Three factors are currently highlighting Turkeys strategic importance.
These factors, taken together, underline Turkeys uniqueness in the Middle East and the Muslim world. As a NATO member situated at the junction of Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East, it plays a series of roles all of which are vital to the West.
It is almost two years since the moderately Islamic AKP (Justice and Development Party) swept to power in Ankara. Its success sprang partly from the charisma of its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and partly from voters disenchantment with the established parties of right and left.
Although the party has Islamic roots, it has carefully repackaged itself as a modern, reformist movement of the centre-right a party of Muslim democrats comparable to the Christian-democratic parties of Western Europe. Despite the scepticism of Turkish secularists (including the powerful generals), who fear the AKP has a hidden Islamist agenda, Erdogan has won credit for maintaining the countrys IMF-backed economic recovery programme, pushing through a series of far-reaching reforms designed to meet the criteria for EU membership, and steering a pragmatic course in foreign policy.
Unluckily for Erdogan, he came to power at the very moment when America was preparing to go to war in neighbouring Iraq. He found himself caught between the pressures of Turkish public opinion strongly opposed to the war and urgent appeals for help from his American ally. The decision of the Turkish parliament to reject the request for US forces to pass through Turkey into northern Iraq
(albeit by the slenderest of majorities) provoked the most serious rift in US-Turkish relations for many years.
That the relationship has now been largely mended is a tribute to Turkeys geopolitical importance. At a time when the triple problems of Iraq, Palestine, and Al-Qaida have created a gulf of hostility and incomprehension between America and the Muslim world, the Bush administration regards Turkey in a special light as living proof that Islam and democracy are compatible, and that Islam and the West are not doomed to confront one another in a fateful clash of civilisations.
President Bushs visit to Istanbul for the NATO summit in June provided him with the perfect backdrop (an open-air speech beside the Bosphorus) to endorse the Turkish model and, by implication, the Erdogan project.
At the same time, the Americans have lost no opportunity to urge the EU to welcome Turkey into the European club. The strategic arguments about Turkeys importance are well understood in London, Paris, and Berlin. There are other considerations, however. It is not just a matter of Turkey meeting the political, economic, and legal criteria for membership; this the Turks have largely done. Europe is divided over whether Turkey can properly be considered European -- and whether, in the post-9/11 climate, Muslims are to be welcomed or feared.
Erdogans recent plan to legislate against adultery gave ammunition to his critics. He was forced to back down in the face of opposition both from Europe and from within Turkey itself. Other problems remain. Turkey is neurotically unhappy about the consolidation of Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq. Its relations with Israel have recently soured. The Cyprus issue remains unresolved. Erdogan is still mistrusted by the Turkish generals.
Nevertheless if, as many expect, EU leaders give Turkey the green light at their summit in December, it will mark a new stage in the countrys pro-Western orientation. If at the same time Erdogans reformist domestic programme proceeds without mishap, the Turkey of the 21st century may indeed provide some kind of model of Muslim modernity.
JIME center.All rights reserved.