Turkey, the Challenge of a New Role

Turkey, the Challenge of a New Role

Andrew Mango

The Washington Papers

Written by an author with an intimate and commanding knowledge of modern Turkey, this essay is a significant contribution to the debate on Turkey’s current predicament and its potential role in the emerging “new world order.” In nine trenchant chapters, Dr. Mango examines virtually all the major problems confronting Turkey today and provides the reader with both information and insights.
Feroz Ahmad, Professor of History and University Research Professor
University of Massachusetts, Boston

Andrew Mango presents a balanced treatment of the very sensitive issues with which Turkey is grappling and places them in historical perspective. He stresses the continued importance of the U.S.-Turkey relationship to the turbulent, uncertain international system emerging from the cold war, but does not gloss over the serious domestic challenges facing Turkey. This valuable book surely furthers our understanding of Turkey’s role in the international arena.
Alan K. Simpson, Minority Whip, United States Senate

Andrew Mango was for 14 years in charge of broadcasts in Turkish for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), later heading the BBC's South European Service and its French Language Service. The former publisher of Turkey Confidential, a monthly newsletter on Turkish affairs, Dr. Mango is an honorary research associate of the Modern Turkish Studies Program at the University of London. He served as a member of the editorial board for the Turkish edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Dr. Mango visits Turkey several times a year for academic purposes or journalistic assignments. He was born in Istanbul in 1926 and educated there at the English High School. In 1955 he received his Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where he complemented his knowledge of Turkish by reading Persian and Arabic. Dr. Mango’s books include Turkey (1968), Discovering Turkey (1971), and Turkey: A Delicately Poised Ally (1975). His articles on Turkey and the Middle East have appeared in Middle Eastern Studies and numerous other journals and books.

Contents

Foreword / vii

About the Author / xi

Summary / xiii

Note on Turkish Spelling and Pronunciation / xvi

Introduction / 1

1. The Maturing of a Nation-State / 5
2. The Kurds / 31
3. Growing Pains in the Economy / 54
4. The Social Scene / 64
5. The Religion of Turkey / 76
6. Joining the Rich / 86
7. The Turkic World / 94
8. A Regional Power / 110
9. Philhellenes and Turcophiles / 122

Conclusion / 129

Notes / 134

Selected Bibliography / 136

Index / 139

FOREWORD

To say that Andrew Mango’s Turkey: The Challenge of a New Role provides a most welcome and timely addition to the nearly nonexistent monographic treatment of contemporary Turkey would be a gross understatement. His insightful analysis reflects both a close familiarity with and appreciation for the problems facing this key country.

Turkey is located in a neighborhood that by any standards must be termed marginal and in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact could well become a slum. Turkey’s neighbors have traditionally included Iran, Iraq, Syria, Cyprus, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and the USSR; to this crowded list the USSR’s collapse has added the Russian Republic, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

Turkey is literally surrounded by instability. Russia, whose future is still to be determined, has recently begun exhibiting nationalist tendencies that do not bode well for Turkey. Georgia is still suffering the aftershocks of a particularly brutal civil war, and Armenia and Azerbaijan show little sign of resolving their five-year ethnic dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh. Iran, whose own future course is far from clear, spares no expense in exporting terrorism and its own brand of
Islamic fundamentalism to neighboring Turkey. Iraq’s future remains a question mark, and Syria (despite U.S. efforts to bring it back into the family of nations as part of the overall Arab-
Israeli settlement) remains a major supporter of terrorism, much of it directed against Turkey.
Greece, Turkey’s long-time regional “ally” remains hostile over bilateral issues and the still unresolved Cyprus crisis. Not unlike a petulant child, it does what it can to destabilize Tin-key-most recently allowing the terrorist Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) to open offices in Athens. To survive in this version of the “new world order,” Turkey needs a strong economy and a fair measure of internal stability.

Mango’s perceptive study amply illustrates the absence of these factors in contemporary Turkey. He argues persuasively that Turkey’s ability to play a more substantive role in its troubled part of the world is closely linked to its still undecided success in meeting its own growing internal problems, especially (1) a fragmented political system; (2) an economy stretched beyond its means by high inflation, mounting external and internal debt, and an outmoded tax system; and (3) the direct threat to its territorial integrity represented by the ever-mounting PKK insurgency in the southeast.

To this analysis must be added the growing tendency of an ever-increasing percentage of the electorate to reject the traditional political parties of the center-right and center-left in favor of extremist religious and ultra-nationalist alternatives on the radical right. This trend, observable in municipal and parliamentary election returns of the past five years, is startling: In the 1989 municipal elections, the extreme right took some 10.8 percent of the total vote (Welfare Party or RP 9.8 percent plus National Action Party or MHP 1.0 percent); two years later in the 1991 parliamentary elections, these two parties running together accounted for 16.9 percent of the nationwide total vote. On March 27, 1994, once again in municipal elections, the extreme right tallied 28.28 percent of the total (RP 18.99 percent plus MHP 8.03 percent plus BBP or Grand Unity Party 1.26 percent). Stated differently, within the relatively short span of five years, that percentage of the electorate rejecting the traditional status quo has practically tripled and today comprises close to three out of every ten voters. Given the fragmentation of the Turkish political parties, a similar growth in the next two years could conceivably see the radical right emerge as the winner of the next scheduled parliamentary elections in 1996.

One thing is certain, as Mango writes, “Turkey and the West need each other as never before.” His perceptive study can play a key role in drawing the attention of Western policymakers to this all-important truth. It behooves us all to focus less on what is wrong with Turkey today than on a far more important question: How can the West help ensure that the only Muslim democracy surmounts its current problems and reemerges as strengthened proof that Islam and democracy are not incompatible? Andrew Mango has set forth the problems. Now all of us must look for ways to resolve them.

Heath W. Lowry
Atatürk Professor of Ottoman
and Modem Turkish Studies
Princeton University

Summary

The republic of Turkey has matured into a middle-ranking regional power. Founded in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) as the central successor state of the Ottoman Empire, it is ruled by a freely elected parliament and pursues economic development within the global free market system. Its tradition of statecraft, inherited from the old empire, has helped it surmount internal political crises and develop a successful foreign policy that has ensured the support of like-minded foreign powers in defense of Turkish national independence and the general world order.

When Andrew Mango wrote his first Washington Paper on Turkey in 1975 (Turkey: A Delicately Poised Ally), internal tensions were threatening to erupt into full-scale civil war between Marxists and nationalists, and the country’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was being challenged by a vocal body of neutralists. Both dangers were averted, and Turkey successfully discharged its role as southeastern bastion of the Western alliance until the cold war’s end brought disintegration to the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union.

From the Truman Doctrine’s inception in March 1947 until the end of the cold war, Western—especially U.S.— aid to Turkey was firmly grounded in common interests. It …

Andrew Mango

Turkey
The Challenge of a New Role

Washington Papers

The Washington Paper
Praeger Publishers
Turkey: the Challenge of a New Role
Andrew Mango

Published with
The Center for Strategic
and International Studies
Washington, D.C.

Praeger
Westport, Connecticut
London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mango, Andrew, 1926-
Turkey: the challenge of a new role / Andrew Mango.
p. cm. - (Washington papers; 163)
“Published with the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
Washington, D.C.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-275-94985-0 (alk. paper).
ISBN 0-275-94986-9 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Turkey —Politics and government-1980-
2. Turkey—Foreign relations —1980-
3. Turkey —Social conditions —1960-
4. Turkey - Economic conditions —1960-
I. Center for Strategic & International Studies
(Washington, D.C.) II. Title. III. Series. DR603.M36 / 1994
327.561-dc20 / 94-10581

The Washington Papers are written under the auspices of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and published with CSIS by Praeger Publishers. CSIS, as a public policy research institution, does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in the volumes of this series should be understood to be solely those of the authors.

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.
Copyright © 1994 by the Center for Strategic and International
International Studies

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced,
by any process or technique,
without the express written consent of the publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 94-10581
ISBN: 0-275-94985-0 (cloth)
0-275-94986-9 (paper)

First published in 1994

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