AXIS OF GOOD FILES

No More Clash of Civilizations: Greece and Turkey join hands to defeat al-Qaeda. (Stephen Schwartz, 3/30/04, FrontPage)

The victors in the Greek election--Kostas Karamanlis and his conservative New Democracy party--won on a classic free market platform. They preached lower taxes for citizens and corporations, leaner government, deregulation, privatization and denationalization of major industries, and reform of social security, health care, and education.

Their opponents, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), in power for 20 of the last 23 years, had long been known for virulent anti-American and anti-NATO rhetoric, and such provocative policies in foreign affairs as allowing Arab and other extremists free access to their country so long as they refrained from harming local interests. As a result, Greece had long been treated with near-universal disdain in European capitals, as well as in Washington.

At the same time, PASOK, for all its coziness with Arab militants, indulged in furious demagogy against Muslim Turkey. There was no contradiction in this--Arabs don't like Turkey, which has close links to Israel. But above all, Greeks still smart over their long humiliation at the hands of the Turks, symbolized by the fall of Constantinople in 1453. [...]

But all that is in the past. Now the Socialists--with George Papandreou as their leader--are in opposition, and Kostas Karamanlis, is prime minister of Greece, like his father before him. His government has approved a framework for direct Greek-Turkish negotiations regarding Cyprus. And on April 20, the Cypriots are scheduled to vote in a UN-sponsored referendum. Greek and Turkish Cypriots will be asked to approve a fairly predictable UN-style system for settlement of refugee claims, along with provisions for power-sharing between the two communities.

While UN-sponsored "conflict resolution" has failed in Bosnia and Kosovo, the Greeks and Turks, fortified by their thriving capitalist economies, seem bent on avoiding the path taken in the upper Balkans. For this, Athens and Ankara deserve congratulation and support. In the age of terrorism, a rapprochement between Greece, the cradle of democracy, and Turkey, the pioneer of Muslim secularism, is welcome news for the civilized world. It is of course anathema to al-Qaeda.

Fortunately wiser heads prevailed over the petulant, who wished to punish Turkey for its entirely justifiable worries about the ramifications of our liberating Iraqi Kurdistan. The ideal American response to the way the Europeans are mucking Turkey about as regards its entry into the EU would be to immediately cut a joint free trade and defense agreement with them and the Israelis and anyone else in the region who cares to join.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 30, 2004 7:15 AM