Jim Geraghty, "Morning Jolt" @ National Review
I'm a little surprised by how resolutely Turkey is turning against Israel at this moment (although it's been building for years). When I was living in Ankara, it wasn't too hard to find a Turkish-language copy of Mein Kampf in mainstream bookstores; even more widespread was books of conspiracy theories of every stripe and variety. Many Turks believed that there was a secret Israeli plot to harm Turkey; they also believed in a secret American plot with the same goal, a secret European plot, a secret Iranian plot, a secret Arab plot, a secret Russian plot, a secret Chinese plot, a Vatican plot, and perhaps a secret plot by the penguins in Antarctica. From my experience, the first rule of Turkish political philosophy is that everyone is always out to get Turkey, and the fact that what most Americans know about Turkey could fit on a 3×5 index card is no impediment to this conclusion. We may be subconsciously conspiring against them.
(Rule number two of of Turkish political philosophy is that they're not Arabs and in their minds, Turks are nothing like Arabs. They're like Europeans; sophisticated, comparatively wealthy, advanced, educated, technologically innovative, honorable and nothing like those backwards despotic hellholes across the border. A lot of Turks look at Arab states as former branch offices of the Ottoman Empire; the sense is that they couldn't be anything like the Arabs because they used to rule over the Arabs.)
But while I was there (2005 to 2007) it seemed like the suspicion pointed in every direction kept the nation in a state of equilibrium; sure, Prime Minister Erdogan and the foreign ministry crew seemed convinced that Syria's Pervez Assad was a reformer (Ha!) and that they had great incentive to have a healthy, friendly relationship with Iran, but the staunchly secular, more pro-Western military leaders knew who was a real threat to the Turkish state and who wasn't. Keep in mind, it was just in November 2007 that Turkey invited Shimon Peres to address the Turkish Parliament, the first time an Israeli president (or any significant Israeli figure, really) spoke before the legislature of a Muslim country. These days, at the risk of breaking rule number two, Turkish foreign policy isn't all that distinctive from that of the Arab states. |