Turkey's Historic Role

[MJ]

Turkey's Historic Role

 

Wall Street Journal, Europe, November 7,

2001

 

Last week Turkey became the only Muslim country to send soldiers to Afghanistan -- and only the second NATO ally to do so. Turkey is sending 90 troops to northern Afghanistan to help train anti-Taliban fighters and administer aid. The ennui that greeted this pledge in some Western quarters utterly misses the significance of Turkey's potential role both in the current campaign to unseat the Taliban and destroy the al Qaeda network and in the broader postwar geopolitical order that must be constructed from the present chaos.

 

The benefit of having the Turkish army on the ground is a no-brainer. Turkey's soldiers are battle-hardened, having fought Kurdish guerrillas in southeast Turkey for a decade. They are used to mountain terrain. Should Turkey be open to broader participation, it fields NATO's second largest army after the U.S. and would be no small resource for the U.S.-led effort.

 

Nor does it take great imagination to see the PR value of Turkey's support. The willingness of a Muslim nation to send its soldiers into war in Afghanistan -- and on the eve of Ramadan -- demonstrates to the Muslim world that the West is not at war with a religion but with radical ideologues who use religion as a cover for terrorism.

 

And yet as useful as Turkey may be for winning the war, it is indispensable in the creation of a semi-stable postwar order in that country and a saner political environment in the Muslim world. To understand why this is so, it helps to review a bit of history.

 

Afghanistan was the first government to recognize the Turkish nationalist movement led by Kemal Mustafa Ataturk in 1921 when a second, Ottoman, government still sat in Istanbul. Ataturk rejected the revanchism and expansionism of other 20th-century ideologies. He was not an empire builder, but an adapter who recognized the Western international order and set out to make Turkey a part of it. His revolution was cultural, political and economic. It required the wholesale change of Islamic institutions, the adoption of Western legal codes and the Latin alphabet, Western clothing and formal surnames.

 

It was Ataturk who personally opened the first Afghan embassy in Ankara in 1921. Soon afterwards, Ataturk sent a delegation of diplomats and military personnel to Kabul. When the Turkish Republic was established in 1923, one of its first foreign-policy missions was a far-reaching assistance program for Afghanistan that lasted until the late 1960s. Doctors, nurses, cartographers, engineers, architects and military personnel were sent to Afghanistan to train the local population. The war college in Kabul, the conservatory, musical institutes, medical and engineering schools were founded by Turkish advisers.

 

The Afghan monarch, King Amanullah Khan, took secular, liberal, democratic Turkey as a model for Afghanistan. In the late 1920s, the King paid an official visit to Turkey and signed a number of friendship treaties. In the 1930s, Afghanistan became a member of the Saadabad Pact, together with Turkey and Iran -- essentially a political show of force and independence with a nervous glance toward Hitler's German juggernaut.

 

Afghan society, however, was not quite ready for Kemalism and the king was overthrown in a fundamentalist rebellion. That was followed by a brief spasm of fundamentalism before the monarchy was restored and the Afghan trend toward modernization continued, albeit more slowly. From the mid-1960s onwards, Soviet influence in Afghanistan grew. Turkey's professionals in Afghanistan were gradually withdrawn as the Soviets moved in. Afghan military officers began to be sent to Moscow to be re-educated. A generation of education along Turkish-Western lines was replaced by a new generation of Soviet-influenced Afghans.

 

This history is worth recalling today. Turkey can still serve as a model for Afghanistan and a partner in its civil and political rehabilitation. A post-Taliban role for Turkey might include both a humanitarian element -- ferrying aid to Afghans -- and a peacekeeping role in the prevention of civil disturbances. Turkey would also act as a gatekeeper of sorts, helping to keep outside influences at bay.

 

In the meantime, however, Turkey can serve as a valued adviser for Washington in the war on terrorism, in which Turkey has plenty of experience. During the Oslo accords, Turkish officials worried privately that, as one Turkish official put it, "there would be a political solution but no terrorist solution." Turkey's concern was that any political framework that just assumes the terrorists would go along was a deception. Turkey was right.

 

In its own decade-long battle with Kurdish separatism, Turkey used a different model. In September 1998 Ankara issued an ultimatum to Syria, which had been supporting the PKK terrorists. Either Syria gave up PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and ceased its support for the PKK or Turkey would use its military option. Turkey's parliament wrote the government a blank check and Turkish troops were amassed on the Syrian border. The result was unequivocal: Syria relented and Turkey got its agreement.

 

It will not be easy for Turkey to sign up as a U.S. ally in Afghanistan with any enthusiasm. Turkey's experience following the Gulf War was not salutary. An unchastened Saddam Hussein was left in power and Turkey was saddled with a refugee crisis and a serious loss of trade. It claims that it lost some $40 billion from the Gulf War, adding to the woes of an already troubled economy. A large part of the Turkish population now looks unfavorably on the war on Afghanistan. Turkish officials also warn against a war to unseat Saddam Hussein that might leave Iraq split in three parts and with Baghdad in even more hostile hands.

 

These are legitimate concerns and Turkey has wise counsel to offer in what is treacherous if necessary business. But Turkey can also be emboldened to play a role that it seems history has ordained. To do that, Turkey needs the assurance of Western support. The European Union could make no greater contribution to the war on Islamic radicalism than to regard Turkey's languishing membership bid as a historic imperative. The U.S. should return Turkey's loyalty -- and encourage Turkey to take up another challenge of the type Ataturk recognized early last century.