Turkey's Dreams of Accession

David L. Phillips

From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2004

Summary:  The hope of joining the EU has driven major reforms in Turkey, including economic liberalization, human rights protection, and greater civilian oversight of the military. But these reforms have fueled suspicions among Islamists and hard-line army officers. EU membership would help Turkey become a successful Muslim democracy, strengthen it as an ally in the fight against terrorism, and foster liberalization in the Islamic world.

David L. Phillips is a Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Critics argue that Erdogan's recent disavowal of Islamic symbolism is only tactical. Erdogan's clique has quietly and consistently removed women from government positions, and few women candidates appear on AKP candidate lists. In May, the Republican People's Party (known as CHP), the AKP's main opposition, backed legislation calling for "positive discrimination" and quotas for women in elected bodies or employed in state institutions. Burhan Kuzu, the AKP president of parliament's Constitutional Committee, rebuffed them: "Parliamentarianism is a hard task. We often work after midnight. A woman returning that late from work will not be looked upon with decency." (In the end, the AKP gave its lukewarm support, and the national assembly affirmed that "woman and man have equal rights" and approved measures giving women "equality before the law.")

The AKP's educational reform package has also given some secularists pause. The party has argued for preferences on the university entrance examinations for vocational school graduates, eight percent of whom have received degrees from religious schools. But it has faced objections from the Central Committee for Higher Education, which was established by the military to set university standards and improve the quality of education in provincial institutions. The committee was concerned that over time the measure would swamp universities with ill-prepared students from religious schools. It also worried that the AKP would undermine its authority by filling Education Ministry positions with party loyalists.

BELONGING

Erdogan may indeed be torn between his Islamic beliefs and his politics. But he has worked consistently to strengthen Turkey's ties to the West, even when his foreign-policy initiatives-regarding the war in Iraq, peace in Cyprus, and Turkey's accession to the EU-have complicated his relations with both Islamists and ardent secularists in the military at home.

In early 2003, AKP leaders assured the Bush administration that it could use Turkey for the transit of U.S. troops on their way to northern Iraq. But in March 2003, the Turkish parliament unexpectedly rejected the measure. Washington's punitive decision to withdraw an offer of significant aid sent shock waves through the ailing economy and offered Erdogan's detractors a chance to undermine him. It is unclear if the NSC, which would usually take the lead on matters of such national importance, demurred in order to engineer the debacle and embarrass Erdogan or if it genuinely thought Turkey's decision not to participate could derail plans for war. Perhaps it calculated that a falling out within the AKP over the invasion of Iraq would bring down the government by driving a wedge between Erdogan and the party's more traditional wing. If this was the strategy, however, it backfired. The United States went to war without Turkey; Erdogan won praise at home for standing up to the Bush administration's bullying after the parliamentary vote; and when U.S. forces got bogged down by the insurgency, Erdogan was applauded for keeping Turkey out of the quagmire.

Erdogan's Cyprus policy also pitted him against ultranationalists and other powerful constituencies at home. Within weeks of assuming office, he helped advance the island's reunification by distancing his government from Rauf Denktash, the obstructionist Turkish Cypriot leader. Erdogan's move pleased EU governments, which had wanted to resolve the dispute among Cypriots before starting accession talks with Ankara. But it exacerbated tensions within Turkey's military.

The military is split between two camps over the extent to which Turkey should implement reforms sought by the EU. On one side, the Foreign Ministry and Hilmi Ozkok, the country's top general and a member of the NSC, support Erdogan's efforts. The NSC had previously undermined parties with an Islamic orientation, but Ozkok has preferred to work with the popular AKP. Reformers like him, as well as the national police and the military intelligence, support Turkey's bid to join the EU. They understand that civilian control of the military is critical to Turkey's EU candidacy.

On the other side, the land army, army intelligence units, and the corps of gendarmes oppose such reforms, which they find excessively constraining. Aytac Yalman, the head of the Land Forces Command and the staunchest Kemalist among Turkey's top military brass, has recently accused the United States of harboring a secret plan to establish an independent state of Iraqi Kurdistan and has applauded academics who call for cutting ties with "imperialist America and the EU." In January 2004, the Land Forces Command asked governors and military centers to spy on and collect information about individuals carrying out "divisive and destructive" activities, especially Turks advocating membership in the EU.

The reformists currently have the upper hand. Last year, Ozkok discreetly engineered a reduction of the military's power in politics. Using the regular rotation of senior military officers at a High Military Council meeting in August 2003, he forced hard-line generals into retirement, including Yalman, who will step down at the end of 2004.