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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study would not have assumed its present form without the generous assistance of many people. I should like to thank officials of the European Community, members of the Permanent Delegations of Turkey, Greece, the United States and the United Kingdom to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, for taking the time to discuss with me some of the themes covered in the following pages. Many errors and some inconsistencies were disposed of by those who were kind enough to attend a seminar at Chatham House in January 1985 to discuss the first draft of this paper. Joan Pearce, head of Policy Studies at Chatham House, was an unflaggingly patient and constructive editor. The manuscript benefited from the attention of Susan Walker at several stages. My profoundest thanks go to all those whose conversations with me over a number of years have helped me form my opinions.
May 1985 / D.M.B.
1 Introduction
Turkey and the West
Relations between Turkey and the Western world can be expected to alter significantly over the next decade as Turkey consolidates its achievement in building an industrialized and urban society. Turkey is the first Middle Eastern and Islamic country to achieve genuine industrialization within the framework of the nation-state. The cultural and political choices it now faces are less straightforward than they appeared to be in the 1930s. Turkish society is not merely divided about these choices; it is only partially aware of them.
Turkey’s long history of involvement in the politics of Europe, and thereby the West, does not offer clear guidance for the future. Primarily because of the religious divide between Christianity and Islam, the history of Turkish-European relations is largely one of confrontation, antagonism and mutual indifference, dislike or misunderstanding. The cultural divide remains strong even today.
Since 1952 Turkey has played a full part in most Western and European international institutions, from NATO to the OECD to the Council of Europe. This involvement has been somewhat procrustean and occasionally controversial. Turkey’s army is larger and poorer than most NATO armies. Its social and economic statistics — and requirement for aid — are far from typical of OECD members. Turkey’s credentials as a member of the Council of Europe have several times been challenged, and Western diplomats privately admit that Turkish membership of the Council is possible, even in normal circumstances, only if something of an exception is made on various matters of principle.
From the Western point of view, Turkey’s geographical position makes it a valued strategic ally. The political and military balance in the Middle East would be hard to imagine if Turkey were overtly neutral or pro-Soviet. Nevertheless, Turks — and their culture - are little known despite their presence in increasing numbers in all Western countries, and there is little press or academic interest in Turkey.
From Turkey’s point of view, despite some of the psychological complications and ambiguities which are regularly encountered in late-modernizing societies and which were most freely ventilated in Turkey in the 1960s, when freedom of discussion was at its greatest, involvement with the West would appear to have brought a range of benefits. Contact with advanced industrial societies remains the chief source of innovation and advance in Turkish society. It is also, it seems fair to say, the main source of improvement where liberal values and human rights are concerned. For this reason even left-wing intellectuals in Turkey who argue for an autarkic or isolationist industrial order, aimed at self-sufficiency, tend to value non-economic links with the West. The relative success of Turkish industrialization since 1963 has begun to blunt the force of arguments, characteristic of ‘Third World’ societies, which claim that Turkey’s dealings with the West are a simple pattern of inferiority, penetration and exploitation.
At the political and institutional level, while Turkey’s links with the West have been largely taken for granted for three and a half decades, day-to-day relations have been dominated by tensions which have acted as a brake on the development of a very close or warm involvement. Western diplomats in Ankara would no doubt argue that these are' reflections of important differences between Turkish and Western societies. Administrative entanglements with bureaucracy, confrontations over human rights issues, the endless round of the media — these form a quite different agenda from that facing the architects of Danish-British or French-Norwegian relations. Crucially, the nature and role of public opinion is different. Is this something that can be expected to change as Turkish society changes?
In practical terms, then, the West’s relations with Turkey tend to consist of a set of institutional connections of varying durability upon which different tensions operate. The most stable of Turkey’s institutional connections with the West is undoubtedly its membership of NATO — which, though put to a certain amount of hamfisted questioning in the 1978-9 period when a centre-left government was in power, has never seriously been in doubt. The most problematic of Turkey’s institutional affiliations is that with the European Community. Unless (as is occasionally argued) the Community is now in effect merely a ‘political bloc’, EC-Turkey relations involve both sides in momentous choices about their own identity. Other economic links — with the OECD, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund or the International Finance Corporation — are essentially workaday problems of implementing policy decisions already taken. Other political links (for example Turkish membership of the Council of Europe) are in normal times relegated to the diplomatic stratosphere, far beyond the sight of Western public opinion. But the more Turkey and Turks begin to impinge directly on Western societies, the more important political tensions will become. These can range from affronts to national pride (unfavourable publicity over drugs cases, for example) to the contest between Greece and Turkey. It may not be a simple accident of history that during the past decade the historical antagonisms between Turks and Greeks and Armenians have re-erupted after half a century of relative dormancy to bedevil Western diplomacy in the Eastern Mediterranean. If so, the going may get tougher rather than easier, as East Mediterranean societies become more intertwined with Western and European institutions without economic and social convergence at a more fundamental level.
Without genuine convergence — which in Turkey’s case implies both continuing success at industrialization and a clear act of will - Turkish-Western relations may continue to be beset by a litany of minor, but not negligible, diplomatic grievances, frustrations and irritations on both sides. But if one assumes steady development of the Turkish economy to at least the point reached by Spain in the 1980s, skilful emphasis on like-mindedness and practical cooperation could offer the West an enrichment of which it may not be aware: the accession of a large and dynamic society of 65 million people with a distinctive contribution to make — towards the life of Europe in particular and the West in general — by means of its pragmatism, resourcefulness and human spirit. Rejection of the idea of convergence - or failure in the attempt - may be expensive for both sides, and result in a proliferation of the kinds of minor dispute which complicate Turkey’s relations with the West and have turned such gatherings as the meetings of the Turkey-EC Joint Association Council into minor arenas for political elbow-wrestling, to the annoyance of everyone involved. In theory at least, the West’s defensive position vis-&-vis the Soviet Union would be weakened. For Turkey, the alternative to a more organic involvement with the West is probably greater isolation, perhaps disguised by a strong bilateral relationship with the USA (though for various reasons this does not seem very probable), or some kind of superficial Islamic or Middle Eastern coloration. There is no real avenue for a thoroughgoing Turkish reintegration with the Middle East, if only because Turkey is not an Arab country, and in any case the scope for integration with its southern neighbours is relatively slight. If Turkey had not firmly signalled its intention to stay outside the Russian and East European world, as it has done for several centuries and most recently by joining NATO, it would be easier to imagine it going in that direction than somehow ‘returning’ to the Middle East. The basic choice for Turkey seems to be between some form of isolation or, despite the statistical incongruities and mutual uncertainties, a fuller involvement with the West. But until the evolution of a traditional society into a modern and urbanized one falls into a complete perspective, the second option will involve an element of faith.
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