ISTANBUL - Two soaring bridges link Asia and Europe in this historic city,
which straddles the two continents.
For the past few years Turkey has likewise acted as a crucial bridge between
the Western and Muslim worlds. Turkey is a member of both the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Organization of the Islamic Conference
(OIC). The current secretary general of the OIC is a Turkish historian.
In early April, United States President Barak Obama issued a crucial appeal for
understanding between the West and Islam during a visit to the Turkish capital,
Ankara.
The Turkish government has been led since 2002 by the
moderate-Islamist Justice and Development Party (known by its Turkish initials,
AKP). Now Turkey, a democratic country of 71.5 million people that has long
embraced the separation of church (mosque) and state, looks set to play an
increasingly important role in both the Middle East and the broader Muslim
world.
In the Arab-Israeli arena, for eight months until last December, Turkey
sponsored and hosted a series of breakthrough proximity talks between Israel
and Syria. It brought the two nations closer than ever to concluding a final
peace agreement. The talks were abruptly ended after Israel invaded Gaza on
December 28.
In February 2006, Ankara played host to Khaled Meshaal, the national leader of
the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas. One month earlier, Hamas had won the
elections to the Palestinian legislature.
Turkey's President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have
both repeatedly called on the international community to respect the results of
the Palestinian elections and urged Western countries to find a way to deal
with Hamas.
In an achievement that indicates Turkey's weight in world affairs, Turkey has
been able to retain its good relations with Israel even while adopting this
stance.
On US-Iranian relations, Gul and Erdogan have consistently called for a
negotiated resolution of the two countries' problems. At a conference held by
Sabanci University's Istanbul Policy Center here Thursday, former diplomat Can
Buharli noted that Turkey's relations with Iran have grown stronger over the
past decade.
Turkey is a majority-Sunni country. Inter Press Service found no Turkish
nationals who agreed with the claim made by some Western officials that an
Iranian-backed "Shi'ite wave" is about to take over the Middle East or that
Iran's nuclear program poses a threat to the region.
In 2003, Turkey firmly opposed the George W Bush administration's decision to
invade Iraq, and refused to allow the US military to use Turkey as a transit
corridor for the invasion.
The distinctive position that Turkey now occupies in world affairs is, most
Turkish commentators agree, largely a result of the in-depth strategic thought
of Dr Ahmet Davutoglu, who was appointed foreign minister on May 1. Before
that, Davutoglu, 50, worked as a special adviser to Erdogan, running Turkey's
shuttle diplomacy between Israel and Syria and other initiatives on Erdogan's
behalf.
Some years ago, Davutoglu developed the concept that Turkey should have "zero
problems with its neighbors". More recently, he has advocated building on that
to strive for "maximum cooperation" with all neighbors.
With some neighbors, like Armenia and the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, that
approach has proven difficult. But even with those two, Erdogan has
considerably improved relations that were previously very tense.
In late April, Turkey concluded a five-point "road map" agreement with Armenia.
One of the points stipulated that the two countries will establish a joint
historical commission to investigate what happened to the Armenians in Turkey
in 1915.
Regarding northern Iraq, Turks now seem confident that they have solid
commitments from the ethnic-Kurdish provincial leaders there that they will no
longer give sanctuary to fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a
movement of ethnic-Kurdish Turkish citizens that has waged a lengthy armed
struggle in eastern Turkey in support of its secessionist goals.
Israel is not an immediate neighbor to Turkey. But even there, Erdogan has
worked for maximum cooperation, despite deep differences over Tel Aviv's policy
toward the Palestinians. In January, those differences spilled into the elite
halls of the annual Davos conference when Israeli president Shimon Peres raised
his voice to Erdogan in a panel discussion - and Erdogan stormed out of the
hall.
Peres later called Erdogan to apologize.
For all its attention to the Middle East, Turkish foreign policy is still
strongly oriented toward the country's longstanding goal of joining the
European Union.
"We see ourselves as part of the West, without a doubt," Buharli said. "And our
neighbors in the region see us that way, too. Indeed, that is part of what
makes us attractive to them."
The two successive AKP governments in Ankara have brought seven years of
unprecedented political stability to a country that throughout the Cold War was
plagued by numerous military coups. Many people around the world also view the
AKP as an intriguing example of how an Islamist party that commits to
democratic principles can become well-integrated into the political life of a
democracy.
When Turkey became a nation-state in 1923, it was founded on the explicitly
secular and Turkish-nationalist principles of its first president, Kemal
Ataturk. From then until today, Turkish women have been forbidden to wear
Muslim-style headscarves in public universities or government offices.
Ataturk ran the republic as a one-party state, clamping down on political
opponents. Under him and until very recently, successive Turkish governments
also used the military to ruthlessly suppress any signs of cultural autonomy or
political separatism from members of the country's sizeable Kurdish minority.
Since the AKP came to power in 2002 it has moved ahead carefully on all these
once explosive issues. It has not pushed forward its longstanding request that
scarf-wearing women be allowed their full economic and social rights.
The wives of both Gul and Erdogan are scarf-wearers, as are around one-quarter
of the women one sees on the streets of Istanbul. (The proportion is reportedly
higher in the country's interior.) But here, as in many majority-Muslim
countries, young women with and without headscarves mix easily together.
On Kurdish issues the AKP has moved ahead more determinedly - in a
constructive, pro-peace way. Earlier this year the public television station
started airing programing in Kurdish for the first time.
In general, the AKP has built a strong political base by pursuing a policy of
"live and let live" at the ideological level - while also paying attention to
the efficient and non-corrupt delivery of good public services to all citizens.
One liberal secularist told IPS that though she was not an ideological
supporter of the AKP, "If you are a liberal in Turkey, then the AKP is probably
the party that will best support your needs and interests."
Not all Turkish secularists agree. On Sunday, around 20,000 militant supporters
of Ataturk-style secularism demonstrated in Ankara against the AKP and against
a wide-ranging investigation the country's judiciary has launched into a
reported anti-government plot hatched in 2007 in what is called the Ergenekon
case.
Istanbul residents expressed different opinions to IPS on whether there is any
substance to the Ergenekon allegations, or whether the whole affair is an AKP
exaggeration or witch-hunt. But they seemed to agree that the judiciary could
be trusted to sort out the truth from the many lurid allegations now swirling
around the case.
In a country where the rule of law was trampled on so thoroughly until recent
years, that trust in the judiciary seems like a significant achievement.
Helena Cobban is a veteran Middle East analyst and author. She blogs at
www.JustWorldNews.org.
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