EurasiaNet Eurasia Insight - Eurasian Idea Could Bring Together Ertswhile Enemies Turkey and Russia

EURASIA INSIGHT

EURASIAN IDEA COULD BRING TOGETHER ERTSWHILE ENEMIES TURKEY AND RUSSIA

Igor Torbakov 3/18/02

A top Turkish general’s provocative suggestion that Ankara should turn its back on Europe and embrace strategic alternatives has triggered a heated public debate over the current state of Turkish-European Union relations. At the same time, the remarks by the secretary-general of the Turkey’s all-powerful National Security Council (MGK), Tuncer Kilinc, reveal a striking parallel in political attitudes among a certain segment of the policy-making elite in both Turkey and Russia.

Speaking at the conference "How to Establish a Peace Belt Around Turkey" held by the Military Academies Command, Gen. Kilinc expressed frustration at the EU’s policies towards Turkey, and said Ankara needed to start looking eastward for new allies. He singled out Russia as a potential strategic partner. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archives].

Official statements have sought to distance the government and military from Kilinc’s comments, suggesting that the high-ranking officer was expressing his personal views. Local analysts dispute this contention, however.

"It is out of the question," says one well-informed Turkish commentator, "that a Turkish general just feels like saying something on a very sensitive political matter without prior approval of his superiors." Also, the observer adds that "Kilinc is no ordinary general. By August 2003, he will take over as Air Force Commander. Nor is the MGK an ordinary security office."

In the opinion of Cengiz Candar, an influential columnist at the Yeni Safak newspaper, "Gen. Kilinc’s words definitely reflect a tendency that prevails entirely at the higher ranks of the Turkish Armed Forces."

The majority of the local and international analysts agree that Turkey’s threat to shift its geopolitical orientation was meant primarily for the Brussels’ ears. "Kilinc tried to give a message mainly to the European Union," wrote the columnist Sami Kohen in the daily Milliyet. However, this seemingly tactical move also appears to highlight a deeper trend - namely, a long-standing split in Turkish society.

"At the end of the 18th century, Ottoman Turks were divided over European aspirations of Sultan Selim III," notes Burak Bekdil in the Turkish Daily News. "More than two centuries after, Republican Turks, too, are divided over the country’s long, difficult journey into Europe."

One cannot fail to notice here an interesting similarity between Turkey’s experience and Russia’s many attempts at Europeanization, which invariably produced deep divisions in Russian society. Like Turkey, the debate in Russia has raged for over two centuries. At the end of the 18th century, for example, Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov decried the results of Peter the Great’s westernizing reforms in his famous pamphlet "On the Corruption of Morals in Russia." Currently, the bulk of Russia’s public and a sizable portion of its political class are wary about President Vladimir Putin’s pro-Western policies.

Since the 16th century, both Turkey and Russia have participated in the international European political system. However, while the two countries have been recognized by other European countries as political and military powers, both Turkey and Russia have struggled to gain acceptance as cultural equals.

Turkey’s and Russia’s chronically incomplete Europeanization, some commentators contend, engenders a vicious cycle. The reluctance of European nations to view Moscow and Ankara as truly equal partners strengthens within both countries a "traditionalist" school of thought that champions indigenous "national values" and discourages close ties with the "evil West."

Many present-day Russian traditional thinkers tend to call themselves Eurasianists after the group of Russian émigrés that was active in Europe in the 1920s. One of the central tenets of both the founders of the movement and their contemporary followers is that Russia constitutes a unique society that differs from both Europe and Asia. At the same time, Russia’s strategic allies, Eurasianists assert, lie primarily in the East.

Gen. Kilinc’s controversial statement can be interpreted as the manifestation of a Turkish version of Eurasianism. Other Turkish leaders have echoed Eurasianist sentiment. For instance, in a recent commentary, Turkish Parliament Speaker Omer Izgi said "Turkey is a great power around its own axis. It is a great state."

"It does not need to seek anything. If obstacles on the part of the EU continue in the same way, and if they become unacceptable, Turkey will find it possible to unite with other forces around it," continued Izgi, a member of the Nationalist Movement Party.

Some political analysts are now asking whether Eurasianist thinking in Turkey and Russia has enough adherents with sufficient clout to bring about a strategic partnership between Ankara and Moscow. Expert opinion differs over the answer. Some point out that Turkey and Russia have been perennial archrivals in the vast region stretching from the Balkans to the Caucasus. "It is no secret," says the analyst Bekdil, "that the Turks have for centuries perceived the [Russian] empire, communist and post-Soviet Russia as elements of a serious foreign threat in this part of the world."

Others argue that when both countries found themselves politically isolated and excluded from the "European concert," they made natural allies. There was a long honeymoon between Kemalist Turkey and bolshevist Russia in the 1920s-1930s. This period of Russian-Turkish cooperation, some historians say, was mutually beneficial economically and also helped stabilize the restive multiethnic Transcaucasus following the upheavals of the World War I and the Russian revolution.

Presently, observers say, Moscow and Ankara are, in fact, faced with the similar set of challenges. The two countries have already cut some major energy deals and continue to explore the ways of how to best use the rich resources of the Caspian. Turkey and Russia also seek to settle the numerous conflicts in the post-Soviet Caucasus.

Eurasianist ideas are found even in the ranks of the pro-European, moderate Motherland Party (ANAP). Praising Gen. Kilinc’s words as a "brave statement," the Motherland Party’s deputy chairman, Bulent Akarcali, said Turkey’s alliance with Russia and Iran would be "extremely appropriate."

"It is important to secure this," Akarcali said. Winning Iran and Russia to Turkey’s side "will also bring comfort to the Caucasus."

Attending a meeting of Azerbaijani and Armenian journalists held in Capadoccia last weekend, Akarcali suggested that a five-member group, including Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Russia, be formed in order to solve the problems related with the three nations of the southern Caucasus. Several long-standing political dilemmas in the Caucasus, especially the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, are seen as obstacles that prevent efforts to develop Caspian Basin natural resources from reaching their full potential.

Editor�s Note: Igor Torbakov is a freelance journalist and researcher who specializes in CIS political affairs. He holds an MA in History from Moscow State University and a PhD from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He was Research Scholar at the Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 1988-1997; a Visiting Scholar at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC, 1995, and a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University, New York, 2000. He is now based in Istanbul, Turkey.

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