THE
WALL STREET JOURNAL
ANKARA DISPATCH
The Sick
Man of Europe--Again
Islamism and leftism
add up to anti-American madness in Turkey.
BY ROBERT L. POLLOCK
Wednesday, February 16, 2005 12:01 a.m.
ANKARA, Turkey--Several years ago I
attended an exhibition in Istanbul. The theme was local art from the era
of the country's last military coup (1980). But the artists seemed a lot
more concerned with the injustices of global capitalism than the fate of
Turkish democracy. In fact, to call the works leftist caricatures--many
featured fat capitalists with Uncle Sam hats and emaciated workers--would
have been an understatement. As one astute local reviewer put it (I quote
from memory): "This shows that Turkish artists were willing to abase
themselves voluntarily in ways that Soviet artists refused even at the
height of Stalin's oppression."
That
exhibition came to mind amid all the recent gnashing of teeth in the U.S.
over the question of "Who lost Turkey?" Because it shows that a
50-year special relationship, between longtime NATO allies who fought
Soviet expansionism together starting in Korea, has long had to weather
the ideological hostility and intellectual decadence of much of Istanbul's
elite. And at the 2002 election, the increasingly corrupt mainstream
parties that had championed Turkish-American ties self-destructed, leaving
a vacuum that was filled by the subtle yet insidious Islamism of the
Justice and Development (AK) Party. It's this combination of old leftism
and new Islamism--much more than any mutual pique over Turkey's refusal to
side with us in the Iraq war--that explains the collapse in relations.
And what a
collapse it has been. On a brief visit to Ankara earlier this month with
Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith, I found a poisonous atmosphere--one
in which just about every politician and media outlet (secular and
religious) preaches an extreme combination of America- and Jew-hatred that
(like the Turkish artists) voluntarily goes far further than
anything found in most of the Arab world's state-controlled press. If I
hesitate to call it Nazi-like, that's only because Goebbels would probably
have rejected much of it as too crude.
Consider the
Islamist newspaper Yeni Safak, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's
favorite. A Jan. 9 story claimed that U.S. forces were tossing so many
Iraqi bodies into the Euphrates that mullahs there had issued a fatwa
prohibiting residents from eating its fish. Yeni Safak has also repeatedly
claimed that U.S. forces used chemical weapons in Fallujah. One of its
columnists has alleged that U.S. soldiers raped women and children there
and left their bodies in the streets to be eaten by dogs. Among the
paper's "scoops" have been the 1,000 Israeli soldiers deployed
alongside U.S. forces in Iraq, and that U.S. forces have been harvesting
the innards of dead Iraqis for sale on the U.S. "organ market."
It's not
much better in the secular press. The mainstream Hurriyet has accused
Israeli hit squads of assassinating Turkish security personnel in Mosul,
and the U.S. of starting an occupation of Indonesia under the guise of
humanitarian assistance. At Sabah, a columnist last fall accused the U.S.
ambassador to Turkey, Eric Edelman, of letting his "ethnic
origins"--guess what, he's Jewish--determine his behavior. Mr.
Edelman is indeed the all-too-rare foreign-service officer who takes
seriously his obligation to defend America's image and interests abroad.
The intellectual climate in which he's operating has gone so mad that he
actually felt compelled to organize a conference call with scientists from
the U.S. Geological Survey to explain that secret U.S. nuclear testing did
not cause the recent tsunami.
Never in an
ostensibly friendly country have I had the impression of embassy staff so
besieged. Mr. Erdogan's office recently forbade Turkish officials from
attending a reception at the ambassador's residence in honor of the
"Ecumenical" Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, who resides in
Istanbul. Why? Because "ecumenical" means universal, which
somehow makes it all part of a plot to carve up Turkey.
Perhaps the
most bizarre anti-American story au courant in the Turkish capital
is the "eighth planet" theory, which holds not only that the
U.S. knows of an impending asteroid strike, but that we know it's going to
hit North America. Hence our desire to colonize the Middle East.
It all
sounds loony, I know. But such stories are told in all seriousness at the
most powerful dinner tables in Ankara. The common thread is that almost
everything the U.S. is doing in the world--even tsunami relief--has
malevolent motivations, usually with the implication that we're acting as
muscle for the Jews.
In the face
of such slanders Turkish politicians have been utterly silent. In fact,
Turkish parliamentarians themselves have accused the U.S. of
"genocide" in Iraq, while Mr. Erdogan (who we once hoped would
set for the Muslim world an example of democracy) was among the few world
leaders to question the legitimacy of the Iraqi elections. When
confronted, Turkish pols claim they can't risk going against "public
opinion."
All of which
makes Mr. Erdogan a prize hypocrite for protesting to Condoleezza Rice the
unflattering portrayal of Turkey in an episode of the fictional TV show
"The West Wing." The episode allegedly depicts Turkey as having
been taking over by a retrograde populist government that threatens
women's rights. (Sounds about right to me.)
In the old
days, Turkey would have had an opposition party strong enough to bring
such a government closer to sanity. But the only opposition now is a
moribund People's Republican Party, or CHP, once the party of Ataturk. At
a recent party congress, its leader accused his main challenger of having
been part of a CIA plot against him. That's not to say there aren't a few
comparatively pro-U.S. officials left in the current government and the
state bureaucracies. But they're afraid to say anything in public. In
private, they whine endlessly about trivial things the U.S. "could
have done differently."
Entirely
forgotten is that President Bush was among the first world leaders to
recognize Prime Minister Erdogan, while Turkey's own legal system was
still weighing whether he was secular enough for the job. Forgotten have
been decades of U.S. military assistance. Forgotten have been years of
American efforts to secure a pipeline route for Caspian oil that
terminates at the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Forgotten has been the fact that
U.S. administrations continue to fight annual attempts in Congress to pass
a resolution condemning modern Turkey for the long-ago Armenian genocide.
Forgotten has been America's persistent lobbying for Turkish membership in
the European Union.
Forgotten,
above all, has been America's help against the PKK. Its now-imprisoned
leader, Abdullah Ocalan, was expelled from Syria in 1998 after the Turks
threatened military action. He was then passed like a hot potato between
European governments, who refused to extradite him to Turkey
because--gasp!--he might face the death penalty. He was eventually
caught--with the help of U.S. intelligence--sheltered in the Greek Embassy
in Nairobi. "They gave us Ocalan. What could be bigger than
that?" says one of a handful of unapologetically pro-U.S. Turks I
still know.
I know that
Mr. Feith (another Jew, the Turkish press didn't hesitate to note), and
Ms. Rice after him, pressed Turkish leaders on the need to challenge some
of the more dangerous rhetoric if they value the Turkey-U.S. relationship.
There is no evidence yet that they got a satisfactory answer. Turkish
leaders should understand that the "public opinion" they cite is
still reversible. But after a few more years of riding the tiger, who
knows? Much of Ataturk's legacy risks being lost, and there won't be any
of the old Ottoman grandeur left, either. Turkey could easily become just
another second-rate country: small-minded, paranoid, marginal and--how
could it be otherwise?--friendless in America and unwelcome in Europe.
Mr.
Pollock is a senior editorial page writer at the Journal.
