It's the conventional wisdom that Turkey's Islamist Justice and Development Party is leading it "eastward," i.e. away from NATO and its traditional (for the last century, anyway) defense alliance with the West and into the arms of Iran, China and other "eastern" countries. But that's not a correct reading of Turkey today, according to a poll flagged by the Wall Street Journal's Emerging Europe blog.
The poll notes that the unpopularity of NATO in Turkey has been driven not by the AKP, but by nationalists. The poll asked Turks whether NATO is "still essential" or "no longer essential" to Turkey's security. And it found that supporters of the AKP were in fact less likely to say that NATO is "no longer essential" than supporters of the nationalist Nationalist Movement Party and -- possibly more remarkably -- the Kemalist Republican People's Party. And while NATO has become less popular over the past five years among all political groups, it's become much less popular among nationalists than among other Turks.
The Journal suggests that it's nationalists who are in fact pushing the AKP prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan into a more anti-NATO posture:
That’s a finding more surprising to foreigners than to Turks, who have long watched nationalist leaders attack the ruling AK Party for selling out the country to foreign, and in particular U.S., interests.
Turkey has said it would be willing to host an office for the Taliban, in the hopes that would help advance a peace process ending the war in Afghanistan. From the AP:
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that he talked last month about hosting a Taliban office with Burhanuddin Rabbani, a visiting former president of Afghanistan who leads a peace council set up by the Afghan government to work toward a political solution.
“We discussed in detail their request to (establish) such an office and said that we are ready to do everything possible for this process,” Davutoglu said Monday on a trip to Hungary. “If there is such a demand, Turkey will help with full capacity.”
Officials from Afghanistan had previously talked about such a possibility, but Turkey has been publicly silent on the issue until now. Having such an office in a non-neighboring country would obviously make it much easier to come to a political settlement of the war in Afghanistan (and presumably would reduce the chances of dealing with fake Taliban leaders).
In a report (pdf) last month (flagged by the AP), the Century Foundation said some Taliban members were interested:
Turkey has hosted joint "urban warfare" exercises with troops from Afghanistan and Pakistan, comprising sniper and anti-tank units from the three countries. A video, apparently from the exercise:
The number of troops was small -- apparently 128 -- but the meaning of the exercise was more political than operational. Turkey has long been NATO's point of contact for relations with Pakistan, and Washington and Brussels have been trying to get Turkey to help build relations between the militaries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. So this exercise -- agreed upon at a summit between the three countries in December -- is a step in that direction. From the Pakistan military press service:
It is pertinent to mention here that this is the first time that a Trilateral Exercise among the three countries is being conducted on the Turkish soil .It will play a pivotal role in cementing close military ties between the countries in the realm of combating the menace of terrorism and extremism being spearheaded by the inimical forces.
For all the hand-wringing about Turkey's "shift to the East," things like this are a reminder that Turkey is uniquely positioned to manage NATO's relations with countries to its east.
Turkey is ratcheting up the tension with the U.S. over the purchase of next-generation fighter jets, saying that it is putting "on hold" its purchases of F-35s because the U.S. is refusing to share with Turkey some software codes that control aspects of the plane's operations. From Today's Zaman:
Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül said on Tuesday, following a meeting of the Defense Industry Implementation Committee (SSİK), that the negotiations over the F-35 procurement tender had not yielded “satisfactory results.” He said, “We will evaluate the order in the next meeting, in light of the progress made in the talks by then.” He said much ground had been covered in the talks in terms of technology sharing, but this was not enough for Turkey to accept the jets.
An earlier story in the same newspaper explained in more detail the so-called "code crisis":
Though Ankara plans at this point to purchase around 100 of these fighter jets, there is the awareness in the Turkish capital that without the codes in question, possession of the jet planes will only be partial. There are assertions at hand that the F-35s will be controllable from outside sources, that they may be defenseless against electronic warfare and that no changes will be able to be made to their software.
An anonymous Turkish official puts the issue in stark terms:
The U.S. can maintain its global primacy if it (among other things) plays Russia off China, India, Iran and Turkey off Russia and Turkey off Iran. That's the analysis of globe-spinner extraordinaire Robert Kaplan, along with his brother Stephen (apparently recently retired as a top CIA official).
The essay, America Primed, is in the new edition of The National Interest and doesn't deal too explicitly with the Caucasus or Central Asia. But it's all about how the U.S. (assisted by the "Anglosphere," other English-speaking countries like Canada, the U.K. and Australia) can maintain dominance on the Eurasian continent. And that requires American leadership to make sure that no other country -- in particular China, Russia or Iran -- gets too powerful. What does that entail, specifically?
For one, playing India off Russia (and "punishing" Pakistan):
Out of national pride, and because of its own tense relationships with China and Pakistan, India needs to remain officially nonaligned. But that will not stop New Delhi from accepting more help from the United States, especially as India now wants to wean itself off Russian arms and replace them with better quality American equipment. Washington should require no quid pro quo from India to make it even more powerful in the region; this is about more than public pronouncements and diplomatic atmospherics, this is about quietly delivering arms, transferring technology and supplying intelligence data to one nation to punish another for taking billions of American dollars without providing the crucial help we require in return.
Also, encouraging Turkey, even with an apparently growing Islamist orientation, to counterbalance Iran:
The "New Type Patrol Boat" at its inauguration, soon to be in the Turkmenistan Navy.
Turkmenistan has quietly made the first moves in its attempt to build a new navy, contracting with Turkish shipyard Dearsan for two new fast patrol boats.
Not too much has been published about the deal, but this article in Hurriyet says the contract is for 55 million Euros. Some details of the ship are available here: it has a displacement of 400 tons and a 40 mm gun made by Italian company Oto Melara.
Neither Dearsan nor Turkmenistan seem to have done anything to publicize this news, which suggests it's going to continue to be difficult to keep up with Turkmenistan's military modernization. But it appears it's serious.
Given the pushback that Turkey has been giving to NATO missile defense plans, some Republican U.S. senators have come up with an alternate location for a missile defense site: Georgia. If you recall, Turkey is the proposed site of a missile defense system for NATO, but Turkey was trying to impose some conditions on that participation, in particular not naming any country in particular as the target of the shield, and sharing information with Israel. It's the latter condition that the senators especially object to in a letter (pdf) to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, as reported by ForeignPolicy.com's The Cable blog. Georgia, they said, would give NATO no such static:
We believe that the Republic of Georgia's geographic location would make it an ideal site for a missile defense radar aimed at Iran, and would offer clear advantages for the protection of the United States from a long range missile as compared to Turkey, or other potential locations in southeastern Europe. What's more, the Republic of Georgia should be a significant partner for future defense cooperation with the U.S., whether as a future member of NATO or in another capacity; it is already one of our nation's most loyal allies in the NATO mission in Afghanistan.
(Note that implicitly, the senators also don't like Turkey's delicacy in refusing to explicitly name the target of the shield -- it's against Iran.)
Last month, Turkey announced that it was going to build an indigenous fighter jet by 2023, which raised the question: what's the point, given that it's already building fighter jets with the U.S., including the current F-16 and the next-generation F-35? Today's Zaman provides a possible answer: it's reconsidering its aerospace cooperation with the U.S. altogether:
Turkey is seriously reconsidering the myriad agreements it has signed with the US, as well as its participation in an international consortium for the procurement of new generation fighter jets, due to rising costs and persisting problems originating from the American side.
Turkey is now seeking new ways to sidestep difficulties in the procurement of F-16 fighter planes, which it has been jointly producing with the US since 1987, due to the delayed delivery by the US authorities of some of the plane’s parts and accessories. There have been serious doubts as to whether Turkey’s plan to purchase 100 F-35 fighter planes would ever materialize, as the country is thinking about withdrawing from the consortium following the hike in costs that resulted from other countries leaving from the consortium.
According to the story, the U.S. has reneged on several agreements with Turkey regarding F-16 production, and that Washington appears to be growing wary of Turkey's loyalty, for reasons including the joint China-Turkey air exercises last year.
That is apparently the claim of former top Turkish intelligence official Osman Nuri Gundes, who has published a memoir alleging that the Fethullah Gulen movement has been sheltering CIA agents in Central Asia since the 1990s. According to the Washington Post's SpyTalk blog, "in the 1990s, Gundes alleges, the movement "sheltered 130 CIA agents" at its schools in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan alone."
The Gulen movement already is a controversial one in Central Asia, with governments cracking down to varying degrees because of the group's alleged Islamist or pan-Turkic bent. And that's without allegations of being a CIA stalking horse.
SpyTalk's author, Jeff Stein, talked to a couple of former CIA officials involved with Central Asia and they poured cold water on the allegation:
Former CIA operative Robert Baer, chief of the agency’s Central Asia and Caucasus operations from 1995 through 1997, called the allegations bogus. "The CIA didn't have any ‘agents’ in Central Asia during my tenure,” he said.
It’s possible, Baer granted, that the CIA “turned around this ship after I left,” but only the spy agency could say for sure, and the CIA does not comment on operational sources and methods.
A U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, also said Gundes’s “accounts are ringing no bells whatsoever.”
But that's what they would say, isn't it... Anyway, Sibel Edmonds, the FBI-translator-turned-whistleblower, says that account doesn't go far enough, and the Gulen movement is an extremist Islamist one -- and that the CIA is cooperating with them nevertheless:
Turkey is betting that Central Asia will be a growing market for its weapons manufacturers, with plans to set up an office in either Azerbaijan or Turkmenistan to promote Turkish defense exports, reports Today's Zaman:
Turkey has decided to take yet another step in increasing its defense industry exports by launching three more promotional offices in Europe, Central Asia and the Gulf.
According to information Today’s Zaman received from Defense Ministry sources, Turkey has intensified efforts to that end in the past couple of months. The sources, who wished to remain anonymous, said the country already received an offer from Qatar to establish an office inside the country’s General Staff headquarters, while the remaining two offices will be opened in Belgium and either Azerbaijan or Turkmenistan. The first such office was opened in Washington, D.C., last month and retired Air Marshal Maurice Lee McFann was brought as the head of the office in the US capital.
It's telling that Central Asia is included among the far larger defense markets of Europe, the U.S. and the Middle East, and suggests that Turkey foresees a lot of growth there. Turkey's straight defense exports to the region have thus far been pretty scanty, though it is lately setting up a lot of joint ventures with companies in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Turkmenistan, however, is a curious choice for the site of such an office. The Turkmenistan government doesn't announce much about their military procurement plans, but does Turkey know more than the rest of us?
