WHO WOULD WISH THE EU ON A FRIEND?:

Giving Thanks for Turkey (Ariel Cohen, 11/25/2003, Tech Central Station)

The 'Muslim democrats' of the ruling AK Party will inevitably be forced to fight Islamist terror. There are two major wings of the AKP: the liberals -- who seem to dominate the party's decision-making mechanism -- and the conservatives. The latter are led by Bülent Arınç, whose group has until now supported more radical positions when it came to divisive religious issues like wearing head scarves, and relaxed guidelines for religious education. AK religious radicals do not practice violence but are sympathetic to it. As Professor Ahmet K. Han of Istanbul Bilgi University said, "these radicals are creating intolerable legitimacy for terrorism."

In the aftermath of the terrorist bombings, the Turkish military, along with its traditional decision making elites, the "deep state" -- security services and state bureaucracy, the anti-EU groups, the hard-line support of Prime Minister Rauf Denktash of Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus -- are all likely to place increased political pressure on the AKP to change its reformist policies. The level of pressure on the ruling party is also likely to be exacerbated by the economic ripple effect of terrorist attacks.

The recent terror attacks will have negative economic consequences on the brittle Turkish economy, which was barely recovering after a painful recession. Phillip Rosenblatt, a U.S. attorney practicing in Istanbul says that the attacks of the past weeks came at a time when the economic stresses had just begun easing up. "With little fanfare, the current Government had put wide ranging reforms in place to align Turkey's economic, social and political legislation with those in the European Community. Turkey hopes to receive a date from the EU at the end of next year to commence negotiations on full membership. Tourism to Turkey, which is $15 billion out of a total GDP of $200 billion, is almost certainly going to be hurt, especially if there are follow-up attacks on tourist targets along the Mediterranean coast."

The Bush Administration should welcome Turkey's firm commitment to fight terrorism and oppose its state sponsors. It should expand security and intelligence cooperation with the Turkish military and security services, initiating joint operations to penetrate Al Qaeda and other radical Islamist terrorist organizations.

Turkish and U.S. security agencies should jointly conduct an audit of potential terror targets, especially on and around the Bosphorus Straits and Incirlik US air base.

Finally, the U.S. should support Turkish economic, legal, and democratic reforms aimed at joining the EU, including declaring a date certain for Turkish accession to the EU by the end of 2004.

Why would we do that to an ally? Offer them their own bilateral free trade agreement and multilateral military pact (including Israel, Russia, India, etc.) instead.

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After the bombs: Maureen Freely grew up in Istanbul. After Friday's terrorist attacks she caught the first plane back - and found the city bloodied but defiant (Maureen Freely, November 25, 2003, The Guardian)

This was Istanbul's September 11. They thought they were safe from the war on terror because they thought all Muslims were brothers. Now they know otherwise, and are unified in their condemnation of the terrorists, who cannot be "true Muslims". The fact that the terrorists staged this attack in the last days of Ramadan has added to their outrage. But no one is in any doubt why the city has become a terrorist target. How its residents respond to their new status depends very much on how much support they get (or fail to get) from the allies who dragged them into this. As one shopkeeper put it, "Surely, now that we have suffered this, the EU must open its arms to us." If it doesn't, or if the US gives the impression, as it has sometimes done in the past, that it is taking Turkey's "sacrifice" for granted, the sense of betrayal could be huge.

But right now, everyone's mind is on the present, on trying to survive. By that I do not mean that people are avoiding danger, but that they are quite adamantly refusing to let danger change the way they live. And God only knows they have had practice. In the past three years, they have been playing this game so much they have hardly had time to breathe. Begin with the earthquake, in which the official death toll was 18,000 but may well have been twice that. Continue with the crippling recession, which has yet to ease, and the crimewave that has followed in its wake. Even so, this has remained an exemplary city. To visit Istanbul over the past few years has been to see friends look after each other in ways that we in the privatised west have long forgotten. According to the local code of conduct, the most dangerous thing is solitude, the next worst thing is to sit at home behind closed doors. The worse things get, the more important it is to go out with your friends and do whatever you have to do to laugh adversity away.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 25, 2003 8:13 PM