Shortly after returning to Istanbul from a trip to North Africa on June 7, the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, lashed out at European Union (EU) members, accusing them of double standards and hypocrisy. Brussels was quick to capitalise on the storm of protests that made headlines around the world. Erdogan must have felt betrayed, considering what his government had done in past years and recent months in order to accommodate EU and Nato policies in the region.
Of course, Erdogan is right — the EU’s double standards and hypocrisy are all too palpable. But in this context, the same accusation can be levied at Erdogan himself.
When confronted with the Middle East high-stakes political game, resulting from the violent upheavals of the last two years or so, Erdogan, hesitant at first, adopted a political style that was consistent with Nato’s, of which Turkey is a member. For nearly a decade, Turkey had angled for a different role in the Arab and Muslim world, a choice that was compelled by the EU’s refusal to grant Turkey membership. Germany and France led the crusade against Turkey’s determined efforts to acquire the coveted membership.
As the bloodletting reached Syria, the so-called Arab Spring posed a threat to Turkey’s own southern regions and thus forced a hurried Turkish policy realignment, back to the very western camp that precluded Turkey for so long.
It was a peculiar position in which Turkey placed itself, posing as a champion of ‘awakened’ Arabs, yet operating within the traditional Nato paradigm, which is grounded in interventionist agendas. The inconsistencies of Turkish policies are too profound and growing: As it settled its dispute with Israel, over the latter’s murder of nine Turkish activists on their way to Gaza in May 2010, it hosted top Hamas leaders for high-level talks. It is facilitating the work of Syrian opposition that is operating both politically and militarily from Turkish territories, while warning against any plots to destabilise Turkey. At the same time, it is paying little heed to the sovereignty of northern Iraq, as it chased after its own armed opposition in the war-torn Arab country for years.
And now that Erdogan has reportedly decided to visit Gaza, one wonders how the Turkish government is able to strike the balance between such a move, given the fact that it is now returning to military coordination and intelligence sharing with Israel.
It is an impossible equation that the Turkish government is trying to resolve.
Before the current upheaval in the Middle East, Turkey, to an extent, succeeded in promoting some sort of a balance that placed it between the West and East, literally and figuratively. It tilted East whenever Europe seemed indisposed to see a Muslim majority country join its political ranks. It slanted West, whenever its perceived security needs pushed it to do so.
Now, Erdogan is leading Turkey to yet another political realignment, the nature and duration of which are yet to be determined. This is compelled by some EU leaders’ responses to anti-government protests in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. The hurried response to condemn the Turkish government must have been sobering for Erdogan because it has essentially risked his reputation among Arabs and Muslims by getting too involved in sinister western designs in Arab affairs, revolutions and civil wars.
However, even Erdogan’s best efforts are simply not enough to sway Europe from capitalising on Turkey’s misfortunes. German Chancellor Angela Merkel quickly took a stance to block “moves to open a new chapter in Ankara’s EU membership talks”, reported Reuters on June 20, supposedly because of her concern regarding the Turkish police crackdown on protesters. Of course the Chancellor is often forgiving when extreme violence is applied by Israel against Palestinians, since no political capital can be attained from such an unwise move.
Nato’s two-facedness even with its own members is too obvious. Compare, for example, European responses to the police crackdown on the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests starting on September 17, 2011, and the massive campaign of arrests, beatings and humiliation of protesters. It turned out that both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security in the US had monitored the movement jointly through their terrorism task forces. This is what Naomi Wolf revealed in the Guardian newspaper on December 29 last year. Where was the outcry by America’s European allies over such unwarranted practices, including the most recent scandal of US National Security Agency (NSA) spying on millions of people using social media and internet technology in the name of trying to catch terrorists? Such practices have become so routine that they rarely compel outrage or serious calls for accountability, aside from such inane concerns as Bloomberg Business Week headlines: ‘Spying for the NSA is bad for US Business’ (June 18).
This political opportunism — cheering for Turkey as it reconciles with Israel and criticising Turkey when it violates the West’s “democratic values”, which, apparently no Muslim nation can ever attain — is essentially western. Even western intellectuals, including some of those on the ‘left’, could not waste such an opportunity to link Cairo’s Tahrir Square and Istanbul’s Taksim Square and such. It is fashionable these days to link newsworthy events, however worlds apart they may be, and speculate on ‘obvious’ links, however illusory.
It is not that Turkish protesters have no legitimate demands that must be adequately addressed in accordance with democratic norms. However, the way such protests were being exploited, mostly in western political and intellectual circles, indicated that Erdogan’s accommodating behaviour, aligned fully with western designs, have failed to spare him, his government and his country in their most vulnerable moments.
Perhaps Europe’s ‘hypocrisy and double standards’ will compel a rethink among Turkey’s political circles as they ponder their own policies. Will Turkey end its role as an outlet for Nato’s policies in the Middle East? This is a question that Turkey must address before it too is engulfed by endless turmoil and inundated by western intervention, the results of which are always lethal. Always.
Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is: My Father was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press).
