FETHIYE, Turkey - Bomb blasts in Turkey
this week did more than kill three and injure 20.
They dealt another blow to Turkey's tourism sector
and its image as a rock of stability in an
explosive Middle East.
And as important,
the blasts appeared to have further cooled
Turkey's desire to hasten negotiations to join the
European Union. The attacks may also have plunged
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization member
toward more active involvement - including
militarily - in the regional
quagmire.
This week's targets were
carefully chosen - Istanbul and Marmaris and
Antalya, two of Turkey's main tourist resorts on
the Mediterranean coast.
This follows a
pattern over the years of numerous bombings in
which scores of people have been killed and
injured, mainly in Istanbul and tourist resorts on
the Mediterranean.
Tourism was already
down 10% on account of continuing violence in Iraq
and the nuclear impasse in Iran, both neighboring
Turkey, and then the intense war in Lebanon. The
bombing in Turkey has added to the sense of
instability.
The bustling fish market in
Fethiye, a sun-fun sea resort between Marmaris and
Antalya, is now sedate. Security agents in plain
clothes move about showing greater vigilance.
You can buy a kilogram of fresh fish for
as little as US$5, and carry it to Isa Girgin's
barbecue restaurant, where he will cook it for $3
and serve it with bread, salad, water and coffee.
"They want to destroy tourism, our bread
and butter," said Girgin. By "they" he meant, as
most Turks do, Kurdish separatists.
By
design or chance, the terrorist bombs came at a
time of increasing turmoil not only in the Middle
East but within Turkey itself.
Turkey has
lost close to 20 soldiers in recent armed clashes
with Kurdish separatists or in mine blasts, and
demands have been raised for more effective
anti-terror measures.
The Islamic-rooted
government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan
pressed the United States and Iraq to rein in some
5,000 Kurdish guerrillas holed up in the Kandil
Mountains across the Turkish frontier in Iraq.
With no concrete offer of support from the
US, already preoccupied with increasing sectarian
violence in all of Iraq, Turkey carried out a
limited military operation on its own, reportedly
bombing the insurgents in northern Iraq, despite
repeated US warnings against unilateral action.
The Turkish sorties, coming on the heels
of unilateral strikes by Iran against Kurdish
targets in northern Iraq, showed a common
objective more in tune with Iran than the US,
Turkey's traditional "strategic partner" in the
Middle East.
Both Turkey and Iran see
Kurdish insurgents in northern Iraq as bent on
destabilizing their two countries. The US, on the
other hand, has cordial relations with the
autonomous Kurdish administration in northern
Iraq, after Kurdish backing for the US-led
military campaign in driving Saddam Hussein out of
power.
Turkey launched its rapid strike in
northern Iraq in response to public demands to do
something in the face of mounting casualties at
home in clashes with Kurdish insurgents.
Tougher Turkish moves against Kurdish
militants may be in the offing. Turkey now has a
new chief of staff, General Yasar Buyukanit, known
to be uncompromising against the separatist
Kurdish Workers' Party, seen as a terrorist
organization by both the US and the EU.
Buyukanit said while taking command that
"democracy" and "cultural rights" - two issues
pushed by the EU in Turkey's approach to its
Kurdish minority - could not be used to undermine
Turkey as a unitary nation-state.
"The
bombings in Turkey were a reaction by Kurdish
terrorists against Turkish incursion into northern
Iraq and the tough new military policy," analyst
Unal Ozer told Inter Press Service.
With
parliamentary elections due in 14 months, Turks
are swept by a sudden burst of nationalism.
Gone is the optimism generated by the
prospect of becoming a full EU member, as public
support for EU membership has dropped from 85% to
less than 50% within two years.
Hardly
anyone gets excited about talk of accession
anymore. Turks are in effect barely moving ahead.
The Financial Times recently ran a headline "Where
is Ali Babacan?" in reference to Turkey's chief
accession negotiator, noting that he is seldom in
Brussels.
It appears that, for the time
being, concern over internal security and national
pride override the 40-year dream of becoming the
first Muslim nation to join the EU and to disprove
the theory of "the clash of civilizations".
Paradoxically, many Turks are now in tune
with many Europeans: neither may want the other in
the same club.
