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COMMENTARY
November 22, 2003
The infidel Turk
In the fanatic Islamist mind there are a thousand reasons to hit Turkey. It begins with history and the fact that the Ottoman Empire with its metropolitan centre in Istanbul was the last thing resembling an universal Muslim caliphate. This fell in the upshot of World War I the office of the caliph was abolished and most of the empire was dissolved and distributed among the victorious European powers; but the Ottoman heartland remained independent becoming transformed into the nation-state of Turkey. Under Ataturk it was vigorously secularized and Westernized with most outward signs of its Islamic identity suppressed. The country has ever since wobbled back and forth between military authoritarianism and constitutional democracy. To this day the Turkish army is recognized as having the right to enforce the constitution against any errant elected government. In the rhetoric of Osama bin Laden and other Islamists the Ottoman Caliphate is frequently evoked. The theme of Turkish apostasy is also played upon to Arab audiences with an historical memory of Ottoman imperial rule. In Europe in the old days the Ottomans were called the "infidel Turk" and curiously the same expression is now common in the Arab countries. The fact that Turkey alone among the Muslim states of the region gives constitutional protection and legal equality to its Christian and Jewish minorities is often mentioned as an outrage. A fundamental Islamic principle is the inferior legal status of non-Muslims. More recent history has confirmed the unhappy relationship between Turks and Arabs. For the first time in its modern history a consciously Islamic religious party has risen to power in Turkish elections. There was much anxiety about this in the West but the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has proved faithful to modern Turkish traditions. It continues to apply (hopelessly) for membership in the European Union. It continues to ignore demands for the institution of Sharia law. It continues to belong not only to NATO but to a special tripartite military alliance with the U.S. and Israel. It governs as the Hindu religious party in India just as if it were another secular political party offering mere sops to its more enthusiastic supporters. It has thus tended to confirm that Turkey is permanently a part of the West not the East. This further enrages the Islamists. And the Turks themselves have come to realize that they are -- after the U.S. and Israel -- the third-favourite national target for terrorist violence. Or possibly the fourth if Iraq succeeds in creating a secular democracy in the very heart of Arab consciousness. While the actual targets were Jewish synagogues last week and British consulate and bank this week it appears that Turkish public opinion was not impressed. The effect of the bombings has been to weld together the Erdogan administration and the Turkish military who previously looked suspiciously upon each other. And the Turkish generals commanding the most powerful army in the Middle East are now aching to strike back at Syria and possibly Iran which are believed to be sheltering the organizers of the Istanbul bombings. Another sleeping giant has been waked. Al Qaeda and its allies have it seems seriously miscalculated through a mixture of ignorance and desperation. Turkey in the future will be a much more reliable and active ally to the U.S. The recent blasts in Saudi Arabia -- in which Muslim Arabs were among the intended victims -- have meanwhile tended to confirm that Al Qaeda has lost the financial support of senior Saudi princes (who paid them the equivalent of "protection money" to leave Arabian targets alone). The failure to mount terrorist strikes in London during President Bush's visit there speaks for itself; Istanbul was the closest they could get. All these things on top of new regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq are evidence that Bush and company are making progress. But the bloodletting is far from over. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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