Gerald Warner: Keep an open mind about the new Ottoman empire

SEVERAL times in every century, geopolitical convulsions throw up a new power that assumes a hegemonial role in its regional sphere of interest. Prussia metamorphosing into the German Empire was a 19th-century example. Sometimes the circumstances are sudden and dramatic, as with the downfall of France in 1870. At other times it is a process of osmosis that goes almost unnoticed by the wider community until it is a fait accompli.

Something of this nature appears to be happening today, as Turkey increasingly tries to assert a leading role in the Middle East and further afield, among the successor states of the former Ottoman Empire. This new muscle-flexing in foreign policy is a reflection of even more radical changes in domestic politics: this year will be recorded by historians as the date when Turkey finally divested itself of the Kemalist doctrines imposed on the country through a constitutional straitjacket by Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s. Of his so-called “Six Arrows” defining the way in which Turks must thenceforth live, the key element was secularism.

That is the rock on which the Ataturk settlement has just perished. The Kemalist version of secularism was not the simple repudiation of a state religion commonplace in many western countries; it was closer to the totalitarian French concept of laïcité, viewing religion with suspicion and hostility. The guardians of this dogma were the army and the Constitutional Court. The armed forces had overthrown four elected governments since 1960 and they cherished their role as enforcers of secularism. That created increasing tension in an overwhelmingly Muslim country at a time of Islamic resurgence. Turkish girls wondered why they could wear the hijab on any British campus, but not at a Turkish university.

In 2008, the Constitutional Court came within one vote of closing down the AKP party of Recep Tayyip Erdogan which had won three elections, on the grounds it was a threat to Turkey’s secularist principles. Erdogan knew the tide of opinion was with him and he moved ruthlessly to crush the secularist parallel state. There are now 250 senior military officers under detention. The final humiliation of the once all-powerful armed forces came at the end of July when the chief of the General Staff and all three services’ chiefs resigned, expecting to provoke a political crisis. Nobody paid any attention. Ataturk’s secularist enforcement agency is history. There is unease in the West over the emergence of a pro-Islamic regime in Turkey; but have we grounds for concern? It all depends whether the Erdogan government is more accurately described as “Islamist” or “Islamic”. If it is the latter, there can hardly be any reasonable objection when the population is Muslim. If it is the former, with the militant aspirations the term connotes, alarm is well-founded. Ankara’s patronage of Hamas and recent baiting of its former ally Israel over the Gaza convoy – a provocation abetted by Turkey – are not reassuring. Yet the situation is not clear-cut.

Although it repudiates the term, Turkey is pursuing a neo-Ottoman policy. It is trying to establish a sphere of influence among the former colonies of the Ottoman Empire. This has led it to face away from Europe, where its application for EU membership has been languishing since 1999. There is no conceivable reason why a country situated in Asia should join the European Union, except in the eyes of those integrationist fanatics who would like to absorb Antarctica too.

The question now is: do the Turks still want to join? Turkey has said that if the Cyprus question is not resolved by 2012 it will freeze relations with the EU. Membership could inhibit its independence as it seeks to reassert leadership in the Middle East, Turkic Asia and Sudan – all part of the Ottoman heritage.

This ambition motivated Turkey to cultivate Libya under Gaddafi and Syria under Assad; now it is trying to erase that memory, rebuking the Syrian dictator who has caused a refugee crisis on its border. Clearly, Turkey wants to cultivate whatever governments emerge in the Middle East. Tomorrow Erdogan begins a tour of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. That is why he has been squaring up to Israel, somewhat theatrically, while distancing himself from Iran, to which he was formerly close.

The neo-Ottoman phenomenon poses a difficult conundrum for western analysts. One possibility, however, is worth considering: if Turkey proves to be respectably Islamic, rather than militantly Islamist, considering that Nato can never again intervene in the Middle East, if Ankara were to interpose in the power vacuum being created by the Arab Spring might that be a stabilising development? Perhaps, for the moment, we should remain open-minded about that. As for EU membership – if the EU itself survives – that is a non-starter for the Ottomans.