From: dbd@urartu.sdpa.org (David Davidian)
Subject: _FIRE, FURY AND NATIONALISM_ (from U.S. News & World Report)
Summary: Attempts to woo central asian republics, Gray Wolves
Keywords: pan-Turkism, greater-Turkey, Turkish versus Islamic traditions 
Organization: S.D.P.A. Center for Regional Studies
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 14:40:09 GMT


		_FIRE, FURY AND NATIONALISM_
	Chaos Spread on Russia's Southern Border

by Louise Lief from the July 6, 1992, _US News and World Report

From Moldova in the west to China in the Far East, the southern frontier of 
the vast Russian and Soviet empires has collapsed, leaving millions of 
Russians stranded in foreign lands, setting off violent ethnic conflicts and 
creating a political and economic vacuum that Moscow's historic rivals are 
beginning to fill.

After two years of watching passively as its empire disintegrates, Russia is
fed up. Nationalist sentiment is growing: Last week in Moldova, Russian troops
went into battle for the first time against forces of another former Soviet 
republic. Fighting in Georgia also has intensified, and in the Baltics, 
Ukraine and Tajikistan, tensions are rising over the continued presence of 
Russian Army units.

As turmoil spreads, outsiders are pecking away at the remnants of the former 
Soviet empire. Romania is sending military aid to its ethnic kin in Moldova.
Turkey, long Russia's bitter rival, is moving into the Central Asian vacuum
left by the Soviet Union's demise. So are two of Islam's champions, Iran and
Saudi Arabia. A confident China, once the Soviet Union's backward little 
brother, has found new opportunities in the economic rubble of the former
Soviet republics.

Most of the 25 million Russians living outside Russia feel little or no 
loyally to their new governments. For decades they have acted like other 
European colonialists. The Russians rarely mixed; few have even bothered to
learn local languages. Now they must decide where they belong and what they
value most. Tens of thousands already are heading for Russia, a grim migration
that is exacerbating housing and other problems there.

A potent "war party" of Russian nationalists, communists, Army officers, 
Russian Orthodox religious fanatics and disgruntled democrats -- including
some members of Yeltsin's own government--has now served notice that the fate 
of Russian minorities and Russian troops serving outside Russia will make or 
break the democratic experiment at home.

Sensing the potency of the challenge. Yeltsin has adopted a hard line, wanting
that Russia will protect its kith and kin beyond its borders. With economic
and political chaos growing and opinion polls suggesting that fewer than a 
third of his countrymen back him, is one issue Yeltsin cannot afford to mis-
handle. Last week, he moved to defuse confrontations in Ukraine and Georgia, 
and struck a tentative truce with Moldovan President Mircea Snegur. But the 
legacy of Russian and Soviet imperialism will continue to haunt Yeltsin and
his reformers--and could decide their fate.


When Turkish Prime Minister Suleiman Demirel opened Turkish embassies in five 
former Soviet republics in Central Asia this spring, the ceremony usually 
included slaughtering a sheep on the steps of the freshly painted premises. 
This presented some delicate protocol problems. First, his hosts wanted
Demirel to be close enough to see the sacrifice but far enough away to keep 
sheep blood from splatter him, the assembled dignitaries or the marching
band. Second. There was the disposal of the dripping carcass. This was a 
particularly acute dilemma at the Turkish Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, where
not one nut two sheep were slaughtered amid a crush of television cameras and 
journalists.

Fortunately, the hapless sheep were safely disposed of as soon as they could
be dragged by the horns down a side alley. Then the Turks could get down to
the real business of their visit--picking over the carcass of imperial Russia,
lands dominated first by the czar's court in St. Petersburg, then from the
Communists' Kremlin in Moscow. Now Central Asia is suddenly open to any comers
hardy enough to endure cockroach-infested hotels, surly waitresses, a variety
of unusual headgear and the pungent trademark drink of the region, fermented
mare's milk.

For all its diplomacy, business deals and aid proposals, this was partly a
voyage of discovery for Demirel and his Turkish colleagues. As far away as
the Chinese border and beyond, they are discovering both their origins and
reminders of their own lost Ottoman Empire in a land filled with gold, silver,
uranium, oil, coal, natural gas and Turkic-speaking tribes with an affinity 
for their European cousins.

Although Turkish officials are careful to use moderate language and to set
fairly modest goals for their cash-strapped government's aid to its neighbors,
pan-Turkic fever has gripped many ordinary Turks. Snubbed by the European 
Community and fast losing its importance as NATO's easternmost base, Turkey
is trying to carve out a new identity as the economic, cultural and linguistic
center of gravity that tugs this new frontier toward the West. In the process,
it seeks to create a new "Turkic" world in a region long dominated by Russia
and China and dismissed by the rest of the world. In the hope that Istanbul
will replace distant Moscow as the transportation hub of Central Asia, Turkish
Airlines is starting regular flights to five Central Asian capitals. "It is
Atlanlis rediscovered," enthuses Gengis Chandar, a columnist with the Turkish
newspaper Sabah.

No one is exploiting the Turkish connection more enthusiastically than
Turkey's neofascist right wing, with the Turkish government's tacit collusion
Prime Minister Demirel is flirting with Alpaslan Turkes, a former Turkish Army
colonel who helped engineer the overthrow of Turkey's elected government in
1960 and who now heads the right-wing Nationalist Labor Party in parliament.
In the 1970s, while he was in a coalition government with Demirel, Turkes
helped found a fascist paramilitary group called the Gray Wolves, which 
assassinated hundreds of people. One of Demirel's key advisers on Central Asia
is Namik Kemal Zeybek, a former Gray Wolf activist who in 1980 was indicted 
for trying to overthrow the constitution but was never convicted.

Before they went underground and he was imprisoned in 1980 after a military
crackdown, the Gray Wolves used to refer to Turkes as Basbug, the Turkish
equivalent to the German Fuhrer. His Gray Wolves spawned Mehmet Ali Agca, who
shot and wounded Pope John Paul 11 in 1981, and another gunman who attempted 
to assassinate current Turkish President Turgut Ozal in 1988.

Many in Ankara dismiss Turkes, who was freed from prison in 1985, as a has-
been who can muster only 9 percent of the vote. But the opening of Central 
Asia has enhanced his stature. For years, while Turkey avoided confronting its
powerful Soviet neighbor, Turkes was preaching a fiery brand of pan-Turkism. 
"We would like Turkey to organize, operate and coordinate among all Turkic 
groups in the world," he told U.S. News. In "West Turkestan," as Turkes calls
Central Asia, he has almost realized his dreams. In "East Turkestan," known to
the world as the Chinese province of Xinjiang, he hopes to liberate Uighur 
Turks in similar fashion.

At 75, Turkes is a national hero in many of the Central Asian republics. On
his first visit to the area with Demirel in May, youths in Turkmenistan kissed
his hands and Azerbaijanis carried his picture and joyfully gave him the sign 
of the Gray Wolf--pinky and forefinger raised together. In Azerbaijan, his
Gray Wolf insignia appears on the khaki uniforms of the Popular Front militia,
an irregular paramilitary force headed by philosopher Ebulfeyz Elchibey, who 
has just won Azerbaijani's presidential election. The Popular Front is
dedicated to recapturing the autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh from
Christian Armenia, and Turkes says his followers are fighting in Azerbaijan.

Senior Turkish officials insist that Turkey has no pan-Turkic ambitions and
simply wants to help Central Asia democratize, convert to a market economy
and avoid the religious and ethnic hatreds that are now devouring Yugoslavia
and threatening to tear apart Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan. The Turks have 
started a new satellite television channel called Avrasya, which broadcasts
Turkish-language programs to households from the Adriatic Sea to China 11 
hours a day. Turkey has given scholarships to 10,000 Central Asian students to
study at Turkish universities and will give the region $1.1 billion in
agricultural credits and investment guarantees.

For all their gushing about a common Turkic heritage, though, the Central
Asians are remarkably hardheaded when it comes to business. Much to the
Turks' chagrin the Uzbeks and some Central Asians have not committed 
themselves to dumping the Russian Cyrillic alphabet and adopting a Latinized
Turkish one and visions of Arab petrodollars still tempt them to adopt an
Arabic alphabet. So far however those dreams have not been realized: Private
Saudi foundations are conducting mainly missionary work building mosques and
religious schools.

With Germans, Koreans, Indians and Chinese crowding into the region's 
miserable hotels in pursuing joint ventures and barter trade, the Central
Asians are waiting for the best offers. In Uzbekistan the lure is literally
gold. Uzbek President Islam Kerimov took Demirel by the hand to show him
Uzbekistan s substantial gold reserves and smugly predicted the potential for 
mining tons more each year. Uzbekistan has black gold too: Oil is gushing
out of the ground in the Fergana Valley threatening to spill into the rivers 
that irrigate the republic's cotton fields. In Turkmenistan there is natural 
gas; in Kirgizstan gold coal oil and precious minerals.

Head Injury. Demirel's trip to Central Asia was not entirely a welcome-home 
parade however. In Alma-Ata the capital of Kazakhstan, the Kazakhs quickly 
dispatched the ritual sheep at the airport. But at the arrival ceremony while
a Russian military band played on (hardly music to Turkish ears) the
predominantly Russian security men beat up Demirel's chief bodyguard and 
punched one Turkish business so hard he was sent to the hospital with a head
injury.

Still, the potential for money-making and the pipelines needed to carry 
natural gas from other Central Asian republics across Kazakhstan to Turkey
were alluring enough for Demirel's delegation of 246 parliamentarians,
millionaires and journalists to endure such indignities. The blows were also
softened somewhat when Prime Minister Nursultan Nazarbayev presented Demirel
with a horse at the end of the visit.

Although the United States has opened diplomatic missions in each republic far
ahead of other countries, the Americans are mostly sitting out the latest
round of the great game in Central Asia. When Turkish officials recently
proposed creating an Istanbul-based English-language University for Central
Asia modeled on the highly successful American universities in Cairo and
Beirut, U.S. officials stunned the Turks by saying that while they supported 
the idea the U.S. government was broke. They advised the Turks to ask Saudi
Arabia for the financing. The United States is missing the boat says Leonard
Weisman a Miami-based businessman who is in Tashkent helping to bring the
wildcat Uzbek oil gusher under control. They view this as a backwater.

The Turks realize that bulk of their trade and economic interests still lie
primarily in the West. But as the pull of their long-lost Turkish "family"
intensifies, Turkey,s balancing act between East and West will become even 
more difficult.

-- 
David Davidian dbd@urartu.sdpa.org "It has been ever thus in all things, son, 
SDPA Center for Regional Studies    Whatever we thrash we give to the wind, 
P.O. Box 382761                     We too have been blown by the world's wind
Cambridge, MA 02238                 The chaff is gone but the grain remains." 
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