prestigious status under the Ottomans

the author wishes to thank

Vanessa and tony Beyer in particular

as well as Yvonne and Michael silverman for their

dedication to his work and the mission

of the turkish research program

at the Washington institute

contents

the author | v

1 introduction | 1

2 the aKprsquos turkey | 3

3 Lessons for Washington | 14

Map Kurdish population in turkey vs support for Kurdish Nationalist party | 8

v

the author

soner cagaptay is the Beyer Family fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute A historian by training he has written extensively on US-Turkey relations Turkish domestic politics and Turkish nationalism publishing in scholarly journals and major inter-national print media including the Wall Street Journal and the International Herald Tribune He is a regular columnist for Hurriyet Daily News Turkeyrsquos oldest and most influential English-language paper and a contributor to CNNrsquos Global Public Square blog He appears regularly on Fox News CNN NPR Voice of America al-Jazeera BBC CNN-Turk and al-Hurra

Dr Cagaptay is the recipient of numerous honors grants and chairs among them the Smith-Richardson Mellon Rice and Leylan fellowships as well as the Ertegun chair at Princeton He has also served on contract as chair of the Turkey Advanced Area Studies Program at the State Departmentrsquos Foreign Service Institute In 2012 he was named an American Turkish Society Young Society Leader

1

chapter 1

introduction

in the past decade Turkey has experienced a dramatic transformation under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) Led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan the AKP has moved the country away from the trend toward Westernization begun in the late eighteenth century under the Otto-man sultans and reinforced by several decades of secularism in the name of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk Since coming to power in 2002 the Islamist AKP has reversed statutes mandating the strict separation of religion government and education Along with these fundamental domestic changes Turkey has aligned itself with the neighboring states of the Muslim Middle East a far cry from the Kemalist republic that viewed itself as a European country acciden-tally set down in the Middle East

Turkeyrsquos Islamization however has been moderated by the countryrsquos exist-ing orientation Even the AKP and its Islamist partners cannot escape Western realities such as the role of women in society and Turkeyrsquos NATO member-ship not to mention forces in the global economy pulling Turkey westward

And recent events have pulled Turkey back toward the West despite the AKPrsquos ideological vision Particularly since the Arab Spring began in early 2011 regional instability has made Turkeyrsquos access to NATO a valuable com-modity As a result Ankara has lately pivoted away from its neighbors and the corresponding notion of Muslim solidarity and toward NATO and Wash-ington A striking example of this shift was Turkeyrsquos 2010 decision to join NATOrsquos missile defense project aimed at protecting alliance members against missiles from Iranmdashas well as China Russia and elsewhere Further accel-erating Turkeyrsquos pivot toward NATO has been the civil war in Syria When Damascus shot down a Turkish plane in June 2012 Turkey swiftly sought NATO assistance calling alliance members for consultation Continued unrest in the Middle East along with competition against Iran to influence develop-ments in Iraq and Syria will only encourage Ankararsquos move toward NATO as well as the United States

2 n soner cagaptay

These events and the countryrsquos deep Western roots suggest Turkey and the other Muslim countries in the Middle East may be headed in different direc-tions While Egypt for example lacks its own Western secular tradition and therefore may be more susceptible to becoming thoroughly Islamized Tur-key is likely to comprise a blend of Western ways and Islamist politics Such a hybrid would make it one of a kind

At home in Turkey the various factions from right to left religious to secu-lar will have to find a modus vivendi If nothing else the sheer numbers who support the opposition will necessitate such coexistence In the most recent national elections 35 percent of voters totaling almost twenty-seven million people supported lists other than the AKP (which received more than 49 per-cent) and other Islamist and conservative parties (15 percent) This secularist bloc will provide an enduring check on Turkeyrsquos Islamization Even though the AKP will likely retain power for another decade during which it will con-tinue to mold the country in its Islamist image the new Turkey will retain its diversity a bit Islamist a bit secularist a bit conservative and a bit Western This scenario presents Washington with a unique set of opportunities but taking advantage of them can only be achieved through understanding the nuances of Turkish society and its leadership

3

chapter 2

the aKprsquos turkey

turkey is rising thanks to dizzying economic growth As recently as a decade ago the average Turk had one-fifth the income of the average Euro-pean Today Turks are only 30 percent less wealthy than citizens of the Euro-pean Union (EU) are1 Further Turks have more purchasing power than do citizens of certain EU member countries including Bulgaria Romania and Latvia2 Given Europersquos financial doldrums Turkey could realize in coming years its four-hundred-year-old dream of becoming Western by catching up with the West

Turkeyrsquos race with the West might be dated to 1683 when the Europeans crushed the Ottoman Empirersquos mighty army in Vienna The quest to ldquocatch uprdquo took many forms During the Ottoman Empirersquos ldquotulip periodrdquo in the early eighteenth century for instance the sultans built gardens to emulate Versailles and factories to mimic those of the industrial revolution hop-ing to replicate Western Europe in Istanbul In the early twentieth century the Young Turks emerged to transform the Ottoman Empire into a consti-tutional monarchy again following contemporary European trends Ataturk too followed Europe during the early part of the twentieth century Modern Turkeyrsquos founder turned to contemporary France for inspiration striving to make Turkey a secular republic Ataturk enshrined the principle of laicite (ie European secularism) into the new Turkish constitution mandating a firewall between religion and politics Ataturk had nearly complete political freedom having liberated Turkey from Allied occupation at the end of World War I the Turkish leader enjoyed immense clout and the backing of his mili-tary In the second half of the twentieth century Turkey joined NATO and became a multiparty democracy anchoring itself in the West during the Cold

1 Turkeyrsquos actual individual consumption (AIC) stands at 58 while the European average is set at 100 These figures correspond to actual goods consumed by households See Eurostat ldquoGDP Per Capita in the Member States Ranged from 45 Percent to 274 Percent of the EU27 Average in 2011rdquo news release httpeppeurostateceuropaeucacheITY_PUBLIC2-20062012-APEN2-20062012-AP-ENPDF2 Ibid

v

the author

soner cagaptay is the Beyer Family fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute A historian by training he has written extensively on US-Turkey relations Turkish domestic politics and Turkish nationalism publishing in scholarly journals and major inter-national print media including the Wall Street Journal and the International Herald Tribune He is a regular columnist for Hurriyet Daily News Turkeyrsquos oldest and most influential English-language paper and a contributor to CNNrsquos Global Public Square blog He appears regularly on Fox News CNN NPR Voice of America al-Jazeera BBC CNN-Turk and al-Hurra

Dr Cagaptay is the recipient of numerous honors grants and chairs among them the Smith-Richardson Mellon Rice and Leylan fellowships as well as the Ertegun chair at Princeton He has also served on contract as chair of the Turkey Advanced Area Studies Program at the State Departmentrsquos Foreign Service Institute In 2012 he was named an American Turkish Society Young Society Leader

1

chapter 1

introduction

in the past decade Turkey has experienced a dramatic transformation under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) Led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan the AKP has moved the country away from the trend toward Westernization begun in the late eighteenth century under the Otto-man sultans and reinforced by several decades of secularism in the name of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk Since coming to power in 2002 the Islamist AKP has reversed statutes mandating the strict separation of religion government and education Along with these fundamental domestic changes Turkey has aligned itself with the neighboring states of the Muslim Middle East a far cry from the Kemalist republic that viewed itself as a European country acciden-tally set down in the Middle East

Turkeyrsquos Islamization however has been moderated by the countryrsquos exist-ing orientation Even the AKP and its Islamist partners cannot escape Western realities such as the role of women in society and Turkeyrsquos NATO member-ship not to mention forces in the global economy pulling Turkey westward

And recent events have pulled Turkey back toward the West despite the AKPrsquos ideological vision Particularly since the Arab Spring began in early 2011 regional instability has made Turkeyrsquos access to NATO a valuable com-modity As a result Ankara has lately pivoted away from its neighbors and the corresponding notion of Muslim solidarity and toward NATO and Wash-ington A striking example of this shift was Turkeyrsquos 2010 decision to join NATOrsquos missile defense project aimed at protecting alliance members against missiles from Iranmdashas well as China Russia and elsewhere Further accel-erating Turkeyrsquos pivot toward NATO has been the civil war in Syria When Damascus shot down a Turkish plane in June 2012 Turkey swiftly sought NATO assistance calling alliance members for consultation Continued unrest in the Middle East along with competition against Iran to influence develop-ments in Iraq and Syria will only encourage Ankararsquos move toward NATO as well as the United States

2 n soner cagaptay

These events and the countryrsquos deep Western roots suggest Turkey and the other Muslim countries in the Middle East may be headed in different direc-tions While Egypt for example lacks its own Western secular tradition and therefore may be more susceptible to becoming thoroughly Islamized Tur-key is likely to comprise a blend of Western ways and Islamist politics Such a hybrid would make it one of a kind

At home in Turkey the various factions from right to left religious to secu-lar will have to find a modus vivendi If nothing else the sheer numbers who support the opposition will necessitate such coexistence In the most recent national elections 35 percent of voters totaling almost twenty-seven million people supported lists other than the AKP (which received more than 49 per-cent) and other Islamist and conservative parties (15 percent) This secularist bloc will provide an enduring check on Turkeyrsquos Islamization Even though the AKP will likely retain power for another decade during which it will con-tinue to mold the country in its Islamist image the new Turkey will retain its diversity a bit Islamist a bit secularist a bit conservative and a bit Western This scenario presents Washington with a unique set of opportunities but taking advantage of them can only be achieved through understanding the nuances of Turkish society and its leadership

3

chapter 2

the aKprsquos turkey

turkey is rising thanks to dizzying economic growth As recently as a decade ago the average Turk had one-fifth the income of the average Euro-pean Today Turks are only 30 percent less wealthy than citizens of the Euro-pean Union (EU) are1 Further Turks have more purchasing power than do citizens of certain EU member countries including Bulgaria Romania and Latvia2 Given Europersquos financial doldrums Turkey could realize in coming years its four-hundred-year-old dream of becoming Western by catching up with the West

Turkeyrsquos race with the West might be dated to 1683 when the Europeans crushed the Ottoman Empirersquos mighty army in Vienna The quest to ldquocatch uprdquo took many forms During the Ottoman Empirersquos ldquotulip periodrdquo in the early eighteenth century for instance the sultans built gardens to emulate Versailles and factories to mimic those of the industrial revolution hop-ing to replicate Western Europe in Istanbul In the early twentieth century the Young Turks emerged to transform the Ottoman Empire into a consti-tutional monarchy again following contemporary European trends Ataturk too followed Europe during the early part of the twentieth century Modern Turkeyrsquos founder turned to contemporary France for inspiration striving to make Turkey a secular republic Ataturk enshrined the principle of laicite (ie European secularism) into the new Turkish constitution mandating a firewall between religion and politics Ataturk had nearly complete political freedom having liberated Turkey from Allied occupation at the end of World War I the Turkish leader enjoyed immense clout and the backing of his mili-tary In the second half of the twentieth century Turkey joined NATO and became a multiparty democracy anchoring itself in the West during the Cold

1 Turkeyrsquos actual individual consumption (AIC) stands at 58 while the European average is set at 100 These figures correspond to actual goods consumed by households See Eurostat ldquoGDP Per Capita in the Member States Ranged from 45 Percent to 274 Percent of the EU27 Average in 2011rdquo news release httpeppeurostateceuropaeucacheITY_PUBLIC2-20062012-APEN2-20062012-AP-ENPDF2 Ibid

1

chapter 1

introduction

in the past decade Turkey has experienced a dramatic transformation under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) Led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan the AKP has moved the country away from the trend toward Westernization begun in the late eighteenth century under the Otto-man sultans and reinforced by several decades of secularism in the name of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk Since coming to power in 2002 the Islamist AKP has reversed statutes mandating the strict separation of religion government and education Along with these fundamental domestic changes Turkey has aligned itself with the neighboring states of the Muslim Middle East a far cry from the Kemalist republic that viewed itself as a European country acciden-tally set down in the Middle East

Turkeyrsquos Islamization however has been moderated by the countryrsquos exist-ing orientation Even the AKP and its Islamist partners cannot escape Western realities such as the role of women in society and Turkeyrsquos NATO member-ship not to mention forces in the global economy pulling Turkey westward

And recent events have pulled Turkey back toward the West despite the AKPrsquos ideological vision Particularly since the Arab Spring began in early 2011 regional instability has made Turkeyrsquos access to NATO a valuable com-modity As a result Ankara has lately pivoted away from its neighbors and the corresponding notion of Muslim solidarity and toward NATO and Wash-ington A striking example of this shift was Turkeyrsquos 2010 decision to join NATOrsquos missile defense project aimed at protecting alliance members against missiles from Iranmdashas well as China Russia and elsewhere Further accel-erating Turkeyrsquos pivot toward NATO has been the civil war in Syria When Damascus shot down a Turkish plane in June 2012 Turkey swiftly sought NATO assistance calling alliance members for consultation Continued unrest in the Middle East along with competition against Iran to influence develop-ments in Iraq and Syria will only encourage Ankararsquos move toward NATO as well as the United States

2 n soner cagaptay

These events and the countryrsquos deep Western roots suggest Turkey and the other Muslim countries in the Middle East may be headed in different direc-tions While Egypt for example lacks its own Western secular tradition and therefore may be more susceptible to becoming thoroughly Islamized Tur-key is likely to comprise a blend of Western ways and Islamist politics Such a hybrid would make it one of a kind

At home in Turkey the various factions from right to left religious to secu-lar will have to find a modus vivendi If nothing else the sheer numbers who support the opposition will necessitate such coexistence In the most recent national elections 35 percent of voters totaling almost twenty-seven million people supported lists other than the AKP (which received more than 49 per-cent) and other Islamist and conservative parties (15 percent) This secularist bloc will provide an enduring check on Turkeyrsquos Islamization Even though the AKP will likely retain power for another decade during which it will con-tinue to mold the country in its Islamist image the new Turkey will retain its diversity a bit Islamist a bit secularist a bit conservative and a bit Western This scenario presents Washington with a unique set of opportunities but taking advantage of them can only be achieved through understanding the nuances of Turkish society and its leadership

3

chapter 2

the aKprsquos turkey

turkey is rising thanks to dizzying economic growth As recently as a decade ago the average Turk had one-fifth the income of the average Euro-pean Today Turks are only 30 percent less wealthy than citizens of the Euro-pean Union (EU) are1 Further Turks have more purchasing power than do citizens of certain EU member countries including Bulgaria Romania and Latvia2 Given Europersquos financial doldrums Turkey could realize in coming years its four-hundred-year-old dream of becoming Western by catching up with the West

Turkeyrsquos race with the West might be dated to 1683 when the Europeans crushed the Ottoman Empirersquos mighty army in Vienna The quest to ldquocatch uprdquo took many forms During the Ottoman Empirersquos ldquotulip periodrdquo in the early eighteenth century for instance the sultans built gardens to emulate Versailles and factories to mimic those of the industrial revolution hop-ing to replicate Western Europe in Istanbul In the early twentieth century the Young Turks emerged to transform the Ottoman Empire into a consti-tutional monarchy again following contemporary European trends Ataturk too followed Europe during the early part of the twentieth century Modern Turkeyrsquos founder turned to contemporary France for inspiration striving to make Turkey a secular republic Ataturk enshrined the principle of laicite (ie European secularism) into the new Turkish constitution mandating a firewall between religion and politics Ataturk had nearly complete political freedom having liberated Turkey from Allied occupation at the end of World War I the Turkish leader enjoyed immense clout and the backing of his mili-tary In the second half of the twentieth century Turkey joined NATO and became a multiparty democracy anchoring itself in the West during the Cold

1 Turkeyrsquos actual individual consumption (AIC) stands at 58 while the European average is set at 100 These figures correspond to actual goods consumed by households See Eurostat ldquoGDP Per Capita in the Member States Ranged from 45 Percent to 274 Percent of the EU27 Average in 2011rdquo news release httpeppeurostateceuropaeucacheITY_PUBLIC2-20062012-APEN2-20062012-AP-ENPDF2 Ibid

2 n soner cagaptay

These events and the countryrsquos deep Western roots suggest Turkey and the other Muslim countries in the Middle East may be headed in different direc-tions While Egypt for example lacks its own Western secular tradition and therefore may be more susceptible to becoming thoroughly Islamized Tur-key is likely to comprise a blend of Western ways and Islamist politics Such a hybrid would make it one of a kind

At home in Turkey the various factions from right to left religious to secu-lar will have to find a modus vivendi If nothing else the sheer numbers who support the opposition will necessitate such coexistence In the most recent national elections 35 percent of voters totaling almost twenty-seven million people supported lists other than the AKP (which received more than 49 per-cent) and other Islamist and conservative parties (15 percent) This secularist bloc will provide an enduring check on Turkeyrsquos Islamization Even though the AKP will likely retain power for another decade during which it will con-tinue to mold the country in its Islamist image the new Turkey will retain its diversity a bit Islamist a bit secularist a bit conservative and a bit Western This scenario presents Washington with a unique set of opportunities but taking advantage of them can only be achieved through understanding the nuances of Turkish society and its leadership

3

chapter 2

the aKprsquos turkey

turkey is rising thanks to dizzying economic growth As recently as a decade ago the average Turk had one-fifth the income of the average Euro-pean Today Turks are only 30 percent less wealthy than citizens of the Euro-pean Union (EU) are1 Further Turks have more purchasing power than do citizens of certain EU member countries including Bulgaria Romania and Latvia2 Given Europersquos financial doldrums Turkey could realize in coming years its four-hundred-year-old dream of becoming Western by catching up with the West

Turkeyrsquos race with the West might be dated to 1683 when the Europeans crushed the Ottoman Empirersquos mighty army in Vienna The quest to ldquocatch uprdquo took many forms During the Ottoman Empirersquos ldquotulip periodrdquo in the early eighteenth century for instance the sultans built gardens to emulate Versailles and factories to mimic those of the industrial revolution hop-ing to replicate Western Europe in Istanbul In the early twentieth century the Young Turks emerged to transform the Ottoman Empire into a consti-tutional monarchy again following contemporary European trends Ataturk too followed Europe during the early part of the twentieth century Modern Turkeyrsquos founder turned to contemporary France for inspiration striving to make Turkey a secular republic Ataturk enshrined the principle of laicite (ie European secularism) into the new Turkish constitution mandating a firewall between religion and politics Ataturk had nearly complete political freedom having liberated Turkey from Allied occupation at the end of World War I the Turkish leader enjoyed immense clout and the backing of his mili-tary In the second half of the twentieth century Turkey joined NATO and became a multiparty democracy anchoring itself in the West during the Cold

1 Turkeyrsquos actual individual consumption (AIC) stands at 58 while the European average is set at 100 These figures correspond to actual goods consumed by households See Eurostat ldquoGDP Per Capita in the Member States Ranged from 45 Percent to 274 Percent of the EU27 Average in 2011rdquo news release httpeppeurostateceuropaeucacheITY_PUBLIC2-20062012-APEN2-20062012-AP-ENPDF2 Ibid

3

chapter 2

the aKprsquos turkey

turkey is rising thanks to dizzying economic growth As recently as a decade ago the average Turk had one-fifth the income of the average Euro-pean Today Turks are only 30 percent less wealthy than citizens of the Euro-pean Union (EU) are1 Further Turks have more purchasing power than do citizens of certain EU member countries including Bulgaria Romania and Latvia2 Given Europersquos financial doldrums Turkey could realize in coming years its four-hundred-year-old dream of becoming Western by catching up with the West

Turkeyrsquos race with the West might be dated to 1683 when the Europeans crushed the Ottoman Empirersquos mighty army in Vienna The quest to ldquocatch uprdquo took many forms During the Ottoman Empirersquos ldquotulip periodrdquo in the early eighteenth century for instance the sultans built gardens to emulate Versailles and factories to mimic those of the industrial revolution hop-ing to replicate Western Europe in Istanbul In the early twentieth century the Young Turks emerged to transform the Ottoman Empire into a consti-tutional monarchy again following contemporary European trends Ataturk too followed Europe during the early part of the twentieth century Modern Turkeyrsquos founder turned to contemporary France for inspiration striving to make Turkey a secular republic Ataturk enshrined the principle of laicite (ie European secularism) into the new Turkish constitution mandating a firewall between religion and politics Ataturk had nearly complete political freedom having liberated Turkey from Allied occupation at the end of World War I the Turkish leader enjoyed immense clout and the backing of his mili-tary In the second half of the twentieth century Turkey joined NATO and became a multiparty democracy anchoring itself in the West during the Cold

1 Turkeyrsquos actual individual consumption (AIC) stands at 58 while the European average is set at 100 These figures correspond to actual goods consumed by households See Eurostat ldquoGDP Per Capita in the Member States Ranged from 45 Percent to 274 Percent of the EU27 Average in 2011rdquo news release httpeppeurostateceuropaeucacheITY_PUBLIC2-20062012-APEN2-20062012-AP-ENPDF2 Ibid

4 n soner cagaptay

War Ankara also launched itself on the path to EU membership though that dream remains unfulfilled five decades after the application was filed

It was Turkeyrsquos catch-up game with the West and the ensuing experience with multiparty government that brought the AKP to power in 2002 But in the past decade Ataturkrsquos laicite model has largely collapsed as a result of the deep religious principles underlying the AKP At the same time the rul-ing party has continued to pursue Turkeyrsquos long-held dream of catching up with the Westmdashin the economic sphere And the results have been impres-sive Since 2002 Turkeyrsquos economic output has nearly tripled3 Buoyed by this growth Ankara has set its sights on joining the worldrsquos ten largest economies within the next decade Yet to attain this goal Turkey would need to grow at more than 8 percent annually until 20234 Adding to the challenge accord-ing to some experts Turkey may hit the ldquomiddle income traprdquo and face diffi-culty ascending the ladder with the same momentum as it did during the past decade5 Still the age-old dream appears nearer than ever before Turkey has recently joined the ldquotrillion dollarndashplusrdquo economies of Europe placing Ankara in an elite club that includes France Germany Great Britain Italy and Spain

Can Turkey parlay its economic strengths into something more such as status as the twenty-first centuryrsquos first Muslim power with new political clout in its neighborhood and potentially across the world Relatedly what effect has the past decade had on the countryrsquos Western political slant with its pre-occupation with the sultans and Ataturk alike The answers to these questions depend on how the political elites in Ankara play their hands Today Turkey faces a range of stress tests over its competence as a global actor as well as its commitments to Western interests and values At the forefront of these chal-lenges is the Syrian crisis with the instability spilling into Turkey and creating friction with Washington In Syria and other Arab states the rise of political Islam is both an opportunity for Turkey and a temptation that could lure the country away from its Western principles Similarly Turkeyrsquos broken ties with

3 World Bank ldquoWorld dataBankrdquo httpdatabankworldbankorgdatahomeaspx4 Jean-Pierre Lehmann ldquoTurkeyrsquos 2023 Economic Goal in Global Perspectiverdquo (Centre for Econom-ics and Foreign Policy Studies June 2011) httpwwwimdorgresearchcenterseviangroupupload Turkey-s-2023-Eco-Goal-in-global-perspectivepdf5 The middle income trap can be defined as a plateau for emerging economies at which rising labor costs and the inability to produce needed income from high-tech industries result in lethargic growth Such a plateau occurs after such economies initially witness strong growth thanks to low labor costs and an ability to attract investment in labor-intensive industries See Esen Caglar ldquoThe European Union Has to Be Turkeyrsquos Growth Storyrdquo Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV) March 19 2012 httpwwwtepavorgtrenkose-yazisi-tepavs3158

the New turkey and Us policy n 5

Israel and its cold war with Cyprus are standing in the way of a closer union with its other Western neighbors

Turkeyrsquos emergence as an economic powerhouse over the past decade can be traced to the countryrsquos successful blending of its traditional connections to European economies with those of other states situated within the Organisa-tion for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) In other words Turkey has kept itself open to Europe attracting significant investment from the continent6 while at the same time seeking to harness the growth in emerg-ing markets particularly those in Muslim-majority countries The shift toward the East however is noteworthy Whereas 56 percent of Turkeyrsquos trade was with Europe in 2007 that figure is down to 42 percent today7 Trade with coun-tries in the Middle East and North Africa meanwhile has increased from 13 percent in 2002 to 26 percent today with the proportion continuing to rise8 With states in sub-Saharan Africa Turkish trade has gone from less than $1 billion annually in 2000 to more than $17 billion today9 This diversification has contributed to Ankararsquos economic rise as demonstrated by Turkeyrsquos robust 53 percent growth over the past decade compared with 13 percent for the EU10

On the trade front Turkey has had the best of both worlds simultane-ously taking advantage of its proximity to Europe and its affinity with Muslim societies A decade of stability under the AKP then has surely had its draw-backs including increasingly authoritarian rule by a single party but it has also helped build the foundation for economic growth

All the same one might conclude that the ldquoTurkish model of successrdquo reflects poorly on the nationrsquos political system with history indicating that Turkey only prospers when under single-party rule while suffering politi-cal and economic spasms when ruled by coalition governments Indeed the country saw political stability under the Democrat Party (DP) in the 1950s and the Motherland Party (ANAP) during the 1980s whereas instability rat-tled the coalition governments of the 1970s and 1990s

6 Invest in Turkey ldquoFDI [Foreign Direct Investment] in Turkeyrdquo httpwwwinvestgovtren-USinvestmentguideinvestorsguidepagesFDIinTurkeyaspx7 Seyfettin Gursel ldquoA Controversial Outlook on the Turkish Economyrdquo paper presented at The US-Turkey Commercial Relationship A Growing Partnership Hollings Center for International Dia-logue Istanbul May 10 20128 Ibid9 Turkish Foreign Ministry ldquoAfrika Ulkeleri Ile Iliskilerrdquo httpwwwmfagovtrturkiye-afrika-iliskileritrmfa10 World Bank ldquoWorld dataBankrdquo httpdatabankworldbankorgdatahomeaspx

6 n soner cagaptay

In the past decade with the exception of the fourth quarter of 2008 and the year 200911 the Turkish economy has grown during every quartermdashall while Europe has faced the prospect of economic meltdown with little growth No wonder then that the Turks today feel more confident about their relation-ship to Europe and the West than they have in decades I witnessed this confi-dence firsthand recently while chatting with a shopkeeper in Adana a city in southern Turkey known for its fine cotton and the Incirlik Air Base a hub of US military operations in the Middle East The shopkeeper told me that two of his uncles had migrated to Germany in the 1980s and 1990s to seek jobs but that he was not interested in following in their footsteps because as he put it ldquoTurkey is so much better off than Europe nowrdquo

This confidence has been at the root of Turkeyrsquos recent foreign policy doc-trine dubbed ldquostrategic depthrdquo Promoted by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto-glu the doctrine holds that Turkeyrsquos moment has come to ascend as a regional power When Davutoglu first articulated his theory back in 2004 the AKP had just come to power and few in Washington had heard of Davutoglu much less considered that the party would challenge Turkeyrsquos decades-old alignment with US views in the Middle East When I talked with Davutoglu in his small office in Ankararsquos ministerial quartermdashdistinguished by its awk-ward blend of interwar architecture ranging from Mussolini-chic to Ottoman Turkish revivalmdashhe explained ldquoTurkey can become politically powerful again only if it utilizes the lsquostrategic depthrsquo of its neighborhood developing better ties with those Muslim neighbors Turkeyrsquos future power depends on having good ties with its Muslim neighbors especially nearby Iran and Syriardquo

Yet Turkey has realigned its foreign policy toward Syria and to a lesser extent Iran only to find that neither Damascus nor Tehran is Ankararsquos friend The Syrian uprising which Turkey supported almost from the beginning in 2011 has pushed Ankara to the opposite end of the Middle East spectrum vis-agrave-vis the Assad regime and its regional patron Tehran Tensions with Syria and Iran are serious concerns for Ankara To begin with Damascus has allowed the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has been waging a war against Turkey since the 1970s to operate inside Syria When the hold of Bashar al-Assadrsquos regime over Syrian territory weakened in summer 2012 the PKK and its Syrian affiliate the Party for Democratic Unity (PYD) moved in to take over towns along the border with Turkey As a result Ankara now has

11 Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) ldquo GNP-GDP with production methodrdquo (1998 Base) httptuikapptuikgovtrulusalhesapappulusalhesap_ingzultur=1

the New turkey and Us policy n 7

to deal with the prospect of PKK-controlled cantons in post-Assad Syria Iran too has acted to retaliate against Turkeyrsquos Syria policy In a successful attempt to punish Ankara in September 2011 Tehran brokered a ceasefire with the Iranian branch of the PKK the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) against which it had hitherto been fighting allowing the group to focus its energy against Turkey Iranian and Syrian support to the PKK is now a major threat for Ankara according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group PKK-related violence has resulted in some seven hundred deaths since the summer of 201112

These emerging threats and enemies in the Middle East constitute a political challenge for the AKP and the ascendant Turkey it has governed Until recently Davutoglu and the AKP were emboldened to pursue an inde-pendent foreign policy at times opposing the United States and breaking with Europe on Middle East issues But recent events in the region indicate a need for Ankara to achieve a more delicate balance In reality the coun-tryrsquos economic miracle has been driven not by heedless independence but by a fine blend of political stability European money and access to emerg-ing markets and Muslim-majority economies If Ankara can now repeat this pattern in global politicsmdashembracing its Muslim identity while providing political stability in its neighborhood and at the same time maintaining strong ties with Europe the United States and other Western societiesmdashit would truly fulfill the promise of a rising Turkey Such a foreign policy would make Turkey valuable for its neighbors to the east and west alike Muslim countries would see a model of a state that maintains its religious values while upholding Western-style institutions and culture and Western nations would appreciate a Muslim-majority country that can act as a reli-able partner

Turkey can rise as a regional power only if it is perceived as contributing value to its Muslim neighbors Take for instance the perspective of Saudi Arabia For Riyadh the Turkey of the late 2000s isolated from NATO and Washington began to resemble a ldquowealthy Yemenrdquomdashthat is a large Muslim nation that did little to enhance regional security The AKPrsquos Turkey appears to be coming to grips with this nuance a realization that sparked Ankararsquos recent foreign policy turnaround Accordingly Turkey made the strategic choice in September 2010 to join NATOrsquos missile defense project Hindrances

12 International Crisis Group ldquoTurkey The PKK and a Kurdish Settlementrdquo September 11 2012 httpwwwcrisisgrouporgenregionseuropeturkey-cyprusturkey219-turkey-the-pkk-and-a-kurdish-settlementaspx

S Y R I A

Black Sea

Mediterranean Sea

Sea ofMarmara

Gulf ofAntalya

Tuz Golu

VanGolu

ISTANBUL

S Y R I ACYPRUS

J O R D A NI S R A E L I R A Q

I R A N

A R M E N I A

G E O R G I A

B U L G A R I A

R O M A N I A

LEBA

NON

G R E E C E

BURSA

ISTANBUL

KOCAELIYALOVA

SAKA

RYA

DUZCEZONGULDAK BARTIN

KARABUKKASTAMONU SINOP

ESKISEHIR

KUTAHYA

MANISA

IZMIR

SAMSUN

ORDU

KIRSEHIR

NEVS

EHIR

YOZGATKIRI

KKAL

E

AKSARAY

SIVAS

KAYSERI

TOKAT

KARAMAN

GIRESUNTRABZON

GAZIANTEP

HATAYKILIS

OSMANIYE

MALATYA

KAHRAMANMARAS

RIZE

KARS

HAKKARISIRNAK

TUNCELI

MARDIN

MUS

DIYARBAKIR

BATM

AN

ERZURUM

ELAZIG

SIIRT

GUMUSH

ANE

BAYBURT

ERZINCAN

TEKIRDAG

KIRKLARELI

BALIKESIR

ADIYAMAN

BINGOL

ARTVIN ARDAHAN

VAN

IGDIR

BITLIS

AGRI

ADANA

BILECIK

DENIZLI

BOLU

EDIR

NE

ANKARA

ANTALYA

KONYA

USAK

MERSIN

NIGDE

MUGLABURDUR

ISPARTA

AFYONKARAHISAR

AYDIN

CANAKKALE

CANKIRICORUM

AMASYA

SANLIURFA

Kurdish Population in Turkey vs Support for Kurdish Nationalist Party

2013 The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

0 200

miles

gt50

40 ndash 50

15 ndash 40

lt15

Support for BDP

0

3

5

8

9

35

82

Kurdish Population

S Y R I A

Black Sea

Mediterranean Sea

Sea ofMarmara

Gulf ofAntalya

Tuz Golu

VanGolu

ISTANBUL

S Y R I ACYPRUS

J O R D A NI S R A E L I R A Q

I R A N

A R M E N I A

G E O R G I A

B U L G A R I A

R O M A N I A

LEBA

NON

G R E E C E

BURSA

ISTANBUL

KOCAELIYALOVA

SAKA

RYA

DUZCEZONGULDAK BARTIN

KARABUKKASTAMONU SINOP

ESKISEHIR

KUTAHYA

MANISA

IZMIR

SAMSUN

ORDU

KIRSEHIR

NEVS

EHIR

YOZGATKIRI

KKAL

E

AKSARAY

SIVAS

KAYSERI

TOKAT

KARAMAN

GIRESUNTRABZON

GAZIANTEP

HATAYKILIS

OSMANIYE

MALATYA

KAHRAMANMARAS

RIZE

KARS

HAKKARISIRNAK

TUNCELI

MARDIN

MUS

DIYARBAKIR

BATM

AN

ERZURUM

ELAZIG

SIIRT

GUMUSH

ANE

BAYBURT

ERZINCAN

TEKIRDAG

KIRKLARELI

BALIKESIR

ADIYAMAN

BINGOL

ARTVIN ARDAHAN

VAN

IGDIR

BITLIS

AGRI

ADANA

BILECIK

DENIZLI

BOLU

EDIR

NE

ANKARA

ANTALYA

KONYA

USAK

MERSIN

NIGDE

MUGLABURDUR

ISPARTA

AFYONKARAHISAR

AYDIN

CANAKKALE

CANKIRICORUM

AMASYA

SANLIURFA

Kurdish Population in Turkey vs Support for Kurdish Nationalist Party

2013 The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

0 200

miles

gt50

40 ndash 50

15 ndash 40

lt15

Support for BDP

0

3

5

8

9

35

82

Kurdish Population

10 n soner cagaptay

remain such as ruptured ties with Israel but if Ankara can leverage its Mus-lim identity and Western traditions thereby serving as an anchor of regional stability the Turks could achieve global political greatness unseen since the Ottoman armies challenged Europe at the gates of Vienna

Other signs point to Turkeyrsquos rise as a Muslim world power True Turkey has the worldrsquos second-largest Muslim economy slightly smaller than that of Indonesia (a country with over three times Turkeyrsquos population) What is more Turkey has arguably the strongest conventional Muslim military force in the worldmdashthough this may have changed following the Ergenekon case which began in 2007 and resulted in the jailing of about a quarter of Tur-keyrsquos generals who faced allegations of a coup plot against the AKP govern-ment The effectiveness of the present Turkish military is therefore yet to be tested on the battlefield Still because of its sheer size with 75 million citi-zens and a $12 trillion economy13 Turkey is better positioned than any other Muslim-majority country to become the twenty-first centuryrsquos first Muslim world power Should Istanbul win the privilege of hosting the 2020 Olympic Gamesmdashan outcome to be decided in September 2013 and that would entail beating Tokyo and Madridmdashthe world will be reminded of Turkeyrsquos ascen-dance In 2014 Turkey will become one of the twenty-four executive board members of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)mdasha prestigious position that will further reflect the countryrsquos newfound economic might

Turkeyrsquos growing prosperity and opening to the world places it in a cat-egory similar to the much-discussed Brazil Russia India and China (BRIC) bloc but Turkey stands alone in several crucial respects as well with possible implications for the United States First under the AKP Turkey has embraced its Muslim identity setting it apart as a self-defined Muslim power Second Turkey has unique historical bonds with Europe and the United States mak-ing its BRIC-like rise specifically relevant for the future course of Western power and institutions Indeed for Turkey to sustain its rise it will need to reintegrate into and take advantage of the Western international system Such a process would be good news for America And Turkey can only become a Muslim global power if it remains true to itself synthesizing Islam and its Western orientation For Ankararsquos policymakers making such a case in the United Nations would bolster the countryrsquos chances of winning one of the rotating seats on the Security Council in 2014

13 Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook ldquoTurkeyrdquo httpswwwciagovlibrarypublicationsthe-world-factbookgeostuhtml

S Y R I A

Black Sea

Mediterranean Sea

Sea ofMarmara

Gulf ofAntalya

Tuz Golu

VanGolu

ISTANBUL

S Y R I ACYPRUS

J O R D A NI S R A E L I R A Q

I R A N

A R M E N I A

G E O R G I A

B U L G A R I A

R O M A N I A

LEBA

NON

G R E E C E

BURSA

ISTANBUL

KOCAELIYALOVA

SAKA

RYA

DUZCEZONGULDAK BARTIN

KARABUKKASTAMONU SINOP

ESKISEHIR

KUTAHYA

MANISA

IZMIR

SAMSUN

ORDU

KIRSEHIR

NEVS

EHIR

YOZGATKIRI

KKAL

E

AKSARAY

SIVAS

KAYSERI

TOKAT

KARAMAN

GIRESUNTRABZON

GAZIANTEP

HATAYKILIS

OSMANIYE

MALATYA

KAHRAMANMARAS

RIZE

KARS

HAKKARISIRNAK

TUNCELI

MARDIN

MUS

DIYARBAKIR

BATM

AN

ERZURUM

ELAZIG

SIIRT

GUMUSH

ANE

BAYBURT

ERZINCAN

TEKIRDAG

KIRKLARELI

BALIKESIR

ADIYAMAN

BINGOL

ARTVIN ARDAHAN

VAN

IGDIR

BITLIS

AGRI

ADANA

BILECIK

DENIZLI

BOLU

EDIR

NE

ANKARA

ANTALYA

KONYA

USAK

MERSIN

NIGDE

MUGLABURDUR

ISPARTA

AFYONKARAHISAR

AYDIN

CANAKKALE

CANKIRICORUM

AMASYA

SANLIURFA

Kurdish Population in Turkey vs Support for Kurdish Nationalist Party

2013 The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

0 200

miles

gt50

40 ndash 50

15 ndash 40

lt15

Support for BDP

0

3

5

8

9

35

82

Kurdish Population

10 n soner cagaptay

remain such as ruptured ties with Israel but if Ankara can leverage its Mus-lim identity and Western traditions thereby serving as an anchor of regional stability the Turks could achieve global political greatness unseen since the Ottoman armies challenged Europe at the gates of Vienna

Other signs point to Turkeyrsquos rise as a Muslim world power True Turkey has the worldrsquos second-largest Muslim economy slightly smaller than that of Indonesia (a country with over three times Turkeyrsquos population) What is more Turkey has arguably the strongest conventional Muslim military force in the worldmdashthough this may have changed following the Ergenekon case which began in 2007 and resulted in the jailing of about a quarter of Tur-keyrsquos generals who faced allegations of a coup plot against the AKP govern-ment The effectiveness of the present Turkish military is therefore yet to be tested on the battlefield Still because of its sheer size with 75 million citi-zens and a $12 trillion economy13 Turkey is better positioned than any other Muslim-majority country to become the twenty-first centuryrsquos first Muslim world power Should Istanbul win the privilege of hosting the 2020 Olympic Gamesmdashan outcome to be decided in September 2013 and that would entail beating Tokyo and Madridmdashthe world will be reminded of Turkeyrsquos ascen-dance In 2014 Turkey will become one of the twenty-four executive board members of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)mdasha prestigious position that will further reflect the countryrsquos newfound economic might

Turkeyrsquos growing prosperity and opening to the world places it in a cat-egory similar to the much-discussed Brazil Russia India and China (BRIC) bloc but Turkey stands alone in several crucial respects as well with possible implications for the United States First under the AKP Turkey has embraced its Muslim identity setting it apart as a self-defined Muslim power Second Turkey has unique historical bonds with Europe and the United States mak-ing its BRIC-like rise specifically relevant for the future course of Western power and institutions Indeed for Turkey to sustain its rise it will need to reintegrate into and take advantage of the Western international system Such a process would be good news for America And Turkey can only become a Muslim global power if it remains true to itself synthesizing Islam and its Western orientation For Ankararsquos policymakers making such a case in the United Nations would bolster the countryrsquos chances of winning one of the rotating seats on the Security Council in 2014

13 Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook ldquoTurkeyrdquo httpswwwciagovlibrarypublicationsthe-world-factbookgeostuhtml

10 n soner cagaptay

remain such as ruptured ties with Israel but if Ankara can leverage its Mus-lim identity and Western traditions thereby serving as an anchor of regional stability the Turks could achieve global political greatness unseen since the Ottoman armies challenged Europe at the gates of Vienna

Other signs point to Turkeyrsquos rise as a Muslim world power True Turkey has the worldrsquos second-largest Muslim economy slightly smaller than that of Indonesia (a country with over three times Turkeyrsquos population) What is more Turkey has arguably the strongest conventional Muslim military force in the worldmdashthough this may have changed following the Ergenekon case which began in 2007 and resulted in the jailing of about a quarter of Tur-keyrsquos generals who faced allegations of a coup plot against the AKP govern-ment The effectiveness of the present Turkish military is therefore yet to be tested on the battlefield Still because of its sheer size with 75 million citi-zens and a $12 trillion economy13 Turkey is better positioned than any other Muslim-majority country to become the twenty-first centuryrsquos first Muslim world power Should Istanbul win the privilege of hosting the 2020 Olympic Gamesmdashan outcome to be decided in September 2013 and that would entail beating Tokyo and Madridmdashthe world will be reminded of Turkeyrsquos ascen-dance In 2014 Turkey will become one of the twenty-four executive board members of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)mdasha prestigious position that will further reflect the countryrsquos newfound economic might

Turkeyrsquos growing prosperity and opening to the world places it in a cat-egory similar to the much-discussed Brazil Russia India and China (BRIC) bloc but Turkey stands alone in several crucial respects as well with possible implications for the United States First under the AKP Turkey has embraced its Muslim identity setting it apart as a self-defined Muslim power Second Turkey has unique historical bonds with Europe and the United States mak-ing its BRIC-like rise specifically relevant for the future course of Western power and institutions Indeed for Turkey to sustain its rise it will need to reintegrate into and take advantage of the Western international system Such a process would be good news for America And Turkey can only become a Muslim global power if it remains true to itself synthesizing Islam and its Western orientation For Ankararsquos policymakers making such a case in the United Nations would bolster the countryrsquos chances of winning one of the rotating seats on the Security Council in 2014

13 Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook ldquoTurkeyrdquo httpswwwciagovlibrarypublicationsthe-world-factbookgeostuhtml

the New turkey and Us policy n 11

Similarly delicate work must be done at home if Ankara wishes to stay on the upswing globally In particular as reflected in the 2011 election results which saw the AKP receiving just below 50 percent of the vote the country is split between supporters and opponents of the present government and on the role of religion in politics Secularists and liberals are deeply concerned about the threat that government-backed social conservatism poses to indi-vidual liberties Unless the country heals this internal split it will be difficult for Ankara to realize its potential to become a global player This question has even greater currency considering that the country is now debating draft-ing its first-ever civilian-made constitution If this new charter outlines the groundwork of true liberal democracymdashfor instance providing for freedom of religion as well as freedom from religionmdashAKP supporters and opponents alike could feel welcome in the new Turkey In return a new social contract would enable Turkey to focus its energy overseas rather than being bogged down in domestic polarization

By drafting a liberal charter Turkey could kill many birds with one stone Not only would a new document provide space for people on both ends of the political spectrum it would also allow Turkey to address its burning Kurdish problem which has become even more pressing in recent years The rise of Kurdish nationalism in Syria Iraq and Turkeymdashand a spike in PKK attacksmdashhas sapped Turkeyrsquos energy The most realistic remedy would be providing for broader cultural and individual rights to all citizens including but not specific to the Kurds within the framework of the new constitution Such a formula would likely satisfy both nationalist Kurds and majority Turks who oppose group-specific rights for the Kurds Alternatively a failure to address the Kurdish issue would likely mean continued domestic and regional vio-lence that would consume the countryrsquos energy in foreign policy and weaken its drive toward increased regional and global power

Last but not least a new charter would allow Turkey to serve as a model for countries experiencing the Arab Spring thereby burnishing its status as a regional power Only by embracing the principles of liberal democracymdashfor instance by drafting a constitution that guarantees freedom of speech broadly defined equal political rights for Muslims and non-Muslims as well as full gender equalitymdashcan Ankara promote itself as a source of inspiration for its Arab and Muslim-majority neighbors at least in the eyes of the West If on the other hand Ankara mobilizes against any sign of pluralism that could challenge its will even if the government is democratically elected it could well make itself attractive to Islamist circles ascending to power in the Arab

12 n soner cagaptay

world Such a development would likely make Ankararsquos Western partners reluctant to support Ankara as a model for countries such as Egypt Tunisia Libya and Yemen

Nor has Turkeyrsquos backing for causes antithetical to the West helped Ankara achieve its current strength a reality of which the Turkish leadership is well aware Instead as implied elsewhere the cornerstone of Turkeyrsquos rise has been the governmentrsquos ability to foster stable political conditions for economic growth And these conditions have included Turkeyrsquos image as a stable and regionally responsible country Related policies have also helped the AKP win three successive elections with increasing majorities Naturally the AKP wants to sustain its astounding electoral run in nationwide local elections slated for 2014 as well as presidential and parliamentary elections to be held in 2014 and 2015 respectively

Accordingly policies such as confrontation with Israel or a military cam-paign in Syria without US or NATO backing risk diminishing the very essence of Turkish power its comparative stability in an uncertain region This realization has been the catalyst for Ankararsquos recent careful balancing of East and West In 2011 this effort played out in Turkeyrsquos relations with Israel Following the bloodshed of the 2010 flotilla incident in which Turkish activ-ists were killed in an altercation with Israeli commandos Ankaramdashheeding requests from the White Housemdashrefused to authorize a second flotilla The desire to maintain the countryrsquos image as a stable and responsible nation has tempered and will continue to temper overly adventurous impulses on the part of Turkeyrsquos leadership

Turkish leaders also recognize that the countryrsquos continued economic suc-cess is not assured Kemal Dervis a former vice president of the World Bank and the technocrat behind Turkeyrsquos economic transformationmdashwhich started with an IMF plan implemented in 2001mdashrecently suggested that ldquoTurkey is on its way to becoming a world economic powerhouserdquo But he also added that Turkeyrsquos ldquoascent will depend on how it manages challenges to its fiscal position and current accountmdashand crucially its ability to foster dialogue and compromise among its fractious politiciansrdquo14

In essence Turkeyrsquos leaders need to realize that if Turkey is to become a global power it must remain stable bring together its disparate parts and calibrate its rise within the Western international system while also reaching

14 NTVMSNBC ldquoDervisrsquoten 2023 hedefi icin uc uyarirdquo September 27 2012 httpwwwntvmsnbccomid25385425

12 n soner cagaptay

world Such a development would likely make Ankararsquos Western partners reluctant to support Ankara as a model for countries such as Egypt Tunisia Libya and Yemen

Nor has Turkeyrsquos backing for causes antithetical to the West helped Ankara achieve its current strength a reality of which the Turkish leadership is well aware Instead as implied elsewhere the cornerstone of Turkeyrsquos rise has been the governmentrsquos ability to foster stable political conditions for economic growth And these conditions have included Turkeyrsquos image as a stable and regionally responsible country Related policies have also helped the AKP win three successive elections with increasing majorities Naturally the AKP wants to sustain its astounding electoral run in nationwide local elections slated for 2014 as well as presidential and parliamentary elections to be held in 2014 and 2015 respectively

Accordingly policies such as confrontation with Israel or a military cam-paign in Syria without US or NATO backing risk diminishing the very essence of Turkish power its comparative stability in an uncertain region This realization has been the catalyst for Ankararsquos recent careful balancing of East and West In 2011 this effort played out in Turkeyrsquos relations with Israel Following the bloodshed of the 2010 flotilla incident in which Turkish activ-ists were killed in an altercation with Israeli commandos Ankaramdashheeding requests from the White Housemdashrefused to authorize a second flotilla The desire to maintain the countryrsquos image as a stable and responsible nation has tempered and will continue to temper overly adventurous impulses on the part of Turkeyrsquos leadership

Turkish leaders also recognize that the countryrsquos continued economic suc-cess is not assured Kemal Dervis a former vice president of the World Bank and the technocrat behind Turkeyrsquos economic transformationmdashwhich started with an IMF plan implemented in 2001mdashrecently suggested that ldquoTurkey is on its way to becoming a world economic powerhouserdquo But he also added that Turkeyrsquos ldquoascent will depend on how it manages challenges to its fiscal position and current accountmdashand crucially its ability to foster dialogue and compromise among its fractious politiciansrdquo14

In essence Turkeyrsquos leaders need to realize that if Turkey is to become a global power it must remain stable bring together its disparate parts and calibrate its rise within the Western international system while also reaching

14 NTVMSNBC ldquoDervisrsquoten 2023 hedefi icin uc uyarirdquo September 27 2012 httpwwwntvmsnbccomid25385425

the New turkey and Us policy n 13

beyond the West The result could be a twenty-first-century Muslim power that promotes stability yet is free from many of the constraints of a regional European rubric In other words Turkeyrsquos game of catch-up with Europe may finally be nearing its end making way for a new Turkey that upholds its Mus-lim identity but also has a place in the West

14

chapter 3

Lessons for Washington

outside the countryrsquos economic success even liberal Turks see rea-sons for hope In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal Demet Muftuoglu-Eseli a supporter of the arts and culture in Istanbul expressed her optimism ldquoWe made democracy work we made a modern economy we lib-erated women we even have one of the worldrsquos top biennials [an art exhibi-tion] There is tension but wersquoll overcome itrdquo15

the turkish Model Not so easy to Follow

Whether Turkey can be a model for other Muslim-majority countries par-ticularly those affected by the Arab Spring is a question of great interest for policymakers A first response one almost always overlooked involves Tur-keyrsquos relatively deep sixty-year experience with democracy Todayrsquos mix of Islamism with democracy takes place within that context

This is not the case for Arab societies which anyway are profoundly differ-ent from Turkey Most Arab countries are either still authoritarian or newly and shakily democratic For instance in all six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries plus Jordan and Morocco monarchs remain more or less firmly in powermdashsome with weak elected parliaments some without even that In Libya and Yemen autocrats have been deposed but the new govern-ments are not effectively in control and remain hostage to tribal regional or religious militias In Iraq the elected government seems to be reverting to autocratic tendencies Syria is currently locked in a bloody stalemate between a dictatorial regime and an increasingly violent popular uprising The Pales-tinians for their part have had neither a popular uprising nor peaceful politi-cal change

That leaves Tunisia and Egypt In Tunisia as in Turkey a relatively moder-ate Islamist party won a majority in a free election but the leadership still

15 Lawrence Osborne ldquoDreaming in Istanbulrdquo Wall Street Journal August 23 2012 httponlinewsjcomarticleSB10000872396390443855804577601322508049192html

14

chapter 3

Lessons for Washington

outside the countryrsquos economic success even liberal Turks see rea-sons for hope In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal Demet Muftuoglu-Eseli a supporter of the arts and culture in Istanbul expressed her optimism ldquoWe made democracy work we made a modern economy we lib-erated women we even have one of the worldrsquos top biennials [an art exhibi-tion] There is tension but wersquoll overcome itrdquo15

the turkish Model Not so easy to Follow

Whether Turkey can be a model for other Muslim-majority countries par-ticularly those affected by the Arab Spring is a question of great interest for policymakers A first response one almost always overlooked involves Tur-keyrsquos relatively deep sixty-year experience with democracy Todayrsquos mix of Islamism with democracy takes place within that context

This is not the case for Arab societies which anyway are profoundly differ-ent from Turkey Most Arab countries are either still authoritarian or newly and shakily democratic For instance in all six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries plus Jordan and Morocco monarchs remain more or less firmly in powermdashsome with weak elected parliaments some without even that In Libya and Yemen autocrats have been deposed but the new govern-ments are not effectively in control and remain hostage to tribal regional or religious militias In Iraq the elected government seems to be reverting to autocratic tendencies Syria is currently locked in a bloody stalemate between a dictatorial regime and an increasingly violent popular uprising The Pales-tinians for their part have had neither a popular uprising nor peaceful politi-cal change

That leaves Tunisia and Egypt In Tunisia as in Turkey a relatively moder-ate Islamist party won a majority in a free election but the leadership still

15 Lawrence Osborne ldquoDreaming in Istanbulrdquo Wall Street Journal August 23 2012 httponlinewsjcomarticleSB10000872396390443855804577601322508049192html

the New turkey and Us policy n 15

has to compete with secular parties and social groups Given Tunisiarsquos fairly well educated population and its large middle class extreme fundamentalists are rare The dominant Islamist party supports the private sector including tourism and other international economic lifelines and is cultivating relations with the West Tunisia may therefore be the best prospect to follow in Turkeyrsquos footsteps Tellingly Tunisiarsquos ruling an-Nahda Party is the only Arab party that says it wants to emulate the Turkish model

Egypt is a different story The Muslim Brotherhoodrsquos party won a plurality in free elections but its main competitors are the more extreme fundamen-talist Salafist parties The Brotherhood is trying to centralize political power from the constitutional committee to the presidency despite earlier promises to take a more inclusive democratic approach Egypt sadly still suffers from widespread poverty and illiteracymdashyet Egyptrsquos new government has gone out of its way to alienate its friends in the United States and Europe over marginal issues like foreign NGOs The Brotherhood has also publicly disavowed com-parisons with the Turkish model

Difficulties aside the Turkish democratic model as applied to Muslim-majority states has been embraced by many commentators such as US-based Vali Nasr a leading scholar on Middle East politics In his 2009 Forces of For-tune Nasr delivers a sweeping tour of the rising bourgeois classes across the Muslim world From the shopping malls of Dubai to the streets of Southeast Asia Nasr shows how capitalism and Islam are coming together to constitute a new force in global politics According to Nasr the implications of these commercial transformations are profound including a more tolerant liberal politics spurred by the growth of the middle class Globalized Muslim popula-tions he argues will necessarily adopt more worldly outlooks Just as it took Europersquos Christian Democrats many decades to reconcile themselves fully with democracy over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Muslim political forces will take time to come around but eventually they will travel the road of democracy and liberalization Nasr chooses Turkey as the protagonist in this tale

According to Nasr the Turks have ldquochampioned the most hopeful model in the region for both economic development and the liberalization of poli-ticsrdquo This is according to Nasr because Turkey is the furthest along when it comes to melding Islam and capitalism and this blend has resulted in a softer version of Islamic politics as the AKP renounces the fundamentalist Islamic platforms of old In the end Nasr gives a convincing account of how the Muslim middle classes have the potential to liberate societies from the

16 n soner cagaptay

death grip of autocracy (admittedly Nasrrsquos analysis predated the onset of the Arab Spring) without abandoning them to the tyranny of fundamentalism But does this mean that Turkeyrsquos model of Muslim democracy is a recipe for liberal success Not so fast

As Nasr deftly illustrates Muslim pragmatists have every reason to eschew the wild fantasies of the Islamists such as complete cessation of ties to the West After all these extremist social structures are bad for business As for Turkey itself Nasr predicts that ldquoif Turkey stays on its current course it will become a Muslim capitalist democracyrdquo By this Nasr seems to imply some sort of practical coexistence between Islamic mores and democratic institu-tions a system clearly more functional than a theocracy but still a far cry from Denmark when it comes to Western liberal credentials This outcome is by no means the worst but given Turkeyrsquos Western traditions why canrsquot it aim for Denmark

The AKP for one thing overtly seems to take Denmark as the goal The partyrsquos leaders are unambiguous that Turkey deserves nothing less than democracy writ large AKP election pledges tout ldquoadvanced democracyrdquo as the finish line for Turkey a goal that denotes the highest standards in human rights democratization and civil society conditions Yet one would have rea-son to doubt the AKPrsquos rhetoric as well as its true commitment to this path By many measures Turkeyrsquos course over the past decade has not represented a straight shot toward liberal democracymdashand on some counts the ball has been moved backward To begin with even as Turkeyrsquos Muslim bourgeoisie have moved up the income ladder and Islam has entered the mainstream the governmentrsquos treatment of the press has not improved Based on an anal-ysis from Reporters Without Borders Turkeyrsquos economic boom has seen a corresponding drop in press freedom with the countryrsquos international rank-ing falling from 99 in 2002 to 148 in 2011 On the matter of overall political conditions Freedom House has ranked Turkey as only ldquopartly freerdquo for the better part of the past decade without any marked improvement

On gender equality Turkeyrsquos economic success has not translated into the advances one might have imagined Overall Turkey is still far from a model to be emulated when it comes to womenrsquos empowerment Not counting agri-cultural workers as of 2012 only 22 percent of Turkeyrsquos women participate in the labor force a rise of only four percentage points from 1988 In 2012 Tur-key was ranked sixty-fifth internationally on the Economistrsquos Womenrsquos Oppor-tunity Economic Index a composite measure of womenrsquos access to education workplace opportunity finance and legal rights Ahead of Turkey were coun-

the New turkey and Us policy n 17

tries like Namibia Belarus and Kazakhstan while Bosnia a European Mus-lim-majority country with an Ottoman heritage outplaced Turkey by a wide margin Of the thirty-one countries in Turkeyrsquos income range Turkey ranked twenty-fifth

1

21

41

61

81

101

121

141

1610

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000

GDPCapRanking

0051152253354455

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000

GDPCapRating

GDPCap and Freedom House Score

GDPCap and Press Freedom Ranking

18 n soner cagaptay

Needless to say the trajectories illustrated in these graphics should give us pause before concluding that Turkey can be a beacon for the emerging societ-ies in Arab and Muslim-majority states

still a role to play in the arab spring

None of this analysis is intended to suggest that Turkey should not help pro-mote democracy in countries affected by the Arab Spring Once again how-ever this participation depends on how Ankara plays its hand and if Wash-ington and Turkeyrsquos European allies take their own constructive steps

For starters Turkey is better positioned than it has been to engage with Arab countries In part this is because Turkey is no longer the poor coun-try it once was desperately seeking accession to the European Union In the past decade record-breaking economic growth has allowed Turkey to float overhead the economic storm pummeling Europe (with only France similarly spared) In addition Turkey has averted any major upheavals like those affect-ing other nations in the Middle East

The bright economic prospects along with the reconstituted foreign policy vision outlined by Foreign Minister Davutoglu have allowed Turkey to shift away from Europe and toward building more influence in the Middle East In grooming ties with former Ottoman lands in the region the AKP has sought to jump-start integration with its neighbors creating something like the 1950s Benelux bloc of Belgium the Netherlands and Luxembourg Revealingly of the thirty-three new Turkish diplomatic missions opened in the past decade eighteen are in Muslim and African countries

Turkeyrsquos emerging commercial and political ties with Middle East nations have often come at the expense of ties with Europe The shift has been accom-panied by the rise of a more socially conservative business elite in central Tur-key which derives strength from trading beyond Europe and is using its new wealth to push for a redefinition of Turkeyrsquos traditional approach to secular-ism Moreover the AKPrsquos approach to religionmdashwhereby Ataturkrsquos French-inspired notion of freedom from religion has been replaced by a softer form of secularism embodied in freedom of religionmdashhas greater appeal for socially conservative Arab countries which for the most part regard French-style secularism as anathema

Over the past decade Turkey has used soft power in Arab countries in its quest to become a regional leader The Turksrsquo efforts have included the cre-ation of business networks and the founding of state-of-the-art high schools

the New turkey and Us policy n 19

in the Middle East Asia and Central Asia run by the Sufi Islamndashinspired Gulen movement to educate future Arab elites Yet the results of these ini-tiatives were largely inconclusive until the Arab Spring largely because of the hard reality that Turkeyrsquos counterparts in rapprochement were not its neighboring peoples but rather their undemocratic regimes Now Turkey has an unprecedented opportunity to spread its influence further in newly free Arab societies

Syria is a case in point whereas Ankara hoped to reach out to the Syrian people the Assad regime took advantage of its close ties with Turkey a NATO member to gain legitimacy while oppressing its people The Arab Spring has ended the mirage Even though Ankara repeatedly asked Assad to stop killing civilians he ignored these calls demonstrating that there was never true rap-prochement between Turkey and Syria and that Ankara had failed in estab-lishing soft power over Damascus

Ankara has since dropped Assad emerging instead as the chief regional opponent of his policies Indeed Ankararsquos new overarching policy toward the Arab Middle East entails leading the world in dropping dictators in favor of the prodemocracy movements from Egypt to Libya to Syria Accordingly Turkey now has a chance to promote democracy in the Middle East and rise to leadership in the region

Building the Democratic center the german Model

In seeking a paradigm for Turkeyrsquos role in the Arab world we might look to Germany in Portugal following the Carnation Revolution of April 1974 which toppled Portugalrsquos forty-eight-year dictatorship The rebellion was led by a group of army officers joined by the underground communist movement and the masses and the regimersquos fall was surprisingly swift Portugalmdashthen riddled by poverty illiteracy and a legacy of authoritarianismmdashfound itself at a crossroads military rule or communist takeover Neither happened Thanks to the often-unmentioned efforts by Germanyrsquos Social Democratic Party (SPD) government and the Stiftungen (NGOs linked to Germanyrsquos political parties) to build centrist forces in Lisbon the unexpected occurred Portugal became a flourishing liberal democracy later joining the European Union

In many ways Portugal in the 1970s parallels todayrsquos Arab societies The coastal nation lacked deep democratic traditions or a sizable middle class The communist movement which can be likened to the Islamists in todayrsquos

20 n soner cagaptay

Arab states was powerful and seemed poised to commandeer the revolu-tion while the militarymdashwhich had taken charge following the revolutionmdashseemed at a loss

For its part Germanyrsquos SPD of the 1970s was the first elected social demo-cratic government in Bonn and therefore had particular credibility in offering social democracy as a legitimate alternative to communism in Lisbon And it did so quite deliberately From the German town of Bad Munstereifel the SPD helped found the Portuguese Socialist Party (PS) a social democratic move-ment that called for a democratic Portugal and the defeat of the communistsrsquo efforts to take power Furthermore in August 1975 Germany took the lead in organizing the Friendship Solidarity Committee for Portuguese Democ-racy and Socialism Led by German chancellor Willy Brandt this committee included leading European social democrats such as Swedish prime minister Olof Palme and Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky and became a platform from which social democrats shared knowledge with the PS and developed strategies for successful democratic transformation The committee also pre-pared the groundwork for Portugalrsquos EU membership

The German Stiftungen too performed a valuable function The SPD-affil-iated Friedrich Ebert Stiftungen (FES) alone donated 10 to 15 million German marks to train PS campaign workers and fund travel for its leaders using dis-creet Swiss bank accounts to facilitate money transfers The range of Stiftun-gen which had connections to liberal and conservative German parties alike built counterparts in Portugal as well

The AKP echoing the SPD in Germany is Ankararsquos first Islamist-rooted and democratically elected party and is therefore well positioned to propose alternatives to radical Islamism in Arab states Yet if Ankara wishes to play a role similar to Germany it cannot be expected to do so alone Just as Bonn received financial and political assistance from the United States and other democracies in building Portuguese democracy Turkey would benefit from support from the West as well as other Muslim-majority democracies such as Indonesia especially in creating ldquoTurkish Stiftungenrdquo the missing part of the Germany-Turkey parallel

challenges remain

Given that Turkey ruled the Arab Middle East until World War I it must now be mindful of the effect of its messages Arabs might be drawn to fellow Mus-lims but the Turks are also former imperial masters And as the Arabs them-

the New turkey and Us policy n 21

selves press for democracy intervention by a nation appearing to behave like a new imperial power will backfire Arab liberals and Islamists alike regularly suggest that Turkey is welcome in the Middle East but should not dominate it

Then there are the various problems associated with transferring the Turkish model to Arab countries In September 2011 when Erdogan landed at Cairorsquos new airport terminal (built by Turkish companies) he was met by joyous millions mobilized by the Muslim Brotherhood However he soon upset his pious hosts by preaching about the importance of a secular gov-ernment that provides freedom of religion using the Turkish word laiklikmdashderived from the French word for secularism and translating in Arabic to ldquoirreligiousrdquo Erdoganrsquos message may have been partly lost in translation but the incident illustrates the limits of Turkeyrsquos influence in more socially con-servative countries

What is more Ankara faces domestic challenges that could hamper its influence in countries affected by the Arab Spring If Turkey wants to become a true beacon of democracy in the Middle East for example the new consti-tution under discussion must provide broader individual rights for the coun-tryrsquos citizens and lift curbs on freedoms such as those on the media Turkey will also need to fulfill Davutoglursquos vision of a ldquono problemsrdquo foreign policymdashwith the neighbors in this instance including Israel This means moving past the 2010 flotilla episode to rebuild strong ties with the Jewish state and learn-ing to get along with the Greek Cypriots

Turkeyrsquos relative stability at a time when the region is in upheaval is attract-ing investment from less stable neighbors like Iran Iraq Syria and Lebanon Ultimately political stability and regional clout are Turkeyrsquos hard cash and its economic growth will depend on both

Turkey will rise as a regional power as well as play a role in the Arab uprising only if it sets a genuine example as a liberal democracy and uses a deft and strategic hand when sharing its knowledge and experience with Arab countries

the Washington institute for Near east policy

Board of Directors

President

Martin J Gross

Chairman

Howard P Berkowitz

Chairmen Emeriti

Fred S Lafer Michael Stein

Founding President and Chairman Emerita

Barbi Weinberg

Senior Vice Presidents

Bernard Leventhal Peter LowyJames Schreiber

Vice Presidents

Benjamin BreslauerWalter P Stern

Vice President Emeritus

Charles Adler

Secretary

Richard S Abramson

Treasurer

Dimitri Sogoloff

Board Members

Jay BernsteinAnthony Beyer Richard BorowMichael Gelman Roger Hertog emeritus

Shelly KassenJack KayMichael KestonMoses LibitzkyDaniel Mintz Zachary SchreiberFred SchwartzJohn ShapiroMerryl TischSusan WagnerGary Wexler

Board of advisors

Max M KampelmanHenry A KissingerSamuel W LewisEdward LuttwakMichael MandelbaumRobert C McFarlaneMartin PeretzRichard PerleJames G RocheGeorge P ShultzR James WoolseyMortimer Zuckerman

Board Members

Jay BernsteinAnthony Beyer Richard BorowMichael Gelman Roger Hertog emeritus

Shelly KassenJack KayMichael KestonMoses LibitzkyDaniel Mintz Zachary SchreiberFred SchwartzJohn ShapiroMerryl TischSusan WagnerGary Wexler

Board of advisors

Max M KampelmanHenry A KissingerSamuel W LewisEdward LuttwakMichael MandelbaumRobert C McFarlaneMartin PeretzRichard PerleJames G RocheGeorge P ShultzR James WoolseyMortimer Zuckerman

ldquoturkey will rise as a regional

power as well as play a role in

the arab uprising only if it sets

a genuine example as a liberal

democracy and uses a deft and

strategic hand when sharing its

knowledge and experience with

arab countriesrdquo

the washington inst itute for near east pol ic ywwwwashingtoninstitute or g

16 n soner cagaptay

death grip of autocracy (admittedly Nasrrsquos analysis predated the onset of the Arab Spring) without abandoning them to the tyranny of fundamentalism But does this mean that Turkeyrsquos model of Muslim democracy is a recipe for liberal success Not so fast

As Nasr deftly illustrates Muslim pragmatists have every reason to eschew the wild fantasies of the Islamists such as complete cessation of ties to the West After all these extremist social structures are bad for business As for Turkey itself Nasr predicts that ldquoif Turkey stays on its current course it will become a Muslim capitalist democracyrdquo By this Nasr seems to imply some sort of practical coexistence between Islamic mores and democratic institu-tions a system clearly more functional than a theocracy but still a far cry from Denmark when it comes to Western liberal credentials This outcome is by no means the worst but given Turkeyrsquos Western traditions why canrsquot it aim for Denmark

The AKP for one thing overtly seems to take Denmark as the goal The partyrsquos leaders are unambiguous that Turkey deserves nothing less than democracy writ large AKP election pledges tout ldquoadvanced democracyrdquo as the finish line for Turkey a goal that denotes the highest standards in human rights democratization and civil society conditions Yet one would have rea-son to doubt the AKPrsquos rhetoric as well as its true commitment to this path By many measures Turkeyrsquos course over the past decade has not represented a straight shot toward liberal democracymdashand on some counts the ball has been moved backward To begin with even as Turkeyrsquos Muslim bourgeoisie have moved up the income ladder and Islam has entered the mainstream the governmentrsquos treatment of the press has not improved Based on an anal-ysis from Reporters Without Borders Turkeyrsquos economic boom has seen a corresponding drop in press freedom with the countryrsquos international rank-ing falling from 99 in 2002 to 148 in 2011 On the matter of overall political conditions Freedom House has ranked Turkey as only ldquopartly freerdquo for the better part of the past decade without any marked improvement

On gender equality Turkeyrsquos economic success has not translated into the advances one might have imagined Overall Turkey is still far from a model to be emulated when it comes to womenrsquos empowerment Not counting agri-cultural workers as of 2012 only 22 percent of Turkeyrsquos women participate in the labor force a rise of only four percentage points from 1988 In 2012 Tur-key was ranked sixty-fifth internationally on the Economistrsquos Womenrsquos Oppor-tunity Economic Index a composite measure of womenrsquos access to education workplace opportunity finance and legal rights Ahead of Turkey were coun-

the New turkey and Us policy n 17

tries like Namibia Belarus and Kazakhstan while Bosnia a European Mus-lim-majority country with an Ottoman heritage outplaced Turkey by a wide margin Of the thirty-one countries in Turkeyrsquos income range Turkey ranked twenty-fifth

1

21

41

61

81

101

121

141

1610

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000

GDPCapRanking

0051152253354455

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000

GDPCapRating

GDPCap and Freedom House Score

GDPCap and Press Freedom Ranking

18 n soner cagaptay

Needless to say the trajectories illustrated in these graphics should give us pause before concluding that Turkey can be a beacon for the emerging societ-ies in Arab and Muslim-majority states

still a role to play in the arab spring

None of this analysis is intended to suggest that Turkey should not help pro-mote democracy in countries affected by the Arab Spring Once again how-ever this participation depends on how Ankara plays its hand and if Wash-ington and Turkeyrsquos European allies take their own constructive steps

For starters Turkey is better positioned than it has been to engage with Arab countries In part this is because Turkey is no longer the poor coun-try it once was desperately seeking accession to the European Union In the past decade record-breaking economic growth has allowed Turkey to float overhead the economic storm pummeling Europe (with only France similarly spared) In addition Turkey has averted any major upheavals like those affect-ing other nations in the Middle East

The bright economic prospects along with the reconstituted foreign policy vision outlined by Foreign Minister Davutoglu have allowed Turkey to shift away from Europe and toward building more influence in the Middle East In grooming ties with former Ottoman lands in the region the AKP has sought to jump-start integration with its neighbors creating something like the 1950s Benelux bloc of Belgium the Netherlands and Luxembourg Revealingly of the thirty-three new Turkish diplomatic missions opened in the past decade eighteen are in Muslim and African countries

Turkeyrsquos emerging commercial and political ties with Middle East nations have often come at the expense of ties with Europe The shift has been accom-panied by the rise of a more socially conservative business elite in central Tur-key which derives strength from trading beyond Europe and is using its new wealth to push for a redefinition of Turkeyrsquos traditional approach to secular-ism Moreover the AKPrsquos approach to religionmdashwhereby Ataturkrsquos French-inspired notion of freedom from religion has been replaced by a softer form of secularism embodied in freedom of religionmdashhas greater appeal for socially conservative Arab countries which for the most part regard French-style secularism as anathema

Over the past decade Turkey has used soft power in Arab countries in its quest to become a regional leader The Turksrsquo efforts have included the cre-ation of business networks and the founding of state-of-the-art high schools

the New turkey and Us policy n 19

in the Middle East Asia and Central Asia run by the Sufi Islamndashinspired Gulen movement to educate future Arab elites Yet the results of these ini-tiatives were largely inconclusive until the Arab Spring largely because of the hard reality that Turkeyrsquos counterparts in rapprochement were not its neighboring peoples but rather their undemocratic regimes Now Turkey has an unprecedented opportunity to spread its influence further in newly free Arab societies

Syria is a case in point whereas Ankara hoped to reach out to the Syrian people the Assad regime took advantage of its close ties with Turkey a NATO member to gain legitimacy while oppressing its people The Arab Spring has ended the mirage Even though Ankara repeatedly asked Assad to stop killing civilians he ignored these calls demonstrating that there was never true rap-prochement between Turkey and Syria and that Ankara had failed in estab-lishing soft power over Damascus

Ankara has since dropped Assad emerging instead as the chief regional opponent of his policies Indeed Ankararsquos new overarching policy toward the Arab Middle East entails leading the world in dropping dictators in favor of the prodemocracy movements from Egypt to Libya to Syria Accordingly Turkey now has a chance to promote democracy in the Middle East and rise to leadership in the region

Building the Democratic center the german Model

In seeking a paradigm for Turkeyrsquos role in the Arab world we might look to Germany in Portugal following the Carnation Revolution of April 1974 which toppled Portugalrsquos forty-eight-year dictatorship The rebellion was led by a group of army officers joined by the underground communist movement and the masses and the regimersquos fall was surprisingly swift Portugalmdashthen riddled by poverty illiteracy and a legacy of authoritarianismmdashfound itself at a crossroads military rule or communist takeover Neither happened Thanks to the often-unmentioned efforts by Germanyrsquos Social Democratic Party (SPD) government and the Stiftungen (NGOs linked to Germanyrsquos political parties) to build centrist forces in Lisbon the unexpected occurred Portugal became a flourishing liberal democracy later joining the European Union

In many ways Portugal in the 1970s parallels todayrsquos Arab societies The coastal nation lacked deep democratic traditions or a sizable middle class The communist movement which can be likened to the Islamists in todayrsquos

20 n soner cagaptay

Arab states was powerful and seemed poised to commandeer the revolu-tion while the militarymdashwhich had taken charge following the revolutionmdashseemed at a loss

For its part Germanyrsquos SPD of the 1970s was the first elected social demo-cratic government in Bonn and therefore had particular credibility in offering social democracy as a legitimate alternative to communism in Lisbon And it did so quite deliberately From the German town of Bad Munstereifel the SPD helped found the Portuguese Socialist Party (PS) a social democratic move-ment that called for a democratic Portugal and the defeat of the communistsrsquo efforts to take power Furthermore in August 1975 Germany took the lead in organizing the Friendship Solidarity Committee for Portuguese Democ-racy and Socialism Led by German chancellor Willy Brandt this committee included leading European social democrats such as Swedish prime minister Olof Palme and Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky and became a platform from which social democrats shared knowledge with the PS and developed strategies for successful democratic transformation The committee also pre-pared the groundwork for Portugalrsquos EU membership

The German Stiftungen too performed a valuable function The SPD-affil-iated Friedrich Ebert Stiftungen (FES) alone donated 10 to 15 million German marks to train PS campaign workers and fund travel for its leaders using dis-creet Swiss bank accounts to facilitate money transfers The range of Stiftun-gen which had connections to liberal and conservative German parties alike built counterparts in Portugal as well

The AKP echoing the SPD in Germany is Ankararsquos first Islamist-rooted and democratically elected party and is therefore well positioned to propose alternatives to radical Islamism in Arab states Yet if Ankara wishes to play a role similar to Germany it cannot be expected to do so alone Just as Bonn received financial and political assistance from the United States and other democracies in building Portuguese democracy Turkey would benefit from support from the West as well as other Muslim-majority democracies such as Indonesia especially in creating ldquoTurkish Stiftungenrdquo the missing part of the Germany-Turkey parallel

challenges remain

Given that Turkey ruled the Arab Middle East until World War I it must now be mindful of the effect of its messages Arabs might be drawn to fellow Mus-lims but the Turks are also former imperial masters And as the Arabs them-

the New turkey and Us policy n 21

selves press for democracy intervention by a nation appearing to behave like a new imperial power will backfire Arab liberals and Islamists alike regularly suggest that Turkey is welcome in the Middle East but should not dominate it

Then there are the various problems associated with transferring the Turkish model to Arab countries In September 2011 when Erdogan landed at Cairorsquos new airport terminal (built by Turkish companies) he was met by joyous millions mobilized by the Muslim Brotherhood However he soon upset his pious hosts by preaching about the importance of a secular gov-ernment that provides freedom of religion using the Turkish word laiklikmdashderived from the French word for secularism and translating in Arabic to ldquoirreligiousrdquo Erdoganrsquos message may have been partly lost in translation but the incident illustrates the limits of Turkeyrsquos influence in more socially con-servative countries

What is more Ankara faces domestic challenges that could hamper its influence in countries affected by the Arab Spring If Turkey wants to become a true beacon of democracy in the Middle East for example the new consti-tution under discussion must provide broader individual rights for the coun-tryrsquos citizens and lift curbs on freedoms such as those on the media Turkey will also need to fulfill Davutoglursquos vision of a ldquono problemsrdquo foreign policymdashwith the neighbors in this instance including Israel This means moving past the 2010 flotilla episode to rebuild strong ties with the Jewish state and learn-ing to get along with the Greek Cypriots

Turkeyrsquos relative stability at a time when the region is in upheaval is attract-ing investment from less stable neighbors like Iran Iraq Syria and Lebanon Ultimately political stability and regional clout are Turkeyrsquos hard cash and its economic growth will depend on both

Turkey will rise as a regional power as well as play a role in the Arab uprising only if it sets a genuine example as a liberal democracy and uses a deft and strategic hand when sharing its knowledge and experience with Arab countries

the Washington institute for Near east policy

Board of Directors

President

Martin J Gross

Chairman

Howard P Berkowitz

Chairmen Emeriti

Fred S Lafer Michael Stein

Founding President and Chairman Emerita

Barbi Weinberg

Senior Vice Presidents

Bernard Leventhal Peter LowyJames Schreiber

Vice Presidents

Benjamin BreslauerWalter P Stern

Vice President Emeritus

Charles Adler

Secretary

Richard S Abramson

Treasurer

Dimitri Sogoloff

Board Members

Jay BernsteinAnthony Beyer Richard BorowMichael Gelman Roger Hertog emeritus

Shelly KassenJack KayMichael KestonMoses LibitzkyDaniel Mintz Zachary SchreiberFred SchwartzJohn ShapiroMerryl TischSusan WagnerGary Wexler

Board of advisors

Max M KampelmanHenry A KissingerSamuel W LewisEdward LuttwakMichael MandelbaumRobert C McFarlaneMartin PeretzRichard PerleJames G RocheGeorge P ShultzR James WoolseyMortimer Zuckerman

Board Members

Jay BernsteinAnthony Beyer Richard BorowMichael Gelman Roger Hertog emeritus

Shelly KassenJack KayMichael KestonMoses LibitzkyDaniel Mintz Zachary SchreiberFred SchwartzJohn ShapiroMerryl TischSusan WagnerGary Wexler

Board of advisors

Max M KampelmanHenry A KissingerSamuel W LewisEdward LuttwakMichael MandelbaumRobert C McFarlaneMartin PeretzRichard PerleJames G RocheGeorge P ShultzR James WoolseyMortimer Zuckerman

ldquoturkey will rise as a regional

power as well as play a role in

the arab uprising only if it sets

a genuine example as a liberal

democracy and uses a deft and

strategic hand when sharing its

knowledge and experience with

arab countriesrdquo

the washington inst itute for near east pol ic ywwwwashingtoninstitute or g

the New turkey and Us policy n 17

tries like Namibia Belarus and Kazakhstan while Bosnia a European Mus-lim-majority country with an Ottoman heritage outplaced Turkey by a wide margin Of the thirty-one countries in Turkeyrsquos income range Turkey ranked twenty-fifth

1

21

41

61

81

101

121

141

1610

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000

GDPCapRanking

0051152253354455

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000

GDPCapRating

GDPCap and Freedom House Score

GDPCap and Press Freedom Ranking

18 n soner cagaptay

Needless to say the trajectories illustrated in these graphics should give us pause before concluding that Turkey can be a beacon for the emerging societ-ies in Arab and Muslim-majority states

still a role to play in the arab spring

None of this analysis is intended to suggest that Turkey should not help pro-mote democracy in countries affected by the Arab Spring Once again how-ever this participation depends on how Ankara plays its hand and if Wash-ington and Turkeyrsquos European allies take their own constructive steps

For starters Turkey is better positioned than it has been to engage with Arab countries In part this is because Turkey is no longer the poor coun-try it once was desperately seeking accession to the European Union In the past decade record-breaking economic growth has allowed Turkey to float overhead the economic storm pummeling Europe (with only France similarly spared) In addition Turkey has averted any major upheavals like those affect-ing other nations in the Middle East

The bright economic prospects along with the reconstituted foreign policy vision outlined by Foreign Minister Davutoglu have allowed Turkey to shift away from Europe and toward building more influence in the Middle East In grooming ties with former Ottoman lands in the region the AKP has sought to jump-start integration with its neighbors creating something like the 1950s Benelux bloc of Belgium the Netherlands and Luxembourg Revealingly of the thirty-three new Turkish diplomatic missions opened in the past decade eighteen are in Muslim and African countries

Turkeyrsquos emerging commercial and political ties with Middle East nations have often come at the expense of ties with Europe The shift has been accom-panied by the rise of a more socially conservative business elite in central Tur-key which derives strength from trading beyond Europe and is using its new wealth to push for a redefinition of Turkeyrsquos traditional approach to secular-ism Moreover the AKPrsquos approach to religionmdashwhereby Ataturkrsquos French-inspired notion of freedom from religion has been replaced by a softer form of secularism embodied in freedom of religionmdashhas greater appeal for socially conservative Arab countries which for the most part regard French-style secularism as anathema

Over the past decade Turkey has used soft power in Arab countries in its quest to become a regional leader The Turksrsquo efforts have included the cre-ation of business networks and the founding of state-of-the-art high schools

the New turkey and Us policy n 19

in the Middle East Asia and Central Asia run by the Sufi Islamndashinspired Gulen movement to educate future Arab elites Yet the results of these ini-tiatives were largely inconclusive until the Arab Spring largely because of the hard reality that Turkeyrsquos counterparts in rapprochement were not its neighboring peoples but rather their undemocratic regimes Now Turkey has an unprecedented opportunity to spread its influence further in newly free Arab societies

Syria is a case in point whereas Ankara hoped to reach out to the Syrian people the Assad regime took advantage of its close ties with Turkey a NATO member to gain legitimacy while oppressing its people The Arab Spring has ended the mirage Even though Ankara repeatedly asked Assad to stop killing civilians he ignored these calls demonstrating that there was never true rap-prochement between Turkey and Syria and that Ankara had failed in estab-lishing soft power over Damascus

Ankara has since dropped Assad emerging instead as the chief regional opponent of his policies Indeed Ankararsquos new overarching policy toward the Arab Middle East entails leading the world in dropping dictators in favor of the prodemocracy movements from Egypt to Libya to Syria Accordingly Turkey now has a chance to promote democracy in the Middle East and rise to leadership in the region

Building the Democratic center the german Model

In seeking a paradigm for Turkeyrsquos role in the Arab world we might look to Germany in Portugal following the Carnation Revolution of April 1974 which toppled Portugalrsquos forty-eight-year dictatorship The rebellion was led by a group of army officers joined by the underground communist movement and the masses and the regimersquos fall was surprisingly swift Portugalmdashthen riddled by poverty illiteracy and a legacy of authoritarianismmdashfound itself at a crossroads military rule or communist takeover Neither happened Thanks to the often-unmentioned efforts by Germanyrsquos Social Democratic Party (SPD) government and the Stiftungen (NGOs linked to Germanyrsquos political parties) to build centrist forces in Lisbon the unexpected occurred Portugal became a flourishing liberal democracy later joining the European Union

In many ways Portugal in the 1970s parallels todayrsquos Arab societies The coastal nation lacked deep democratic traditions or a sizable middle class The communist movement which can be likened to the Islamists in todayrsquos

20 n soner cagaptay

Arab states was powerful and seemed poised to commandeer the revolu-tion while the militarymdashwhich had taken charge following the revolutionmdashseemed at a loss

For its part Germanyrsquos SPD of the 1970s was the first elected social demo-cratic government in Bonn and therefore had particular credibility in offering social democracy as a legitimate alternative to communism in Lisbon And it did so quite deliberately From the German town of Bad Munstereifel the SPD helped found the Portuguese Socialist Party (PS) a social democratic move-ment that called for a democratic Portugal and the defeat of the communistsrsquo efforts to take power Furthermore in August 1975 Germany took the lead in organizing the Friendship Solidarity Committee for Portuguese Democ-racy and Socialism Led by German chancellor Willy Brandt this committee included leading European social democrats such as Swedish prime minister Olof Palme and Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky and became a platform from which social democrats shared knowledge with the PS and developed strategies for successful democratic transformation The committee also pre-pared the groundwork for Portugalrsquos EU membership

The German Stiftungen too performed a valuable function The SPD-affil-iated Friedrich Ebert Stiftungen (FES) alone donated 10 to 15 million German marks to train PS campaign workers and fund travel for its leaders using dis-creet Swiss bank accounts to facilitate money transfers The range of Stiftun-gen which had connections to liberal and conservative German parties alike built counterparts in Portugal as well

The AKP echoing the SPD in Germany is Ankararsquos first Islamist-rooted and democratically elected party and is therefore well positioned to propose alternatives to radical Islamism in Arab states Yet if Ankara wishes to play a role similar to Germany it cannot be expected to do so alone Just as Bonn received financial and political assistance from the United States and other democracies in building Portuguese democracy Turkey would benefit from support from the West as well as other Muslim-majority democracies such as Indonesia especially in creating ldquoTurkish Stiftungenrdquo the missing part of the Germany-Turkey parallel

challenges remain

Given that Turkey ruled the Arab Middle East until World War I it must now be mindful of the effect of its messages Arabs might be drawn to fellow Mus-lims but the Turks are also former imperial masters And as the Arabs them-

the New turkey and Us policy n 21

selves press for democracy intervention by a nation appearing to behave like a new imperial power will backfire Arab liberals and Islamists alike regularly suggest that Turkey is welcome in the Middle East but should not dominate it

Then there are the various problems associated with transferring the Turkish model to Arab countries In September 2011 when Erdogan landed at Cairorsquos new airport terminal (built by Turkish companies) he was met by joyous millions mobilized by the Muslim Brotherhood However he soon upset his pious hosts by preaching about the importance of a secular gov-ernment that provides freedom of religion using the Turkish word laiklikmdashderived from the French word for secularism and translating in Arabic to ldquoirreligiousrdquo Erdoganrsquos message may have been partly lost in translation but the incident illustrates the limits of Turkeyrsquos influence in more socially con-servative countries

What is more Ankara faces domestic challenges that could hamper its influence in countries affected by the Arab Spring If Turkey wants to become a true beacon of democracy in the Middle East for example the new consti-tution under discussion must provide broader individual rights for the coun-tryrsquos citizens and lift curbs on freedoms such as those on the media Turkey will also need to fulfill Davutoglursquos vision of a ldquono problemsrdquo foreign policymdashwith the neighbors in this instance including Israel This means moving past the 2010 flotilla episode to rebuild strong ties with the Jewish state and learn-ing to get along with the Greek Cypriots

Turkeyrsquos relative stability at a time when the region is in upheaval is attract-ing investment from less stable neighbors like Iran Iraq Syria and Lebanon Ultimately political stability and regional clout are Turkeyrsquos hard cash and its economic growth will depend on both

Turkey will rise as a regional power as well as play a role in the Arab uprising only if it sets a genuine example as a liberal democracy and uses a deft and strategic hand when sharing its knowledge and experience with Arab countries

the Washington institute for Near east policy

Board of Directors

President

Martin J Gross

Chairman

Howard P Berkowitz

Chairmen Emeriti

Fred S Lafer Michael Stein

Founding President and Chairman Emerita

Barbi Weinberg

Senior Vice Presidents

Bernard Leventhal Peter LowyJames Schreiber

Vice Presidents

Benjamin BreslauerWalter P Stern

Vice President Emeritus

Charles Adler

Secretary

Richard S Abramson

Treasurer

Dimitri Sogoloff

Board Members

Jay BernsteinAnthony Beyer Richard BorowMichael Gelman Roger Hertog emeritus

Shelly KassenJack KayMichael KestonMoses LibitzkyDaniel Mintz Zachary SchreiberFred SchwartzJohn ShapiroMerryl TischSusan WagnerGary Wexler

Board of advisors

Max M KampelmanHenry A KissingerSamuel W LewisEdward LuttwakMichael MandelbaumRobert C McFarlaneMartin PeretzRichard PerleJames G RocheGeorge P ShultzR James WoolseyMortimer Zuckerman

Board Members

Jay BernsteinAnthony Beyer Richard BorowMichael Gelman Roger Hertog emeritus

Shelly KassenJack KayMichael KestonMoses LibitzkyDaniel Mintz Zachary SchreiberFred SchwartzJohn ShapiroMerryl TischSusan WagnerGary Wexler

Board of advisors

Max M KampelmanHenry A KissingerSamuel W LewisEdward LuttwakMichael MandelbaumRobert C McFarlaneMartin PeretzRichard PerleJames G RocheGeorge P ShultzR James WoolseyMortimer Zuckerman

ldquoturkey will rise as a regional

power as well as play a role in

the arab uprising only if it sets

a genuine example as a liberal

democracy and uses a deft and

strategic hand when sharing its

knowledge and experience with

arab countriesrdquo

the washington inst itute for near east pol ic ywwwwashingtoninstitute or g

18 n soner cagaptay

Needless to say the trajectories illustrated in these graphics should give us pause before concluding that Turkey can be a beacon for the emerging societ-ies in Arab and Muslim-majority states

still a role to play in the arab spring

None of this analysis is intended to suggest that Turkey should not help pro-mote democracy in countries affected by the Arab Spring Once again how-ever this participation depends on how Ankara plays its hand and if Wash-ington and Turkeyrsquos European allies take their own constructive steps

For starters Turkey is better positioned than it has been to engage with Arab countries In part this is because Turkey is no longer the poor coun-try it once was desperately seeking accession to the European Union In the past decade record-breaking economic growth has allowed Turkey to float overhead the economic storm pummeling Europe (with only France similarly spared) In addition Turkey has averted any major upheavals like those affect-ing other nations in the Middle East

The bright economic prospects along with the reconstituted foreign policy vision outlined by Foreign Minister Davutoglu have allowed Turkey to shift away from Europe and toward building more influence in the Middle East In grooming ties with former Ottoman lands in the region the AKP has sought to jump-start integration with its neighbors creating something like the 1950s Benelux bloc of Belgium the Netherlands and Luxembourg Revealingly of the thirty-three new Turkish diplomatic missions opened in the past decade eighteen are in Muslim and African countries

Turkeyrsquos emerging commercial and political ties with Middle East nations have often come at the expense of ties with Europe The shift has been accom-panied by the rise of a more socially conservative business elite in central Tur-key which derives strength from trading beyond Europe and is using its new wealth to push for a redefinition of Turkeyrsquos traditional approach to secular-ism Moreover the AKPrsquos approach to religionmdashwhereby Ataturkrsquos French-inspired notion of freedom from religion has been replaced by a softer form of secularism embodied in freedom of religionmdashhas greater appeal for socially conservative Arab countries which for the most part regard French-style secularism as anathema

Over the past decade Turkey has used soft power in Arab countries in its quest to become a regional leader The Turksrsquo efforts have included the cre-ation of business networks and the founding of state-of-the-art high schools

the New turkey and Us policy n 19

in the Middle East Asia and Central Asia run by the Sufi Islamndashinspired Gulen movement to educate future Arab elites Yet the results of these ini-tiatives were largely inconclusive until the Arab Spring largely because of the hard reality that Turkeyrsquos counterparts in rapprochement were not its neighboring peoples but rather their undemocratic regimes Now Turkey has an unprecedented opportunity to spread its influence further in newly free Arab societies

Syria is a case in point whereas Ankara hoped to reach out to the Syrian people the Assad regime took advantage of its close ties with Turkey a NATO member to gain legitimacy while oppressing its people The Arab Spring has ended the mirage Even though Ankara repeatedly asked Assad to stop killing civilians he ignored these calls demonstrating that there was never true rap-prochement between Turkey and Syria and that Ankara had failed in estab-lishing soft power over Damascus

Ankara has since dropped Assad emerging instead as the chief regional opponent of his policies Indeed Ankararsquos new overarching policy toward the Arab Middle East entails leading the world in dropping dictators in favor of the prodemocracy movements from Egypt to Libya to Syria Accordingly Turkey now has a chance to promote democracy in the Middle East and rise to leadership in the region

Building the Democratic center the german Model

In seeking a paradigm for Turkeyrsquos role in the Arab world we might look to Germany in Portugal following the Carnation Revolution of April 1974 which toppled Portugalrsquos forty-eight-year dictatorship The rebellion was led by a group of army officers joined by the underground communist movement and the masses and the regimersquos fall was surprisingly swift Portugalmdashthen riddled by poverty illiteracy and a legacy of authoritarianismmdashfound itself at a crossroads military rule or communist takeover Neither happened Thanks to the often-unmentioned efforts by Germanyrsquos Social Democratic Party (SPD) government and the Stiftungen (NGOs linked to Germanyrsquos political parties) to build centrist forces in Lisbon the unexpected occurred Portugal became a flourishing liberal democracy later joining the European Union

In many ways Portugal in the 1970s parallels todayrsquos Arab societies The coastal nation lacked deep democratic traditions or a sizable middle class The communist movement which can be likened to the Islamists in todayrsquos

20 n soner cagaptay

Arab states was powerful and seemed poised to commandeer the revolu-tion while the militarymdashwhich had taken charge following the revolutionmdashseemed at a loss

For its part Germanyrsquos SPD of the 1970s was the first elected social demo-cratic government in Bonn and therefore had particular credibility in offering social democracy as a legitimate alternative to communism in Lisbon And it did so quite deliberately From the German town of Bad Munstereifel the SPD helped found the Portuguese Socialist Party (PS) a social democratic move-ment that called for a democratic Portugal and the defeat of the communistsrsquo efforts to take power Furthermore in August 1975 Germany took the lead in organizing the Friendship Solidarity Committee for Portuguese Democ-racy and Socialism Led by German chancellor Willy Brandt this committee included leading European social democrats such as Swedish prime minister Olof Palme and Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky and became a platform from which social democrats shared knowledge with the PS and developed strategies for successful democratic transformation The committee also pre-pared the groundwork for Portugalrsquos EU membership

The German Stiftungen too performed a valuable function The SPD-affil-iated Friedrich Ebert Stiftungen (FES) alone donated 10 to 15 million German marks to train PS campaign workers and fund travel for its leaders using dis-creet Swiss bank accounts to facilitate money transfers The range of Stiftun-gen which had connections to liberal and conservative German parties alike built counterparts in Portugal as well

The AKP echoing the SPD in Germany is Ankararsquos first Islamist-rooted and democratically elected party and is therefore well positioned to propose alternatives to radical Islamism in Arab states Yet if Ankara wishes to play a role similar to Germany it cannot be expected to do so alone Just as Bonn received financial and political assistance from the United States and other democracies in building Portuguese democracy Turkey would benefit from support from the West as well as other Muslim-majority democracies such as Indonesia especially in creating ldquoTurkish Stiftungenrdquo the missing part of the Germany-Turkey parallel

challenges remain

Given that Turkey ruled the Arab Middle East until World War I it must now be mindful of the effect of its messages Arabs might be drawn to fellow Mus-lims but the Turks are also former imperial masters And as the Arabs them-

the New turkey and Us policy n 21

selves press for democracy intervention by a nation appearing to behave like a new imperial power will backfire Arab liberals and Islamists alike regularly suggest that Turkey is welcome in the Middle East but should not dominate it

Then there are the various problems associated with transferring the Turkish model to Arab countries In September 2011 when Erdogan landed at Cairorsquos new airport terminal (built by Turkish companies) he was met by joyous millions mobilized by the Muslim Brotherhood However he soon upset his pious hosts by preaching about the importance of a secular gov-ernment that provides freedom of religion using the Turkish word laiklikmdashderived from the French word for secularism and translating in Arabic to ldquoirreligiousrdquo Erdoganrsquos message may have been partly lost in translation but the incident illustrates the limits of Turkeyrsquos influence in more socially con-servative countries

What is more Ankara faces domestic challenges that could hamper its influence in countries affected by the Arab Spring If Turkey wants to become a true beacon of democracy in the Middle East for example the new consti-tution under discussion must provide broader individual rights for the coun-tryrsquos citizens and lift curbs on freedoms such as those on the media Turkey will also need to fulfill Davutoglursquos vision of a ldquono problemsrdquo foreign policymdashwith the neighbors in this instance including Israel This means moving past the 2010 flotilla episode to rebuild strong ties with the Jewish state and learn-ing to get along with the Greek Cypriots

Turkeyrsquos relative stability at a time when the region is in upheaval is attract-ing investment from less stable neighbors like Iran Iraq Syria and Lebanon Ultimately political stability and regional clout are Turkeyrsquos hard cash and its economic growth will depend on both

Turkey will rise as a regional power as well as play a role in the Arab uprising only if it sets a genuine example as a liberal democracy and uses a deft and strategic hand when sharing its knowledge and experience with Arab countries

the Washington institute for Near east policy

Board of Directors

President

Martin J Gross

Chairman

Howard P Berkowitz

Chairmen Emeriti

Fred S Lafer Michael Stein

Founding President and Chairman Emerita

Barbi Weinberg

Senior Vice Presidents

Bernard Leventhal Peter LowyJames Schreiber

Vice Presidents

Benjamin BreslauerWalter P Stern

Vice President Emeritus

Charles Adler

Secretary

Richard S Abramson

Treasurer

Dimitri Sogoloff

Board Members

Jay BernsteinAnthony Beyer Richard BorowMichael Gelman Roger Hertog emeritus

Shelly KassenJack KayMichael KestonMoses LibitzkyDaniel Mintz Zachary SchreiberFred SchwartzJohn ShapiroMerryl TischSusan WagnerGary Wexler

Board of advisors

Max M KampelmanHenry A KissingerSamuel W LewisEdward LuttwakMichael MandelbaumRobert C McFarlaneMartin PeretzRichard PerleJames G RocheGeorge P ShultzR James WoolseyMortimer Zuckerman

Board Members

Jay BernsteinAnthony Beyer Richard BorowMichael Gelman Roger Hertog emeritus

Shelly KassenJack KayMichael KestonMoses LibitzkyDaniel Mintz Zachary SchreiberFred SchwartzJohn ShapiroMerryl TischSusan WagnerGary Wexler

Board of advisors

Max M KampelmanHenry A KissingerSamuel W LewisEdward LuttwakMichael MandelbaumRobert C McFarlaneMartin PeretzRichard PerleJames G RocheGeorge P ShultzR James WoolseyMortimer Zuckerman

ldquoturkey will rise as a regional

power as well as play a role in

the arab uprising only if it sets

a genuine example as a liberal

democracy and uses a deft and

strategic hand when sharing its

knowledge and experience with

arab countriesrdquo

the washington inst itute for near east pol ic ywwwwashingtoninstitute or g

the New turkey and Us policy n 19

in the Middle East Asia and Central Asia run by the Sufi Islamndashinspired Gulen movement to educate future Arab elites Yet the results of these ini-tiatives were largely inconclusive until the Arab Spring largely because of the hard reality that Turkeyrsquos counterparts in rapprochement were not its neighboring peoples but rather their undemocratic regimes Now Turkey has an unprecedented opportunity to spread its influence further in newly free Arab societies

Syria is a case in point whereas Ankara hoped to reach out to the Syrian people the Assad regime took advantage of its close ties with Turkey a NATO member to gain legitimacy while oppressing its people The Arab Spring has ended the mirage Even though Ankara repeatedly asked Assad to stop killing civilians he ignored these calls demonstrating that there was never true rap-prochement between Turkey and Syria and that Ankara had failed in estab-lishing soft power over Damascus

Ankara has since dropped Assad emerging instead as the chief regional opponent of his policies Indeed Ankararsquos new overarching policy toward the Arab Middle East entails leading the world in dropping dictators in favor of the prodemocracy movements from Egypt to Libya to Syria Accordingly Turkey now has a chance to promote democracy in the Middle East and rise to leadership in the region

Building the Democratic center the german Model

In seeking a paradigm for Turkeyrsquos role in the Arab world we might look to Germany in Portugal following the Carnation Revolution of April 1974 which toppled Portugalrsquos forty-eight-year dictatorship The rebellion was led by a group of army officers joined by the underground communist movement and the masses and the regimersquos fall was surprisingly swift Portugalmdashthen riddled by poverty illiteracy and a legacy of authoritarianismmdashfound itself at a crossroads military rule or communist takeover Neither happened Thanks to the often-unmentioned efforts by Germanyrsquos Social Democratic Party (SPD) government and the Stiftungen (NGOs linked to Germanyrsquos political parties) to build centrist forces in Lisbon the unexpected occurred Portugal became a flourishing liberal democracy later joining the European Union

In many ways Portugal in the 1970s parallels todayrsquos Arab societies The coastal nation lacked deep democratic traditions or a sizable middle class The communist movement which can be likened to the Islamists in todayrsquos

20 n soner cagaptay

Arab states was powerful and seemed poised to commandeer the revolu-tion while the militarymdashwhich had taken charge following the revolutionmdashseemed at a loss

For its part Germanyrsquos SPD of the 1970s was the first elected social demo-cratic government in Bonn and therefore had particular credibility in offering social democracy as a legitimate alternative to communism in Lisbon And it did so quite deliberately From the German town of Bad Munstereifel the SPD helped found the Portuguese Socialist Party (PS) a social democratic move-ment that called for a democratic Portugal and the defeat of the communistsrsquo efforts to take power Furthermore in August 1975 Germany took the lead in organizing the Friendship Solidarity Committee for Portuguese Democ-racy and Socialism Led by German chancellor Willy Brandt this committee included leading European social democrats such as Swedish prime minister Olof Palme and Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky and became a platform from which social democrats shared knowledge with the PS and developed strategies for successful democratic transformation The committee also pre-pared the groundwork for Portugalrsquos EU membership

The German Stiftungen too performed a valuable function The SPD-affil-iated Friedrich Ebert Stiftungen (FES) alone donated 10 to 15 million German marks to train PS campaign workers and fund travel for its leaders using dis-creet Swiss bank accounts to facilitate money transfers The range of Stiftun-gen which had connections to liberal and conservative German parties alike built counterparts in Portugal as well

The AKP echoing the SPD in Germany is Ankararsquos first Islamist-rooted and democratically elected party and is therefore well positioned to propose alternatives to radical Islamism in Arab states Yet if Ankara wishes to play a role similar to Germany it cannot be expected to do so alone Just as Bonn received financial and political assistance from the United States and other democracies in building Portuguese democracy Turkey would benefit from support from the West as well as other Muslim-majority democracies such as Indonesia especially in creating ldquoTurkish Stiftungenrdquo the missing part of the Germany-Turkey parallel

challenges remain

Given that Turkey ruled the Arab Middle East until World War I it must now be mindful of the effect of its messages Arabs might be drawn to fellow Mus-lims but the Turks are also former imperial masters And as the Arabs them-

the New turkey and Us policy n 21

selves press for democracy intervention by a nation appearing to behave like a new imperial power will backfire Arab liberals and Islamists alike regularly suggest that Turkey is welcome in the Middle East but should not dominate it

Then there are the various problems associated with transferring the Turkish model to Arab countries In September 2011 when Erdogan landed at Cairorsquos new airport terminal (built by Turkish companies) he was met by joyous millions mobilized by the Muslim Brotherhood However he soon upset his pious hosts by preaching about the importance of a secular gov-ernment that provides freedom of religion using the Turkish word laiklikmdashderived from the French word for secularism and translating in Arabic to ldquoirreligiousrdquo Erdoganrsquos message may have been partly lost in translation but the incident illustrates the limits of Turkeyrsquos influence in more socially con-servative countries

What is more Ankara faces domestic challenges that could hamper its influence in countries affected by the Arab Spring If Turkey wants to become a true beacon of democracy in the Middle East for example the new consti-tution under discussion must provide broader individual rights for the coun-tryrsquos citizens and lift curbs on freedoms such as those on the media Turkey will also need to fulfill Davutoglursquos vision of a ldquono problemsrdquo foreign policymdashwith the neighbors in this instance including Israel This means moving past the 2010 flotilla episode to rebuild strong ties with the Jewish state and learn-ing to get along with the Greek Cypriots

Turkeyrsquos relative stability at a time when the region is in upheaval is attract-ing investment from less stable neighbors like Iran Iraq Syria and Lebanon Ultimately political stability and regional clout are Turkeyrsquos hard cash and its economic growth will depend on both

Turkey will rise as a regional power as well as play a role in the Arab uprising only if it sets a genuine example as a liberal democracy and uses a deft and strategic hand when sharing its knowledge and experience with Arab countries

the Washington institute for Near east policy

Board of Directors

President

Martin J Gross

Chairman

Howard P Berkowitz

Chairmen Emeriti

Fred S Lafer Michael Stein

Founding President and Chairman Emerita

Barbi Weinberg

Senior Vice Presidents

Bernard Leventhal Peter LowyJames Schreiber

Vice Presidents

Benjamin BreslauerWalter P Stern

Vice President Emeritus

Charles Adler

Secretary

Richard S Abramson

Treasurer

Dimitri Sogoloff

Board Members

Jay BernsteinAnthony Beyer Richard BorowMichael Gelman Roger Hertog emeritus

Shelly KassenJack KayMichael KestonMoses LibitzkyDaniel Mintz Zachary SchreiberFred SchwartzJohn ShapiroMerryl TischSusan WagnerGary Wexler

Board of advisors

Max M KampelmanHenry A KissingerSamuel W LewisEdward LuttwakMichael MandelbaumRobert C McFarlaneMartin PeretzRichard PerleJames G RocheGeorge P ShultzR James WoolseyMortimer Zuckerman

Board Members

Jay BernsteinAnthony Beyer Richard BorowMichael Gelman Roger Hertog emeritus

Shelly KassenJack KayMichael KestonMoses LibitzkyDaniel Mintz Zachary SchreiberFred SchwartzJohn ShapiroMerryl TischSusan WagnerGary Wexler

Board of advisors

Max M KampelmanHenry A KissingerSamuel W LewisEdward LuttwakMichael MandelbaumRobert C McFarlaneMartin PeretzRichard PerleJames G RocheGeorge P ShultzR James WoolseyMortimer Zuckerman

ldquoturkey will rise as a regional

power as well as play a role in

the arab uprising only if it sets

a genuine example as a liberal

democracy and uses a deft and

strategic hand when sharing its

knowledge and experience with

arab countriesrdquo

the washington inst itute for near east pol ic ywwwwashingtoninstitute or g

20 n soner cagaptay

Arab states was powerful and seemed poised to commandeer the revolu-tion while the militarymdashwhich had taken charge following the revolutionmdashseemed at a loss

For its part Germanyrsquos SPD of the 1970s was the first elected social demo-cratic government in Bonn and therefore had particular credibility in offering social democracy as a legitimate alternative to communism in Lisbon And it did so quite deliberately From the German town of Bad Munstereifel the SPD helped found the Portuguese Socialist Party (PS) a social democratic move-ment that called for a democratic Portugal and the defeat of the communistsrsquo efforts to take power Furthermore in August 1975 Germany took the lead in organizing the Friendship Solidarity Committee for Portuguese Democ-racy and Socialism Led by German chancellor Willy Brandt this committee included leading European social democrats such as Swedish prime minister Olof Palme and Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky and became a platform from which social democrats shared knowledge with the PS and developed strategies for successful democratic transformation The committee also pre-pared the groundwork for Portugalrsquos EU membership

The German Stiftungen too performed a valuable function The SPD-affil-iated Friedrich Ebert Stiftungen (FES) alone donated 10 to 15 million German marks to train PS campaign workers and fund travel for its leaders using dis-creet Swiss bank accounts to facilitate money transfers The range of Stiftun-gen which had connections to liberal and conservative German parties alike built counterparts in Portugal as well

The AKP echoing the SPD in Germany is Ankararsquos first Islamist-rooted and democratically elected party and is therefore well positioned to propose alternatives to radical Islamism in Arab states Yet if Ankara wishes to play a role similar to Germany it cannot be expected to do so alone Just as Bonn received financial and political assistance from the United States and other democracies in building Portuguese democracy Turkey would benefit from support from the West as well as other Muslim-majority democracies such as Indonesia especially in creating ldquoTurkish Stiftungenrdquo the missing part of the Germany-Turkey parallel

challenges remain

Given that Turkey ruled the Arab Middle East until World War I it must now be mindful of the effect of its messages Arabs might be drawn to fellow Mus-lims but the Turks are also former imperial masters And as the Arabs them-

the New turkey and Us policy n 21

selves press for democracy intervention by a nation appearing to behave like a new imperial power will backfire Arab liberals and Islamists alike regularly suggest that Turkey is welcome in the Middle East but should not dominate it

Then there are the various problems associated with transferring the Turkish model to Arab countries In September 2011 when Erdogan landed at Cairorsquos new airport terminal (built by Turkish companies) he was met by joyous millions mobilized by the Muslim Brotherhood However he soon upset his pious hosts by preaching about the importance of a secular gov-ernment that provides freedom of religion using the Turkish word laiklikmdashderived from the French word for secularism and translating in Arabic to ldquoirreligiousrdquo Erdoganrsquos message may have been partly lost in translation but the incident illustrates the limits of Turkeyrsquos influence in more socially con-servative countries

What is more Ankara faces domestic challenges that could hamper its influence in countries affected by the Arab Spring If Turkey wants to become a true beacon of democracy in the Middle East for example the new consti-tution under discussion must provide broader individual rights for the coun-tryrsquos citizens and lift curbs on freedoms such as those on the media Turkey will also need to fulfill Davutoglursquos vision of a ldquono problemsrdquo foreign policymdashwith the neighbors in this instance including Israel This means moving past the 2010 flotilla episode to rebuild strong ties with the Jewish state and learn-ing to get along with the Greek Cypriots

Turkeyrsquos relative stability at a time when the region is in upheaval is attract-ing investment from less stable neighbors like Iran Iraq Syria and Lebanon Ultimately political stability and regional clout are Turkeyrsquos hard cash and its economic growth will depend on both

Turkey will rise as a regional power as well as play a role in the Arab uprising only if it sets a genuine example as a liberal democracy and uses a deft and strategic hand when sharing its knowledge and experience with Arab countries

the Washington institute for Near east policy

Board of Directors

President

Martin J Gross

Chairman

Howard P Berkowitz

Chairmen Emeriti

Fred S Lafer Michael Stein

Founding President and Chairman Emerita

Barbi Weinberg

Senior Vice Presidents

Bernard Leventhal Peter LowyJames Schreiber

Vice Presidents

Benjamin BreslauerWalter P Stern

Vice President Emeritus

Charles Adler

Secretary

Richard S Abramson

Treasurer

Dimitri Sogoloff

Board Members

Jay BernsteinAnthony Beyer Richard BorowMichael Gelman Roger Hertog emeritus

Shelly KassenJack KayMichael KestonMoses LibitzkyDaniel Mintz Zachary SchreiberFred SchwartzJohn ShapiroMerryl TischSusan WagnerGary Wexler

Board of advisors

Max M KampelmanHenry A KissingerSamuel W LewisEdward LuttwakMichael MandelbaumRobert C McFarlaneMartin PeretzRichard PerleJames G RocheGeorge P ShultzR James WoolseyMortimer Zuckerman

Board Members

Jay BernsteinAnthony Beyer Richard BorowMichael Gelman Roger Hertog emeritus

Shelly KassenJack KayMichael KestonMoses LibitzkyDaniel Mintz Zachary SchreiberFred SchwartzJohn ShapiroMerryl TischSusan WagnerGary Wexler

Board of advisors

Max M KampelmanHenry A KissingerSamuel W LewisEdward LuttwakMichael MandelbaumRobert C McFarlaneMartin PeretzRichard PerleJames G RocheGeorge P ShultzR James WoolseyMortimer Zuckerman

ldquoturkey will rise as a regional

power as well as play a role in

the arab uprising only if it sets

a genuine example as a liberal

democracy and uses a deft and

strategic hand when sharing its

knowledge and experience with

arab countriesrdquo

the washington inst itute for near east pol ic ywwwwashingtoninstitute or g

the New turkey and Us policy n 21

selves press for democracy intervention by a nation appearing to behave like a new imperial power will backfire Arab liberals and Islamists alike regularly suggest that Turkey is welcome in the Middle East but should not dominate it

Then there are the various problems associated with transferring the Turkish model to Arab countries In September 2011 when Erdogan landed at Cairorsquos new airport terminal (built by Turkish companies) he was met by joyous millions mobilized by the Muslim Brotherhood However he soon upset his pious hosts by preaching about the importance of a secular gov-ernment that provides freedom of religion using the Turkish word laiklikmdashderived from the French word for secularism and translating in Arabic to ldquoirreligiousrdquo Erdoganrsquos message may have been partly lost in translation but the incident illustrates the limits of Turkeyrsquos influence in more socially con-servative countries

What is more Ankara faces domestic challenges that could hamper its influence in countries affected by the Arab Spring If Turkey wants to become a true beacon of democracy in the Middle East for example the new consti-tution under discussion must provide broader individual rights for the coun-tryrsquos citizens and lift curbs on freedoms such as those on the media Turkey will also need to fulfill Davutoglursquos vision of a ldquono problemsrdquo foreign policymdashwith the neighbors in this instance including Israel This means moving past the 2010 flotilla episode to rebuild strong ties with the Jewish state and learn-ing to get along with the Greek Cypriots

Turkeyrsquos relative stability at a time when the region is in upheaval is attract-ing investment from less stable neighbors like Iran Iraq Syria and Lebanon Ultimately political stability and regional clout are Turkeyrsquos hard cash and its economic growth will depend on both

Turkey will rise as a regional power as well as play a role in the Arab uprising only if it sets a genuine example as a liberal democracy and uses a deft and strategic hand when sharing its knowledge and experience with Arab countries

the Washington institute for Near east policy

Board of Directors

President

Martin J Gross

Chairman

Howard P Berkowitz

Chairmen Emeriti

Fred S Lafer Michael Stein

Founding President and Chairman Emerita

Barbi Weinberg

Senior Vice Presidents

Bernard Leventhal Peter LowyJames Schreiber

Vice Presidents

Benjamin BreslauerWalter P Stern

Vice President Emeritus

Charles Adler

Secretary

Richard S Abramson

Treasurer

Dimitri Sogoloff

Board Members

Jay BernsteinAnthony Beyer Richard BorowMichael Gelman Roger Hertog emeritus

Shelly KassenJack KayMichael KestonMoses LibitzkyDaniel Mintz Zachary SchreiberFred SchwartzJohn ShapiroMerryl TischSusan WagnerGary Wexler

Board of advisors

Max M KampelmanHenry A KissingerSamuel W LewisEdward LuttwakMichael MandelbaumRobert C McFarlaneMartin PeretzRichard PerleJames G RocheGeorge P ShultzR James WoolseyMortimer Zuckerman

Board Members

Jay BernsteinAnthony Beyer Richard BorowMichael Gelman Roger Hertog emeritus

Shelly KassenJack KayMichael KestonMoses LibitzkyDaniel Mintz Zachary SchreiberFred SchwartzJohn ShapiroMerryl TischSusan WagnerGary Wexler

Board of advisors

Max M KampelmanHenry A KissingerSamuel W LewisEdward LuttwakMichael MandelbaumRobert C McFarlaneMartin PeretzRichard PerleJames G RocheGeorge P ShultzR James WoolseyMortimer Zuckerman

ldquoturkey will rise as a regional

power as well as play a role in

the arab uprising only if it sets

a genuine example as a liberal

democracy and uses a deft and

strategic hand when sharing its

knowledge and experience with

arab countriesrdquo

the washington inst itute for near east pol ic ywwwwashingtoninstitute or g

the Washington institute for Near east policy

Board of Directors

President

Martin J Gross

Chairman

Howard P Berkowitz

Chairmen Emeriti

Fred S Lafer Michael Stein

Founding President and Chairman Emerita

Barbi Weinberg

Senior Vice Presidents

Bernard Leventhal Peter LowyJames Schreiber

Vice Presidents

Benjamin BreslauerWalter P Stern

Vice President Emeritus

Charles Adler

Secretary

Richard S Abramson

Treasurer

Dimitri Sogoloff

Board Members

Jay BernsteinAnthony Beyer Richard BorowMichael Gelman Roger Hertog emeritus

Shelly KassenJack KayMichael KestonMoses LibitzkyDaniel Mintz Zachary SchreiberFred SchwartzJohn ShapiroMerryl TischSusan WagnerGary Wexler

Board of advisors

Max M KampelmanHenry A KissingerSamuel W LewisEdward LuttwakMichael MandelbaumRobert C McFarlaneMartin PeretzRichard PerleJames G RocheGeorge P ShultzR James WoolseyMortimer Zuckerman

Board Members

Jay BernsteinAnthony Beyer Richard BorowMichael Gelman Roger Hertog emeritus

Shelly KassenJack KayMichael KestonMoses LibitzkyDaniel Mintz Zachary SchreiberFred SchwartzJohn ShapiroMerryl TischSusan WagnerGary Wexler

Board of advisors

Max M KampelmanHenry A KissingerSamuel W LewisEdward LuttwakMichael MandelbaumRobert C McFarlaneMartin PeretzRichard PerleJames G RocheGeorge P ShultzR James WoolseyMortimer Zuckerman

ldquoturkey will rise as a regional

power as well as play a role in

the arab uprising only if it sets

a genuine example as a liberal

democracy and uses a deft and

strategic hand when sharing its

knowledge and experience with

arab countriesrdquo

the washington inst itute for near east pol ic ywwwwashingtoninstitute or g

Board Members

Jay BernsteinAnthony Beyer Richard BorowMichael Gelman Roger Hertog emeritus

Shelly KassenJack KayMichael KestonMoses LibitzkyDaniel Mintz Zachary SchreiberFred SchwartzJohn ShapiroMerryl TischSusan WagnerGary Wexler

Board of advisors

Max M KampelmanHenry A KissingerSamuel W LewisEdward LuttwakMichael MandelbaumRobert C McFarlaneMartin PeretzRichard PerleJames G RocheGeorge P ShultzR James WoolseyMortimer Zuckerman

ldquoturkey will rise as a regional

power as well as play a role in

the arab uprising only if it sets

a genuine example as a liberal

democracy and uses a deft and

strategic hand when sharing its

knowledge and experience with

arab countriesrdquo

the washington inst itute for near east pol ic ywwwwashingtoninstitute or g

ldquoturkey will rise as a regional

power as well as play a role in

the arab uprising only if it sets

a genuine example as a liberal

democracy and uses a deft and

strategic hand when sharing its

knowledge and experience with

arab countriesrdquo

the washington inst itute for near east pol ic ywwwwashingtoninstitute or g