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PREFACE
"Turkey after the Cold War is equivalent to Germany during the Cold
War—a pivotal state, where diverse strategic interests intersect." — Richard Holbrooke
As former Assistant Secretary of State Holbrooke indicates, Turkey's long-standing strategic relevance to the United States and the West has been cast in a new light by such recent events as the fall of the Soviet Union, the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the emergence of independent Turkic states in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. Still, despite their recognition of Turkey's strategic location among regions in flux, scholars and policymakers have tended to neglect the fact that it is also part of the Middle East, long an unstable region. Although any Middle East specialist will acknowledge Turkey's significant role in the history of the region and its distinctive relationships with the Arab states and Israel, it is not often spoken of as an important factor in the peace process or in Western calculations in the Persian Gulf. Nor does one hear much about Turkey's relationships with its immediate neighbors—Syria, Iraq, and Iran—although they have every bit as much potential for upheaval as its relations with Europe and the states of the former Soviet Union.
But Turkey's burgeoning importance in the Middle East can be seen in such instances as Ankara's deepening engagement with the Kurds in northern Iraq, stresses in its relations with Syria over the Kurds and sharing Tigris and Euphrates water, and its controversial military cooperation with Israel.
In June 1994, the United States Institute of Peace convened "A Reluctant Neighbor: Analyzing Turkey's Role in the Middle East," a conference designed to initiate a discussion of these issues and bring together scholars and other experts from Turkey and the Middle East, as well as American and European specialists on the region. The overwhelming response to this conference indicates the growing interest in understanding this dimension of Turkey's foreign policy, and the liveliness of the discussion helped persuade us to develop a book creating a document of the debate on which students and policymakers might draw. The present volume includes chapters developed from papers presented at the conference and subsequently considerably expanded and updated, as well as a new essay by Alan Makovsky designed to complete the overview. Contributors come from Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, as well as the United States and Britain, bringing to bear varied backgrounds, viewpoints, and disciplines.
I would like to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of Patricia Carley, program officer at the United States Institute of Peace, who worked with me to organize the original conference. I would also like to express my gratitude to Institute President Richard H. Solomon, who supported the conference and book projects throughout their development, as well to Kenneth M. Jensen, who as the Institute's then-director of research and studies was the first to approve of the conference idea. In addition, Priscilla Jensen worked diligently on bringing the manuscript to fruition.
Chapter One
Turkey's Place in the World
Patricia Carley
Few countries occupy Turkey's exceptional position—literally at the crossroads between the cultures of East and West, overlapping Europe and Asia geographically, economically, politically, and even spiritually, as a Muslim country that aspires to be part of the West. The inherent incongruity has haunted the country for much of its modem history. Turkey's location and seemingly paradoxical aspirations have left it with something like an identity crisis, or at least an identity dilemma, which continues to mark not only the national character but how Turkey views itself and its place in the world.
The contradictions are manifold. Though it is an unequivocally Islamic country, Turkey is only loosely part of the Middle East, and the Turks are neither ethnically nor linguistically Arab. At the same time, its attempts to fit in with the West have been complicated by Western ambivalence toward Islam, among other reasons. Culturally, Turkey stood alone. Until the independence of the Turkic-speaking Central Asian states and Azerbaijan, the Turkish language was not related to the language of any other internationally recognized sovereign state. Turkey, it seemed, simply did not fit anywhere.
To understand Turkey's confounding—and sometimes confused —position in the world, one need look only at how it has been characterized by outside observers, including scholars, strategists, and diplomats. At different times Turkey has been said to belong, all at once, to the Near East, the Middle East, the southern flank, the northern tier, the Balkans, the Islamic world, the West generally, and Western Europe specifically. Added to those categories since the fall of the Soviet Union are the Turkic world and even, loosely defined …
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