turkish-israeli relations through the lens of the turkish identity debate

Turkish-Israeli Relations Through the Lens of the Turkish Identity DebateAuthor(s): M. Hakan YavuzSource: Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Autumn, 1997), pp. 22-37Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Institute for Palestine StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2537807 .

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TumaSH-ISRAELi RELATIONS THROUGH THE LENS OF THE TURKSH IDENTITY DEBATE

M. HAKAN YAvuZ

This article explores Israeli-Turkish relations within the context of the deepening polarization between Turkey's secular elite and the religiously oriented segments of society. Examining the causes and political context of the alliance, the author argues that the deepening ties are at least partly a function of the sense of beleaguerment of the Turkish military, guardians of Kemalist orthodoxy, in the face of domestic challenges to its homogenizing vision. After describing the fea- tures of the axis itself; the author shows how it intermeshed with the accelerating showdown between the military and the Islamist-led civilian government. Finally, the paper examines the relationship in the light of Turkish national interests, concluding that Turkey's main problems are internal and not amenable to outside solutions.

ON THE NIGHT OF 1 FEBRUARY 1997, a rally to protest Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem was held in Sincan, a small town near Ankara. Placards sup- porting Hizballah and Hamas were displayed to chants of "Down with Israel" and denunciations of deepening Turkish-Israeli ties. Demonstrations com- memorating "Jerusalem Day" had become annual events in towns through- out Anatolia, particularly in the south and east, since 1987.1 What distinguished the Sincan rally from countless others was its proximity to An- kara, bastion of the state's secularist ideology, and the presence of the Ira- nian ambassador alongside local Turkish politicians. On 4 February, tanks rumbled through Sincan and the military forced the Interior Ministry to arrest the town's mayor, the organizer of the event and a member of the Islamist Refah party then in power. The Sincan incident can be seen as the opening shot in the showdown between the civilian government led by Refah and the secularist forces led by the military that was to culminate, less than five months later, in the government's fall.

Turkey's strategic ties with Israel are a foreign policy issue, but the interaction with domestic concerns is dynamic and far-reaching. In the demonstrations that have marked the struggle between Refah and the populist Islamic movements on the one hand and the secular, Western-oriented es-

M. HAKAN YAVUZ has a doctorate in political science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and currently holds a postdoctoral position at the School of Islamic and Social Sciences, Leesburg, Virginia. He wishes to thank Mark Jacobs and Mujeeb Khan for their comments on this article.

Journal of Palestine Studies XXVII, nO. 1 (Autumn 1997), PP 22-37



TURKISH-IsRAELI RELATIONS 23

tablishment and military on the other, placards proclaiming "Turkish Media are the Servants of Israel," "This is Turkey, not Israel," and "Turkey will not become an Israel"2 mingle with those calling on the Turkish military to "return to the barracks" and stay out of civilian affairs.3 Israeli flag burning is a frequent feature of the demonstrations.4 It is thus that the growing ties between Turkey and Israel have become a zone of contestation over Turkey's national orientation and yet another source of polarization between con- tending segments of society.5

NATIONAL IDENTITY As BATTLEGROUND

It is impossible to understand the impact of the Israeli-Turkish alliance on Turkey's domestic scene without delving into the sociopolitical background of the identity debate. From the founding of the Turkish republic by Mustafa Kemal Atatuirk in 1922 until 1980, secular nationalism was the main vehicle for modernization; in the Turkish case, it was not a state-building but a nation-building ideology, since the state structure was already well developed. The Kemalist regime blamed Islam for Turkey's economic backwardness, equating progress with a secular Westernized identity. In their attempt to forge a homogenous nation out of a medley of ethnic groups, Kemalist ide- ologists were more interested in drawing on Anatolia's Hittite and Sumerian past than in deriving the cultural sources of the Turkish "self" from the Otto- man legacy. Indeed, the statist elite felt that modernity could be achieved only by freeing the republic from Ottoman-Islamic tradition. Ironically, secular Turkey identified the country's Armenians, Greeks, and Jews as foreign- ers and even established a "labor camp" for non-Muslim minorities in the 1940s to facilitate the Turkification of the economy.6

Although the Kemalist objective of creating a "secular" Turkish nation made slow progress in traditional Anatolian society, it achieved considerable success among the elites of the large urban centers, among the Muslim immigrants from the Balkans who settled in Turkey in large numbers with the retrenchment of the Ottoman empire as of the late nineteenth century and the Greek-Turkish population exchange of the 1920s, and among segments of the heterodox Alevi sect. The process of "Westernization" and "progress," the raison d'etre of the Republican regime, required that interaction with the Middle East be kept to a minimum.7 It was thus that, in the 1920s and 1930s, Ankara implemented a radical policy of "de-Arabization" and de-Islamization of society. While Turkey in 1949 became the first Muslim country to establish relations with Israel, it strove to remain aloof from Middle East politics, a brief departure being its involvement in the Baghdad Pact of 1955. Turkey's foreign policy identification with the West was, to be sure, the imperative of geographic and cold war considerations, but it was also a function of the political orientation and legitimation of the Kemalist elite.8 Foreign relations filtered down from the secular elite's self-ascribed European identity, which in turn was the basis for framing "Turkish national interests."



24 JOURNAL OF PALESTNE STUDIES

The attempt to disengage from the surrounding Islamic world considera- bly widened the gap between the elite and the masses. The extent of this gap became clear in the 14 May 1950 elections, when the population massively voted the Republican People's Party (RPP), which had ruled Turkey since Atatuirk, out of office. The Democratic Party (DP), which had promised re- spect for Islamic tradition and consciously portrayed itself as the voice of the marginalized Anatolian majority, won a landslide 487 out of 556 parliamentary seats. According to political scientist Ergtun Ozbudun, "the common de- nominator of the DP supporters was their opposition to the center of officialdom."9

With the rise of a multiparty system in the 1950s, the duality of Republican Turkish identity was magnified. Democratization and economic liberalization brought hitherto peripheral Islamically oriented groups closer to the center of politics, largely via the DP in the 1950s and, after the DP was banned in 1961, the Justice Party (JP). Powerful Islamic groups such as the Nurcus (the followers of Said Nursi) and the Nak?ibendi Sufi order became politically active within the framework of the "secular" JP rather than within the newly established Islamic National Salvation Party (forerunner of the Refah Party) of Necmettin Erbakan. The presence of strong religious factions within overtly secular political parties of the center and right-which contin- ues to this day-softened the harsh antireligious sanctions enshrined during the early Kemalist years.

During the 1970s, Turkey's isolation over the Cyprus issue and the growing economic significance of the Middle East, coupled with the increasing salience of local Islamic sentiments, forced the Turkish state to become more sensitive to the previously despised Arab world. One manifestation of this shift was allowing the PLO to open a full diplomatic mission in Ankara in 1979. In early September 1980, the parliament in an unprecedented move forced the foreign minister out of office for his alleged indifference to Islamic interests in Jerusalem.10 Relations with Israel deteriorated further following Turkey's military coup of 12 September 1980, with Ankara recalling its ambassador and requesting Israel to do the same. Relations were not restored to the ambassadorial level until December 1991, and then in an effort to counter the sharp criticism directed at Turkey from the West for abstaining in the UN General Assembly resolution repealing the 1976 "Zionism equals ra- cism" resolution. The PLO mission was upgraded to ambassadorial status at the same time.

The changes in the political map were paralleled in the economic and cultural spheres, especially starting with the liberalization policies of Turgut Ozal, who became prime minister in 1983. With the shift from the official import substitution policies of the 1960s and 1970s to the new export- oriented economic policy of the 1980s, Anatolian and newly urbanized en- trepreneurs in Istanbul, largely Islamically oriented in cultural terms and close to Ozal's newly created Motherland party, began challenging the pre- eminence of state-subsidized large industrialists. The dynamic private sector



TURIuSH-IsRAELu RELATIONS 25

known as "Anatolian tigers" and emerging new economic centers eroded the economic base of secularism, and, as of the mid-1980s, local businessmen's groups began springing up all over Turkey. The most prominent of these, the Association of Independent Businessmen (MUSIAD), representing pro- Islamist, small and medium-size businesses in forty-five towns, openly as- pired to act as a counterweight to the Association of Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen (ThSIAD) comprising a number of business conglomer- ates seen as benefiting from the state's favoritism. Moreover, segments of the new mainly Anatolian bourgeoisie used its wealth to promote ties with the broader Islamic world, often in symbolic terms associated with capitalist consumption. This has included sales campaigns promising donations to Muslim charities working in Bosnia, Chechnya, and even Algeria. In the increasingly polarized society that is Turkey today, the purchase of certain brands, such as Olker food products, has come to be a political statement.

Economic diversification has led to a diversification in the cultural discourse and symbols. Thus, in addition to the increasing political power of provincial capital, the ideological basis of the Turkish Republic has been challenged by privatization in education and the media, with some hundred television stations, many Islamically oriented, supplementing the single state channel that had the monopoly until the mid-1980s. Newspapers and magazines representing a wide spectrum of views have proliferated. Civil- society-based associations, including cultural foundations and trade unions, organizing through Sufi networks, gradually used their votes and economic means to shape the political parties of the center-right as well as the religious-right. This pushed forward the recruitment of religiously oriented party loyalists for high offices in the bureaucracy and the police. Efforts to infiltrate the military academies have failed, but a profound transformation nonetheless has been taking place in the lower and middle ranks of the of- ficer corps, where the new generation is increasingly Central Anatolian rather than the children of Balkan immigrants. These changes have begun to have an important impact on the reformulation of national interests.11

It could seem paradoxical that several decades of economic expansion and political liberalization have provided the grounds for the construction of an Islamic political identity. However, it is important to note that the current movement of Islamic identity is not a reversion to old ways but rather a "modern creation, constructed in relation to current politics."12 This form of Islamic identity is detached from its traditional rural environment and rooted in an urban, market-driven context. It should also be stressed that the various challenges to the old secular nationalist identity have not led to its disintegra- tion, but rather to an intermingling and adaptation between Islamic and nationalist secular identities.

Meanwhile, these same forces of economic and political liberalization brought about the rise of Kurdish nationalism, which has a middle-class base and as of the 1980s began to demand cultural rights for Kurdish citizens. Islamic and Kurdish intellectuals, operating outside the officially sanctioned




confines of the state, have been among the most dynamic social and intellec- tual segments of civil society calling for a more pluralist and open polity.

The diversification of the elite, combined with new identity discourses, constituted a radical challenge to the traditional statist discourse of the Kemalist establishment, which used all possible means to curtail deviation from the official line of a homogeneous nation-state united under the leadership of an enlightened modernizing elite. Faced with growing demands that the state acknowledge the diversity of identity and interests in a historically

diverse land, the secular elite attributed these chal- Faced with growing lenges to conspiracies from Iran, in the case of the

demands to acknowledge Islamists, and from Syria, in the case of the Kurds. The the diversity of identity in consequences of the state's refusal to acknowledge a historically diverse land, legitimate cultural aspirations were particularly tragic the secular elite attributed with regard to the Kurds, where the identity issue is

the challenges to more complex. Thus, while the Islamic and other conspiracies from Iran identities intermingled and to a greater or lesser

and Syria. extent overlapped with the Turkish national identity, the Kurdish identity was seen by some Kurds as

antithetical. This tendency gained ground as the Kurdish demands for cultural rights were totally rebuffed by the state, and by the mid-1980s an insur- rection had developed in the southeast. While the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) was an outcome of the dissatisfied identity claims of the Kurds and the Turkish state's refusal to open political space, the increased support of the PKK among Kurds resulted from a military campaign that failed to distin- guish PKK guerrillas from ordinary sympathizers.

As a result of Islamic revivalism-by the mid-1990s taking the form of an electoral threat with the rise of the Refah party-and the development and expansion of the Kurdish problem, Turkey's domestic and foreign policies became increasingly governed by a deepening sense of insecurity. A "security-first state" has evolved at the expense of civil society and basic human rights, with the result that the maturation of Turkish civil and democratic society lags far behind the country's level of economic and social development. For the Kemalist establishment, the sense of siege and doom was exacerbated as their mission to become part of the West was cruelly halted by what was perceived as the determination of the European Union (EU) to exclude "Muslim Turkey" while it contemplated the admission of former Warsaw Pact adversaries such as Poland and Hungary and even, potentially, Romania and Bulgaria.13 It was against this background that the military elite has sought to overcome this domestic insecurity and Turkey's isolation within the Western world through the new alliance with Israel.

FROM NORMALIZATION TO STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP

Turkey's long-standing policy of maintaining a "balance" between the Arabs and the Israelis, and indeed a certain tilt toward the Arabs as of the



TURKISH-ISRAELI RELATIONS 27

1970s, began to crumble as of the Gulf War. The state took note of the fact that trade with the Arab world had declined sharply, with Turkey's exports to Arab countries falling from 47 percent of its total exports in 1982 to only 12 percent in 1994. The Central Asian Turkic republics after the collapse of the Soviet Union offered the promise of an eventual alternative source of oil, gas, and markets for Turkish goods. At the political level, the Gulf War and its aftermath drove home the fragmentation of the Arab world, leading Turkish policy makers to conclude that the entire notion of an "Arab bloc" need not be taken seriously.14 Most important as a "facilitating factor," the agreements between the PLO and Israel sheltered Turkish bureaucrats from domestic and Arab criticism. 5 After the Madrid Conference in October 1991, the Min- istry of Foreign Affairs responded to domestic opposition to normalizing relations with Israel with statements to the effect that there was no reason to be "more Arab than the Arabs." Since the Arab states, including the PLO, were seeking to develop relations with Israel, why should Turkey not do the same?

The Gulf War and its aftermath, in addition to lifting the "constraints" on Turkey's rapprochement with Israel, increased the motivations for embark- ing on such an alliance. Following Desert Storm, the explosion of the Kurd- ish insurgency made it the main security threat to the existence of the Turkish state. Thus, at the same time that the collapse of the Soviet Union made Turkey's traditional role in the Western alliance uncertain, the state's increasingly brutal tactics to root out PKK sympathizers and its suspension of basic political rights to Kurdish parties made it the target of growing criticism from the West. The outcry in Europe over Turkey's human rights violations in connection with the Kurdish issue forced Belgium, Germany, Norway, and other European countries to bow to public pressures and terminate arms sales to Turkey, spurring it to develop its indigenous arms industry and en- couraging it to look for assistance from Israel, which does not attach human rights conditions to its weapons sales. Cooperation with Israel further meshed with Turkey's desire to pressure Syria to withdraw its support for PKK attacks on Turkish civilian and military targets.16

Seen in this light, the reasons for Turkey's normalization with Israel, and the military alliance that followed, become clear. Through its strategic relationship with Israel, the Kemalist establishment, in this instance led by the military, hopes (1) to gain a "back door" to Washington via Israel's good offices, countering the Greek and Armenian lobbies; (2) to confirm Turkey's Western orientation following the EU's rejection of its bid for membership and to demonstrate its "secular" credentials; (3) to counter regional support (primarily from Iran and Syria) for local Islamist groups and the PKK; and (4) to secure a reliable new source of military technology not subject to human rights constraints. After the formation of Erbakan's coalition government in June 1996, yet another motivation was added: to embarrass the pro-Islamic government by exposing its powerlessness to halt an alliance it openly had opposed.



28 JOURNAL OF PALEsnNE STUDEES

"Normalization" with Israel could be said to have begun with the visit in June 1992 of Turkish tourism minister Abduilkadir Ate? (the first by a Turkish minister in twenty-seven years) and the signing of a treaty facilitating tourism between the two countries. But there is no question that the Israel-PLO Dec- laration of Principles on 13 September 1993 opened the way for a marked shift in Turkish policy toward Israel. A month later, on 14 November 1993, Turkish foreign minister Hikmet fetin visited Israel, the highest ranking Turkish official publicly to do so since Israel's creation in 1948. Economic issues were high on the agenda: Israel's desire to penetrate Central Asia via Turkey and Turkey's need for Israel's support in obtaining U.S. backing for the routing of oil pipelines from the Caspian Sea to its port of Iskenderun. The two documents signed were essentially framework agreements on tourism, economic cooperation, and educational exchange programs,17 but the importance of the visit lay elsewhere. The official Turkish newspaper New- spot presented it as opening a "New Era in Turco-Israeli relations," and upon his return to Ankara fetin told a journalist that "Turco-Israeli relations will develop further in all fields. We have agreed that Turkey and Israel should cooperate in restructuring the Middle East."'18

A flurry of high-level Israeli visits followed. As if to underline the strategic implications of fetin's visit, Israeli Defense Ministry director-general David Ivry led a delegation of senior officials and generals to Ankara to examine potential areas of cooperation. Israeli president Ezer Weizman paid a state visit 25-27 January 1994, followed by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres's official visit to Ankara in April 1994, when he signed an agreement on the environment.

Turkish prime minister Tansu filler's visit to Israel 3-5 November 1994 marked a turning point in Turkish-Israeli relations. During the visit, she pushed hard for a free trade agreement, which was signed only on 14 March 1996 and not ratified until April 1997, but the two states did conclude cooperation agreements in the fields of telecommunications, postal services, and combatting drug trafficking. The importance of the visit, however, was political: Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin thanked filler "for taking a step no other Turkish prime minister ever dared to make, to visit Israel." Though filler was forced by Foreign Minister Muimtaz Soysal, a staunch supporter of Palestinian self-determination, to visit Orient House in East Jerusalem, she openly praised Zionism with her Israeli hosts and compared Ben-Gurion with Atattirk.19 For the Israelis, the visit symbolized a major political change in the region.20

How major was that change did not become clear until more than a year later, when, in April 1996, it was learned that a Turkish-Israeli "Military Coop- eration and Training Agreement" had been signed on 23 February 1996.21 The contents of the agreement have not been released, but it reportedly in- volves a joint training agreement with the Israeli air force and navy.22 Under the agreement, Turkey and Israel will exchange military personnel and have visiting rights at each others' bases, and Israel will be permitted to conduct



TURIISH-IsRAELI RELATIONS 29

electronic surveillance flights along Turkey's borders with Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Cooperation in counterterrorism and border security is stressed, including Israeli help in securing Turkey's borders against infiltration by Kurd- ish separatist guerrillas.23

Ironically, by the time the military agreement was signed, Turkey's De- cember 1995 national elections had already given the Islamist Refah party of Necmettin Erbakan a plurality of votes. Erbakan had campaigned on the promise to cut ties with Israel,24 and both his speeches and his party's litera- ture were rife with denunciations of Zionism and the Jewish state.25 But he was unable to change the course of the alliance: On 26 August 1996, two months after he finally assumed office on 28 June 1996, Turkey and Israel completed a $590-million deal under which the Israeli Aircraft Industries (LAI) would modernize Turkey's fleet of F-4 Phantom fighters with high-tech equipment.26 Prime Minister Erbakan signed the deal on 8 December 1996, reportedly under extreme pressure from the Turkish military.27

Turkey also is considering replacing the army's assault rifle, the German- made G3, with the Israeli-made Galil, and already has purchased fifty Popeye I missiles for its fleet of F-4s currently being upgraded at IAI. Israel and Tur- key have agreed to produce jointly-through a consortium to be established between two Turkish firms and Rafael-the sophisticated Popeye II air-to- ground missile in a deal initially worth about $100 million.28

SHOWDOWN

The municipal elections of 27 March 1994, which brought the Islamist Refah party to power in major Turkish cities including Ankara, Diyarbakir, Istanbul, Kayseri, and Trabzon,29 and the national elections of 24 December 1995 in which Refah won the largest number of votes, marked a psychologi- cal break in Turkish history. Some journals reported the news under such headlines as "The Black Turks versus the White Turks,"30 "The Other Turkey Wins the Election," and "Fatih Wins Against Harbiye."31 The election results revealed a sharply divided society and reflected the ongoing search for new state-society relations.

The six-month delay between the elections and Necmettin Erbakan's formation of a coalition government on 28 June 1996 is itself an indication of the deep consternation within the Turkish establishment at his electoral vic- tory. Such moves as Erbakan's opting to receive as his first foreign visitor a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the son of the late Hassan al-Banna,32 and his choice of Iran and Libya as the destinations of his first official visits abroad underlined his strategic aim of turning Turkey into a leader in the Muslim world as opposed to a "subservient follower" in the Western bloc. The EU's sustained and increasingly pronounced rejection of Turkey directly fueled Erbakan's ambitions of reorienting the country eastward with pan- Islamic projects such as the "Developing Eight" association of Muslim coun-



30 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

tries and the Economic Cooperation Organization. The secular establishment watched Erbakan's moves with alarm.

It was after the Sincan incident of 4 February 1997 that the long-simmer- ing dispute came to a head. Rumors of an impending military coup reached

frenzied heights. On 24-28 February 1997, General Erbakan's strategic aim Ismail Karadayi, the Turkish chief of the General Staff,

was to turn Turkey into a launched a counteroffensive by visiting Israel without leader in the Muslim world bothering to inform the Refah-led coalition.33 The

as opposed to a timing of his visit was widely interpreted as a "subservientfollower" in response to Erbakan's attempts to develop relations

the Western bloc. with Muslim countries. Immediately upon his return to Ankara on 28 February 1997, the Turkish Armed

Forces openly moved into politics through National Security Council-on which the country's top generals sit ex officio-which ordered Erbakan's government to implement an eighteen-point plan to curb Islamic political and social movements in the country. The plan calls for (a) full implementa- tion of the "Uniformity of Education" law, including the closure of many of the Qur'anic schools and the Imam Hatip schools;34 (b) the declaration of "antisecular acts" against the state as illegal; (c) an end to the recruitment of Islamists into government jobs; and (d) close surveillance of the economic activities of the Islamic groups. Next, in February 1997, the military released a list of some hundred corporations with which it would have no dealings in the future and which were to come under investigation as financial supporters of the Islamic movements. These corporations, many of which are in the forefront of the drive to promote Turkish exports, include the Ulker food processing giant, the IHLAS holding corporation, and the thirty-six-company Kombassan cooperative. The army went on to list 19 newspapers, 20 national television stations, 51 radio stations, 110 magazines, and 1,200 student fraternities as engaging in "subversive Islamic activities."35

During this tense period of confrontation between the military and civilian leadership, Israeli foreign minister David Levy visited Ankara 6-9 April 1997 and met with Chief of Staff General Karadayi. The Turkish military asked Levy to use Israel's influence in Washington to release embargoed arms. Although Prime Minister Erbakan was an avowed opponent of the free trade agreement, he was forced by the army to sign it, 36 and it finally was ratified on the eve of Levy's visit. Erbakan did, however, use the opportunity of his meeting with Levy to express before the media his negative views of Israeli policies and told Levy that "Israel should withdraw from the occupied territories, including Jerusalem, in line with long-established UN Resolutions."37

The armed forces, stepping up their campaign against the Islamic trend, revealed at the end of April the formulation of a new Concept of National Military Strategy (CNMS) which openly brands Islamic movements as "En- emy No. 1" along with Kurdish separatists. Thus, on 29 April 1997, General Kenan Deniz, the head of Internal Security and the Planning Department of



TURKISH-ISRAELI RELATIONS 31

the Chief of Staff's Office, briefed journalists on "Islamic Radicalism and the Kurdish Question," declaring that "according to new national security guide- lines, the perception of threat has shifted from outside the country to inside: Islamic movements and divisiveness [the Kurdish issue] which consolidate one another."38 Indicative of the state of siege, the armed forces took the unprecedented step of having the state prosecutor ask the Constitutional Court to ban the Refah party, the lead member of the coalition government in power.

In response to the spate of demonstrations, including a rally of some 300,000 in Istanbul against the closure of Qur'anic schools and the middle- level Imam Hatip schools on 11 May 1997,39 the armed forces declared on 11 June 1997 their "readiness to use force against Islamic groups." A week later, Erbakan resigned under pressure from the military in what the Turkish press has termed a "soft coup." The formation of a new government under Mesut Yilmaz of the Motherland Party did not end the assault on the Islamists, with schools continuing to be shut down, moves to control the content of text- books, and the expulsion of an additional seventy-six officers from the army for Islamic sympathies.

Erbakan and his supporters contend that he was sacrificed in order to tie the country closer to Israel.40 While the ouster undoubtedly was more re- lated to his domestic policies, political analysts have also drawn a link between the Israeli-Turkish axis and the siege against Refah. Luitfullah Karaman of Bogazici University, for example, argued that the timing of relations with Israel represents the determination of "establishment Turkey" to suppress civil society.41 Sami Kohen, a prominent foreign policy analyst, pointed out that the deepening of relations and high-level military visits to Israel coincided with the revelation of the new CNMS targeting the Islamists.42 What is beyond question is that the military's vigorous pursuit of relations with Israel was in part calculated to embarrass a government whose head had called openly for a break in those ties. By forging ever closer links with Israel, the generals "turned foreign policy into a domestic political football"43 and challenged Erbakan to defy them: Erbakan, aware of his powerlessness vis-a-vis the military, reluctantly acquiesced. The military's agenda was clearly expressed by Jonathan Lyons, a senior Reuters reporter, who said that "the military ties with Israel put an end to any eastward drift that might be imagined under the Erbakan government in Turkey's foreign policy."44

Turkey's new relationship with Israel has brought into sharp relief the preponderant role of the military in Turkey's foreign policy, a role somewhat blandly expressed by Deputy Chief of Staff General fevik Bir, the most mili- tant proponent of the anti-Islamic crusade and widely considered to be the prime mover on the Turkish side behind the axis with Israel, when he as- serted that "the Turkish Armed Forces are an integral part of Turkey's foreign policy."45 Indeed, with regard to the relationship with Israel, it appears that the civilian government itself does not know the details. According to Abdul- lah Gul, minister of state in Erbakan's government and currently head of



32 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIS

Refah's foreign affairs department, Erbakan at a cabinet meeting asked the defense minister about the content of the Israeli agreements and negotia-

tions, and the defense minister replied that he did not The civilian government know but that the generals had told himthat they itself does not know the were not directed against a "third country."46 Further-

details of the agreements. more, when a deputy from Gaziantep on 13 August 1996 used the parliamentary process to obtain infor-

mation about the agreements, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded on 18 October 1996 with a list of the agreements, which may or may not be complete, but provided no details.47

Ironically, the army's blatant interference in civilian government makes the agreements themselves more vulnerable, especially given the fact that close ties with Israel find very little support at the societal level. Alan Makov- sky, a Turkey expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro- Israel think tank, has written that the Turco-Israeli alliance must be handled "deftly."48 So far, this has not been the case. Because the military's anti- Islamic campaign coincided with an acceleration of visits to Israel, it is widely interpreted at the popular level as a function of the deepening of Turkish-Israeli relations; the popular perception is that the military is serving Israeli anti-Islamic strategies in the region and indeed that Israel was respon- sible for the ouster of the Erbakan government and for crudely interfering in Turkish democracy. Such perceptions, however erroneous, not only under- mine the stability of Turkey's relations with Israel but also the position of the armed forces in the eyes of Turkey's conservative Muslims.49 Even among Turks not supportive of the Refah, the fact that the relationship with Israel became a tool to assert the military's dominance over a civilian government has created strong resentment against Israel.

THE ALLIANCE AND TURKISH NATIONAL INTERESTS

That Turkey stands to benefit from aspects of its relations with Israel is beyond dispute. The Free Trade Pact signed in March 1996 is expected to quadruple trade between the two countries in three years: Having grown substantially to reach $500 million last year, the goal is $2 billion by 1999. The two countries are also working on joint projects involving commercial satellites, cargo transport, electricity production, and joint arms manufactur- ing. Trade barriers and tariffs on most goods (except agricultural products) will also be lifted gradually. Meanwhile, 300,000 Israeli tourists visited Tur- key in 1996, and this figure is expected to reach 350,000 by the year 2000. This economic foundation, according to the planners, will lead to the formation of a comprehensive regional bloc of like-minded countries enjoying the patronage of the United States.

In the strategic domain, the new axis offers a new avenue to high technology and military hardware as well as Israeli cooperation in large-scale defense programs. In principle, it also promises to put pressure on Syria to



TURnIcSH-IsRAELI RELATIONS 33

curtail its support of the PKK. In this last area, however, the agreement so far appears to have the opposite effect: Responding to the latest Turkish incur- sion into northern Iraq in May 1997, the PKK for the first time used Russian- made missiles to shoot down Turkish military helicopters, killing a number of high-ranking officials. Many analysts believe that the missiles were provided by Syria in escalation of their support for the PKK.

But the question implicit in much of the strong criticism of the alliance which run from the religious right to the secular left-remains: To what extent do Israeli and Turkish interests-even the interests of the Turkish military-actually coincide? Certainly, it would be unrealistic for the generals to expect any sustained Israeli involvement in their war against the Kurds and other oppositional groups.50 Although the Israeli state has long been a major supporter of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq in line with its "periphery strategy," such an entity represents a threat to Turkey. Moreover, liberals within the American Jewish community are sensitive to human rights issues and have been critical of the military's abuses against even nonviolent Kurdish dissidents. Similarly, it is doubtful that the pro-Israeli lobby in Wash- ington, which the generals tend to view as omnipotent, will be willing to spend its own credit to lobby hard for Turkish interests with the U.S. government. It is true that the lobby has already helped Turkey obtain via Israel American arms blocked by Congress for human rights reasons, but such lob- bying directly serves Israel's interests by making Turkey more dependent on it.

A more important question is whether it is really in Turkey's interest to embark upon a policy that alienates its neighbors. Builent Ecevit, leader of the Party of the Democratic Left, the junior partner in the new Turkish coalition that came to office through military intervention, is among the many Turkish secularists who argue for a regionally-based foreign policy that strives not to alienate any of Turkey's Middle Eastern neighbors. Mehmet Ali Birand, a liberal social democrat and one of Turkey's distinguished foreign policy journalists, commented that the agreement "has dynamited the pros- pects for better Turkish-Syrian relations" and lamented that "Turkey is being forced to take part in the Israel-Syrian-Iranian confrontation."51 The words of senior analyst Cengiz (andar summarizes the view of many: "A Muslim country that pursues an Israel-based foreign policy may bring relief to Israel, but it would isolate that country both in the region and in the international system."52

CONCLUSION

Turkey's foreign policy has become hostage to the domestic insecurity arising from the Kurdish and Islamic challenges to the homogenizing policies of Kemalism and to the Kemalist establishment's quest to become a "Eu- ropean country within the Islamic world." Seeing the sources of Turkey's




problems as lying beyond its borders, the Turkish military-bureaucratic establishment is seeking solutions through its military axis with Israel.

But while Turkish-Israeli relations may prove beneficial in terms of military production and the transfer of technology, they certainly cannot solve the country's pressing domestic problems and indeed will exacerbate them by acting as an additional polarizing element. Even if Israel wished to become involved in the Kurdish problem, it could not help solve it. The Kurd- ish question has been deterritorialized as a result of the dispersion of the Kurds through more than a decade of war and can be addressed only through a genuine political solution based on a recognition of their legitimate cultural rights. Nor is the Islamic "challenge" amenable to a solution via an alliance with external actors; indeed, the generals' use of the Israeli relationship to humiliate the pro-Islamic government only deepened the crisis of legitimacy of the Turkish military itself. Finally, the West's refusal to accept Turkey as one of its own will not change through Israel's advocacy, even if it were to be forthcoming.

"The old Turkey," Graham Fuller has said, "is finished. We are not sure what the new Turkey will look like."'53 The "old" Turkey, dominated by a single hegemonic Kemalist vision, was based on a conscious "forgetting" of the Ottoman-Islamic past. The new Turkey that is bound ultimately to emerge, despite setbacks, will be shaped by a far more diversified elite which in turn will reshape the Turkish discourse on national identity and eventually foreign policy. This "new" Turkey can only be based on "remem- bering" Ottoman-Islamic history and diversity in a process that should be seen not only as an Islamization of Turkish nationalism, but as the Turkifica- tion of Islamic tradition. How soon this transformation can be completed will determine how soon Turkey will be able to overcome its self-created domestic insecurity problem and identity crisis and play a creative role in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East.

NOTES

1. During my dissertation fieldwork in Erzurum and Bayburt, I attended one of these "Jerusalem Day" all-night activities. After Qur'anic recitations, the speakers in- troduce the significance of the city within the framework of Islam and the Ottoman history. They then criticize the government's domestic and foreign policies and call for a just system. The meetings usu- ally end with pledges "not to deal with Israel" and to work for those who would bring "justice within and without." After the pledge, the Ottoman military march plays to deepen religious emotions. These grass-roots networks made possible the mobilization in Turkey for the Bosnian cause.

2. See Zaman, 29 July 1997. 3. See, for example, Milliyet and

Zaman, 16 August 1997. 4. At demonstrations against strategic

ties with Israel, the Yugoslav flag is often burned along with the Israeli flag because of the alleged Israeli arms sales to Serbia during the genocide against the Bosnian Muslims.

5. See M. Hakan Yavuz, "Turkey's Re- lations with Israel," Foreign Policy (An- kara) 25, nos. 3-4 (1991), pp. 41-68; and M. Hakan Yavuz and Mujeeb R. Khan, "Turkish Foreign Policy Toward the Arab- Israeli Conflict: Duality and Develop- ment," Arab Studies Quarterly 14, no. 4 (1992), pp. 69-94.



TuR1ISH-IsRAELi RELATIONS 35

6. Faik Okte, The Tragedy of the Turk- ish Capital Tax (London: Croom Helm, 1987).

7. Soli Ozel, "Of Not being a Lone Wolf: Geograplhy, Domestic Plays, and Turkish Foreign Policy in the Middle East," in Powder Keg in the Middle East, ed. Geoffrey Kemp and Janice G. Stein (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995), pp. 161-94. An egregious example of Turkey's efforts to prove its rupture with the Islamic world was Ankara's vote at the United Nations against Algeria's independence.

8. Frank Tachau, Turkey: The Politics of Authority, Democracy, and Develop- ment (New York: Praeger, 1984), pp. 165-66.

9. Ergtun Ozbudun, Political Change and Political Participation in Turkey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 52.

10. After Israel passed its Basic Law on Jerusalem declaring the city its "eter- nal capital," Erbakan's National Salvation Party accused Foreign Minister Hayrettin Erkmen of being pro-Israeli because of his reluctance to sever diplomatic ties with Israel to protest the move, and intro- duced a no-confidence motion. On 4 Sep- tember 1980, parliament passed the motion against Erkmen by 230 votes to 2, with 180 abstentions. Bulent Ecevit of the Republican Peoples' Party also supported the motion. See Cumhuriyet, 3 September 1980; Milliyet, 4 September 1980.

11. The army's successive purges of "Islamic elements"-in April and Decem- ber 1996 and May and August 1997-indicates the degree in which Islamic voices have penetrated the army. These con- stant purges are a sign of internal opposition to the higher ranking officers' policies.

12. Sami Zubaida, "Islam, Cultural Na- tionalism and the Left," Review of Middle East Studies, no. 4 (1990), p. 6.

13. Mujeeb R. Khan, "External Threats and the Promotion of a Transnational Is- lamic Consciousness: The Case of the Late Ottoman Empire and Contemporary Tur- key," Islamic World Report 1, no. 3 (1996), pp. 115-28.

14. Ihsan Gurkan, "Turkish-Israeli Re- lations and the Middle East Peace Pro- cess," Turkish Review of Middle East Studies, no. 7 (1993), p. 123.

15. Duygu Bazoglu-Sezer argues that "if there were no peace process between Israel and the PLO, the rapprochement with Israel could not even be conceived." See Sahin Alpay's interview with Sezer in Milliyet, 21 July 1997.

16. It has been alleged that the bulk of former Prime Minister (Filler's $6.5-million slush fund was used to form a "small intelligence circle" in Damascus to attack Syrian targets and intimidate Damascus to give up PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.

17. For the text of the agreement, see Gtirkan, "Turkish-Israeli Relations," pp. 133-36.

18. Newspot, November 18, 1993. 19. Milliyet and Cumhuriyet, 7 No-

vember 1994. 20. Jose Rosenfeld, "Free-trade Pact

with Turkey Near," The Jerusalem Post, 6 November 1994.

21. Robert Olson, "The Turkey-Israel Agreement and the Kurdish Question," Middle East International, 24 May 1996, pp. 18-19.

22. Mehmet Ali Birand, "Thrkiye, Israel ile Uzaklara Gidecek, Ancak," Sabah, 27 May 1997; "Turkiye Israil'in Silah Pazarina Daldi," Sabah, 28 May 1997.

23. One of Turkey's goals in the alliance is to prevent Israeli support for Kurdish nationalism. Many Turks harbor deep suspicions, based on Israel's "periphery strategy" to encourage non-Arab minority independence movements, that Israel is the main supporter of Kurdish nationalism in Iraq, Syria, and Iran.

24. The Jerusalem Post, 4 May 1997. Also see "Turk Donanmasi Israil'de," Mil- liyet, 17 June 1997.

25. He has charged, for example, that "Zionists are seeking to assimilate Turkey and pull us from our historical Islamic roots through integrating it into the Euro- pean Community" and has frequently presented Israel as a major world center of anti-Muslim activity. Following Israel's April 1996 attack on Lebanon, Refah followers distributed video tapes of the Qana bombing's devastation.

26. According to bevik Bir, the deputy chief of staff, this agreement was concluded on 18 September 1995 and repre- sented the first step toward military cooperation ("bevik Bir 'Isbirligi'ni Savundu," Yeni $afak, 5 June 1996). Con- fusion or discrepancies about what was "concluded" or "completed" or "signed,"



36 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

and when, is heightened by the secrecy of the agreements.

27. Steve Rodan, "Turkish PM Signs LAI $650 m. F-4 Deal," Jerusalem Post, 8 December 1996.

28. Arieh O'Sullivan, "Israel, Turkey to Make 'Popeye' Missiles," Jerusalem Post, 18 May 1997.

29. Konya already had an Islamist mayor, who was reelected.

30. "Black Turks" here designate Anatolians, "White Turks" Rumeli Turks from the Balkans or, more generally, the elite that has embraced the secular, Kemalist ethos. See Mehmet Ali Soydan, Dunden Bugune ve Yarina Turkiye'nin Refah Gercegi (Erzurum: Birey Yayincilik, 1994).

31. "The Other Turkey Wins" (front cover) and "Fatih Wins Against Harbiye" in Izlenim, 2-9 April 1994. (Fatih and Harbiye are neighborhoods in Istanbul, Fatih being a large traditional and conservative neighborhood, and Harbiye a Westernized, cosmopolitan one.) For evaluation of the March 1994 election, see Abdurrahman Dilipak, "RP'nin Ba? arisinda Gozardi Edilen Birkaq Nokta," Milliyet, 22 April 1994; Saffet Solak, "Son Seqimler ve Bazi Gerqekler," Zaman, 23 April 1994. For the December 1995 elections, see Eric Rouleau, "Refah Partisi'nin Ba?arisi Suirecek Mi?" Yeni Yuzyil, 5 Janu- ary 1996; Omit Cizre Sakallioglu, "Ala- cakaranlik Ku?agi Seqimleri," Birikim, no. 81 (January 1996), pp. 26-30.

32. Yeni Yuzyil, 14 October 1996. This caused enough concern for Egyptian president Husni Mubarak to pay a short visit to Ankara asking Erbakan to stop "interfering" in Egyptian affairs.

33. Nicole Pope, "Turkey's Generals Behind the Israel Axis," Middle East Inter- national, 16 May 1997, p. 3.

34. While the Qur'anic schools teach only the Qur'an, the Imam Hatip schools have a mixed curriculum of secular and religious education and grant diplomas equivalent to those of the state-run lycees. Ironically, the schools were en- couraged by the military following the 1980 coup as a counter to leftism, then seen as the main threat to the state.

35. Hugh Pope, "Turkish Military Tightens Noose on Pro-Islamic Regime," Wall Street Journal, 13 June 1997.

36. Michael Yudelman, "Erbakan to Meet Levy," Jerusalem Post, 8 April 1997.

37. Fikret Ertan, "David Levy'e Birkaq Soz," Zaman, 8 April 1997; Yeni Yuzyil, 9 April 1997.

38. The generals' tendency to amalga- mate Islamism and the Kurds as threats was exacerbated by the heavy representa- tion of Kurds within Refah: In the 1995 national elections, 26 of Refah's 158 deputies were Kurdish (Yeni Yiizyil, 22 July 1996), and the largest number of deputies from the Kurdish regions were Refah. Refah has been the dominant party in the Kurdish regions not because the Kurds are more "Islamist" than the Turks but because Refah is seen as an antisystem party.

39. Daniel J. Wakin, "Erbakan Chro- nology," Associated Press, Ankara, 18 June 1997.

40. Melik Aktas, "Israil'in Hedefi Arz-i Mev'ud Olabilir," Islam, June 1997, pp. 46-49.

41. See Fuat Atik's interview with Ltutfullah Karaman in "Israil ile yakinlasma "Resmi Turkiyenin Tercihi," Islam (June 1997), p. 48. See also Ahmet Davutoglu, "Islam Tehdit Degil, Bir Dinamizm Kaynagi," Altinoluk (August 1997), p. 15.

42. Sami Kohen, "Israil ile Stratejik Diyalog," Milliyet, 7 May 1997.

43. David Butler, "A Country Pulled in Two Directions," Middle East Economic Digest, 30 May 1997, p. 2.

44. Jonathan Lyons, "Growing Turk- ish-Israeli Ties Bury Islamic Dream," Reuters World Service, 11 May 1997.

45. "bevik Bir." A number of Turkish writers, especially on the left, have ob- jected to the growing Turkish-Israeli relations precisely because they are mili- tarizing Turkish foreign and domestic policy. Ali Bayramoglu, for example, a social democratic analyst for the paper Yeni Yuzyil, laments that Turkey's foreign policies are being "directly produced by the military authority. . . and this represents military supervision over the decision- making process in Turkey." ("Di? Politika ve Asker," Yeni Yuzyil, 25 April 1996). See also Ergun Balqi, "Turkiye'ye Kar?i Tehlikeli Cephe," Cumhuriyet, 30 June 1997.

46. Telephone interview with Abdul- lah Gul, 23 July 1997. In the Turkish system, the defense minister has no authority over the military. In state protocol, he is after the chief of staff.



TUR1SH-IsRAEuI RELATIONS 37

47. The memorandum, contained in the assembly proceedings (Tu rkiye Buyuk Millet Meclisi Tutanaklari, 18 October 1996) reads as follows: "To the Speaker of the Turkish Grand National Assembly. In response to the question of deputy Ya?ar Uinal on 13 August 1996 about the agreements signed with Israel, they are listed as follows. Respectfully yours, Prof. Dr. Tansu biller, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister.

1. Agreement on Cooperation in Cul- tural, Educational, and Scientific Fields on 14 November 1993.

2. Memorandum on the Principles of Mutual Cooperation, 14 November 1993.

3. Agreement on the Protection of En- vironment and Nature, 11 April 1994.

4. Agreement on Cooperation in Tele- communication and Postal Service, 3 November 1994.

5. Agreement of Narcotic and Psycho- tropic Drugs, 4 November 1994.

6. Agreement on Cooperation of Med- ical and Health Services, 14 March 1995.

7. Memorandum in Cooperation in Agriculture, 27 June 1995.

8. Agreement of Military Education and Cooperation, 22 February 1996.

9. Free Trade Pact Agreement, 14 March 1996.

10. Agreement for the Protection of In- vestment, 14 March 1996.

11. Agreement for the Examination of Dual Taxation, 14 March 1996.

12. Agreement on Cooperation in Eco- nomic, Scientific, and Technical Fields, 14 March 1996.

13. Agreement on Cooperation in De- fense Industry, 28 August 1996."

48. Alan Makovsky, "Israeli-Turkish Relations: A Turkish 'Periphery' Strategy?" in Reluctant Neighbor: Turkey's Role in the Middle East, ed. Henri J. Barkey (Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996), p. 149.

49. In an interview on 12 August 1997, a high-ranking Turkish diplomat told the author in Chicago of the appearance of new slogans calling the army "Peygamber Ocagi degil artik, Yahudi Ocagi" [No longer the hearth of the prophet, but the hearth of the Jews].

50. Makovsky, "Israeli-Turkish Rela- tions," pp. 166-67. Interestingly, an Israeli daily reported during betin's November 1993 visit that Israeli officials were un- comfortable with betin's appeal for a joint battle against terrorism: "We are not interested in making enemies. The PKK has never hurt us. We also don't have any interest in antagonizing Syria" (Jerusalem Post International, 27 November 1993). And during Israeli president Weizman's visit to Turkey the following January, the Israeli side refused to make an outright condemnation of the PKK (Jerusalem Post, 30 January 1994). The Turkish daily Cumhuriyet editorialized on 25 January 1994 that Israeli leaders refuse to sign agreements on antiterror cooperation where Turkey is concerned and only seek to get assistance for themselves.

51. Mehmet Ali Birand, "Turkiye, Israel ile Suriye Savasina Katildi," Sabah, 16 April 1996.

52. Cengiz bandar, "Turkiye, Kudus'un Neresinde?" Sabah, 10 April 1997.

53. "Turkey's Refah Party in Power: An Assessment: An Interview with Graham Fuller" in Middle East Affairs Journal 3, nos. 1-2 (Winter-Spring 1997), p. 167.



turkish-israeli relations through the lens of the turkish identity debate

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