From: celep@aludra.usc.edu (Omer Halid Celep)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Atlantic'ten  - 2/3
Date: 6 Apr 1992 13:24:21 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: aludra.usc.edu










(devamla)


  Although the Mediterranean Sea and the mountainous Balkan peninsula act as a 
territorial buffer between Christian Europe and the Muslim Middle East, the 
religious revival in both the Slavic and Turkic halves of the former Soviet 
Union has brought Orthodox Christianity and Sunni Islam face to face on a long 
border. Experts observe that whereas Central Asians themselves may be confused 
about whether thay should be defined broadly as Turkic or more narrowly as, 
for example, Uzbek, or both, thay are not confused about their religion. Islam 
is the one unifying factor throughout Central Asia, bridging ethnic and class 
differences. More than Turkic racial identity or the various Soviet-created 
nationalities, it has the capacity to create political legitimacy.

  What this means depends on what Islam becomes here. In Central Asia now 
there is renewed interest in learning Arabic script, which was the means of 
writing Turkic until Stalin's day and is still used among the Turkic peoples 
of Iran, Afghanistan and China. Though Central Asian Islam is fiercely 
traditional, it is not at present fanatical. Islam in these mountains and 
steppes is simply a way of life : the natural, apolitical outgrowth of a 
materially poor existence. But the situation could change as a result of 
missionary activity by fundamentalist Iranians and by the very different 
fundamentalist "Wahhabi" groups from Saudi Arabia.

  The Turkic world represents a new frontier for Middle Eastern 
fundamentalists. For Iran, there are opportunities but also difficulties and 
dangers. Whereas Iran is mostly Shiite, formerly Soviet Central Asia is Sunni, 
including the Persian-speaking Tajiks. This will severely limit the appeal of 
the mullahs. Culturally, the three million Sunni Tajiks have a strong sense of 
having been cut off from their Persian heritage and thus welcome closer 
contact with Iran. But Iran's integrity as a nation is threatened by the 
Soviet collapse, because much of its northern tier is, like Afghanistan, 
inhabited by Turks -Azeri Turks in the west and Turkomens in the east- who in 
the feature could be ripe for pan-Turkism.

  More than Iran, however, it is our ally Saudi Arabia whose citizens may 
demonstrate a real influence in the emerging Turkic world. During the Afghan 
war Saudi religious groups were active among both Afghan mujahidin and 
Pakistanis, handing out large sums of money as part of an effort to convert 
these traditionalist Muslims to Wahhabism.

  Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab was an eighteenth-century Arabian religious leader 
who led a back-to-the-roots Islamic movement, away from the calcified 
orthodoxy of Ottoman Turkey and the pre-Islamic paganism practiced by some 
desert tribes. Though almost all Saudis today are nominally Wahhabis, it is 
the most extreme Wahhabi fundamentalists who have been active in Afghanistan 
and Pakistan. I'll never forget leaving the Afghan city of Kandahar with a 
group of mujahidin, with gunfire all about, and being stopped by two  Wahhabi 
missionaries who tried telling the mujahidin that they were not pure enough 
Muslims. Because these Wahhabis are very aggressive activists, their message 
was not well received among Afghans, whose Islam is steeped and traditional. 
The Wahhabis' success came among the most unsavory and extreme elements within 
the mujahidin movement : the Afghans who during the Gulf War supported Saddam 
Hussein instead of their own Saudi financiers. Though one would assume that 
the Saudi government learned a lesson from this experience, the Wahhabis are 
now extending their activities throughout the former Soviet Muslim Republics, 
armed with Korans and plenty of cash. "The defeat of communist ideology," 
coupled with the awful economic conditions in the region, "may permit the 
Wahhabis to fill the ideological vacuum," says Almaz Estekov, who was thought 
by Wahhabis in Kazakhstan. This is not necessarily a development the West must 
fear, but it is certainly one that should be understood.

  Muddying the waters for Iran and for Saudi Wahhabis in Central Asia will be 
the influence of Turkey, the surviving remnant of the Ottoman Empire, whose 
Turkic people are said to descend from Osman, the third chief of a small tribe 
who brought his kinsmen westward, out of the lands devastated by the Mongols, 
and established them in Asia Minor. Rather than promoting religion, Turkey 
will be promoting a secular and racially based nationalism in its role as the 
only Turkic society thus far to have evolved into a modern nation-state. "If 
the U.S. and the Europeans train the Slavic Christian world, why can't Turkey 
train ours ?" says Rusi Nasar, an Uzbek who runs a consulting firm in 
Washington, D.C., which specializes in Central Asian matters. He notes that 
the leaders of almost all the former Soviet Turkic republics have recently 
made official visits to Turkey. Turkey is now opening banks and establishing 
air links throughout Central Asia. It has signed contracts to buy natural gas 
from Turkmenistan and cotton from Uzbekistan. Instead of the Arabic 
typewriters that Iran is sending to the region, the Turks are dispatching 
Latin ones. Turkic Central Asians today disscuss Turkey's internal politics 
and its historical enmity towards the Greeks and the Armenians as though these 
concerns were their own. But again, as in the case of Iran, the opportunities 
for Turkey may be equaled by the dangers.

  Turkey's internal situation is more fragile politically than it has been at 
any moment since the 1980 military takeover that ended the administration of 
Suleiman Demirel, who was recently re-elected Prime Minister. Demirel has a 
weak parliamentary power base and a reputation for populist demagoguery. 
Though Turkey returned to civilian rule in 1983, it has been able to maintain 
stability only through a dictatorial style of governance. Demirel and the 
President, Turgut Ozal, are known to despise each other. Prior to the 1980 
coup Turkey was wracked by armed conflicts among various extremist groups. 
Some of these groups espoused pan-Turkism, which at the time represented a 
theoretical pipe dream. But no longer. Pan-Turkism has suddenly a practical 
flavor in Turkey, where Attila ang Ghengiz are common first names. There is 
little consensus on this inflammatory issue now that Turkey, for the first 
time ever, must quickly articulate a policy toward the greater Turkic world. 
The founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was an opponent of 
pan-Turkism. Thus the debate gets tangled with the one over Ataturk's 
philosophy - another issue that is highly sensitive in the country.


(to be continued)


Robert D. Kaplan
The Atlantic, April 1992










-- 
----------------
Omer Halid Celep
celep@usc.edu