A Conference Report

Turkey’s Role 

in the Middle East

Patricia Carley

United States

Institute of Peace
Summary v

Preface viii

1 Introduction 1

2 Background 2

3 Historical and Geostrategic Context 5

4 Turkey, the Kurds, and Relations with Iraq 8

5 Turkey and Iran 12

6 Turkey, Syria, and the Water Crisis 16

7 Turkey and the Middle East Peace Process 20

8 Conclusion: Turkey’s Future Role in the Middle East 23

Conference Participants 27

About the Author 28

About the Institute 29

CONTENTS
The end of the Cold War seemed to portend a

decline in Turkey’s strategic importance to

the West; however, the political changes in

the world since 1989 have also loosened the constraints within which Turkey can act. As a result,

Ankara’s foreign policy has been redirected from

its strictly western orientation to one in which the

countries of the Middle East have become potentially more significant. The changing relationship

between Turkey—uniquely positioned in both the

West and the East—and its neighbors in the Middle

East was examined at a United States Institute of

Peace conference entitled “A Reluctant Neighbor:

Analyzing Turkey’s Role in the Middle East,” held

on June 1–2, 1994. 

The foundations of Turkey’s foreign policy are a

legacy of the country’s founder, Kemal Ataturk,

who from the time of its establishment in 1923,

had two fundamental goals for the new republic:

modernization and westernization. Ataturk directed the country away not only from other Turkic peoples, but also, despite their historical relationship over centuries of Ottoman rule, from the

rest of the Islamic world. He instituted a series of

domestic reforms to bolster the new direction of

the country, including secularizing the political

and judicial systems and changing the alphabet

from Arabic to Latin. As a result of these radical

changes, Turkey experienced an almost complete

break with its past in both foreign and domestic

spheres that remains a part of the nation’s fabric.

Although Ataturk’s influence is not unshakable,

his legacy endures, and any change in Ankara’s foreign policy orientation must be examined against

this background.

Ironically, Turkey’s relationship with the Middle

East is colored by the very past that Ataturk sought

to repudiate. On the one hand, many current Arab

suspicions about Turkey date back to the period after 1908, when the extremist Turkification campaign of the Young Turks led to the suppression of

Arab language and culture. On the other hand,

Turks remember that Arabs sided with the British

during World War I, an act that, while motivated

by the Arab drive for independence, is still viewed

by many Turks as unforgivable treachery. Thus, despite the revolutionary and enduring nature of

Ataturk’s reforms, when Arabs and Turks confront

each other today, the past is not as much a dead issue as many in Turkey may want to believe. 

The greater attention being given by Turkey to

relations with the Middle East results not only

from changing world politics but also from factors

such as the Kurdish rebellion in southeast Turkey,

the water dispute with Syria, and the peace accords

between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signed in September 1993. Despite

expanded relations with the Middle East, however,

Turkey’s most important political relationship will

continue to be with the West, as will its principal

trade relations.

The Kurds 

The Kurdish problem is one of Turkey’s most vexing. Some 12 million to 14 million Kurds live in

Turkey today, and their relations with the government have been troubled since the founding of the

republic. The problem stems in part from Ataturk’s

dictum that, despite the presence of millions of

Kurds, only the “Turkish nation” lived within the

borders of the republic. To uphold this tenet, the

Turkish government has suppressed any display of

Kurdish linguistic or cultural distinctiveness and

encouraged full assimilation. In the 1970s, a radicalized Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was

formed to fight for the rights of Kurds. When that

group turned to violent terrorist tactics in the early

1980s, the government responded with force,

SUMMARY

v
killing many non-PKK Kurdish villagers in the

process. In the past ten years there have been thousands of deaths of Kurdish and Turkish civilian bystanders, as well as Turkish soldiers, PKK guerrillas, journalists, and human rights activists. 

The Turkish government appears bent on a military solution to the problem. Yet one of the factors

exacerbating the crisis is the government’s failure

to separate the broader Kurdish struggle for linguistic and cultural rights from the narrower—and

more legitimate—issue of combating PKK terrorism. It appears that the most effective solution

would be to accept a separate identity for the

Kurds and to abandon the policy of assimilation.

Indeed, to remain a stable, democratic country

that can act as a secular model for others, Turkey

must confront the Kurdish question in a more constructive manner.

Iraq

Before the 1991 Gulf War, Turkey had better relations with Iraq than with any other Middle Eastern

neighbor except Jordan, and the two frequently cooperated on the Kurdish problem. Relations worsened with the onset of the war, when Turkey supported the embargo against Iraq. Today, the

Kurdish issue, ironically, unites more than divides

them, since both countries want to contain Kurdish separatism. Other prominent factors that

shape Turkish-Iraqi relations include the oil

pipeline (which may also induce cooperation since

both countries suffered economically from its closing) and the attitude of the West, particularly the

United States, which would be extremely uneasy

about any Turkish attempt to improve relations

with Iraq.

Iran

Although they are historical rivals, Turkey and Iran

have enjoyed relatively good relations in this century, in part because of their mutual hostility to

communism. The relationship was damaged by

the 1979 Iranian revolution, but it has steadily improved since then, as the two countries have put

aside ideological differences and as Turkey has

sought to restrain the polarization between Islam

and the West unleashed by the 1979 events. Turkish-Iranian relations took yet another turn in the

late 1980s as the two countries competed for influence in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia

and the Caucasus. However, both Turkish and

Iranian hopes have been dashed by the economic

and political realities of Central Asia, and competition there is no longer as important a source of tension between them.

Syria

Relations between Turkey and Syria, on the other

hand, have been clouded by general Arab suspicion dating back to the Young Turk era and institutionalized during the Cold War, when the two

were positioned on opposing sides. Syria has always suspected Turkey of being a gendarme, serving western interests in the region. Antagonism between the two heightened in the 1970s, when the

Turks began construction of the Guneydogu

Anadolu Projesi (GAP), the large dam project on

the Euphrates River that, when completed in the

mid-1980s, restricted the flow of water into Syria.

Tensions since then have been compounded by

Turkish claims that Syria gives safe haven to the

PKK—claims that Syria officially denies. Furthermore, there remains the sleeping issue of Alexandretta (or Hatay, as the Turks call it), a contested

area on the border that became part of Turkey in

1939, over Syrian opposition.

Water issues are particularly contentious with

Syria. Turkey claims that the Euphrates and Tigris

Rivers are “transboundary” water courses that belong to one country while the river flows through

it and become the property of another after crossing the border. Syria, however, views these vital arteries as international waterways belonging to no

one. Syria claims that Turkey drains off an unfair

share of the water before it crosses the border and

charges that Ankara lacks the political will to reach

an equitable agreement on sharing water rights.

Turkey, for its part, believes that Syria is harboring

PKK terrorists as a weapon in the water dispute. As

long as these mutual accusations persist, TurkishSyrian relations are likely to remain tense.

vi
Israel

Turkey’s uninterrupted diplomatic relations with

Israel—even at the height of Arab-Israeli tensions—

made it unusual among Muslim nations and contributed to Arab suspicions of Turkey’s role. Yet

Ankara’s relations with Tel Aviv were reduced to a

low level in the mid-1960s, and Turkey openly

supported the Palestinian cause. In recent years

there has been a warming of relations between

Turkey and Israel, although in contrast to the situation before the early 1990s, it is now Turkey that

is pursuing better relations. The September 1993

Israeli-PLO Peace Accords sped up the warming

process, and relations have improved to the point

that there has been discussion not only of a free

trade agreement, but even of cooperation on security and intelligence.

The Arab World

For Arabs, relations with Turkey have never been

as important as the Palestinian issue. Although

there is currently a constructive “reinvention” of

Turkey in Arab political discourse, Arabs remain

skeptical of each of Turkey’s potential roles. For

example, Turkey simply would not have the necessary military power to act as regional caretaker in

the face of a serious threat to the region, and it has

too many serious economic problems of its own to

be a credible model of economic development.

Furthermore, Arabs tend to see Turks as living in a

perpetual identity crisis, neither fully a part of the

West or the Middle East nor fully independent of

either.

Conclusions

Analysis of Turkey’s roles in the Middle East leads

to several conclusions:

Turkey’s relations with the Middle East—as with

the rest of the world—will be determined by its

success in handling two critical domestic problems: the Kurdish rebellion and a dire economic crisis. Failure to solve either problem

soon could threaten the country’s political stability. Their effective resolution, on the other

hand, could allow Turkey to become a significant force in the Middle East.

Not only has the Kurdish insurrection rapidly

escalated in intensity in recent months, but

Turkish society is becoming increasingly polarized between Turks and Kurds, substantially

raising the risk of a broader civil war. The government’s refusal to separate the Kurdish issue

from the problem of dealing with PKK terrorism is at the heart of the problem. To be resolved successfully, the Kurdish issue must be

addressed on a social, economic, cultural, and

political basis and not simply through the application of military force.

Turkey’s future role in the Middle East is likely

to expand, but it will remain limited for a number of reasons. These include Turkey’s differing

political culture and geographic marginality, as

well as the fact that other regions—such as the

Balkans, Cyprus, and the states of the former

Soviet Union—are of greater importance to

Ankara than the Middle East is. 

The most important Middle Eastern countries

from Turkey’s perspective will remain Iran,

Iraq, and Syria, where problems of water, political ambition, religion, boundaries, and the PKK

are factors. Iraq will continue to present

Turkey’s trickiest foreign policy problem

among its neighbors, as the waves of Kurdish

refugees to Turkey necessitate some accommodation with Saddam Hussein, which may complicate relations with the United States.

In contrast to the regions where Turkey plays a

more significant role, its relations with the Middle

East, though more active than in the past, will remain cautious and tentative. Many factors, from

the Kurdish problem to the new political order,

are forcing changes in Turkey’s traditional foreign

policy orientation, but the nations of the West will

continue to be Turkey’s most important political

and economic partners and the focus of its foreign

policy.

vii

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The United States Institute of Peace has given

special attention to a range of Middle Eastern problems in recent years. We have examined regional arms control in the post–Gulf

War period, means to facilitate the Arab-Israeli

peace process in the Madrid era, and, most recently, the phenomenon and implications of political Islam. In choosing these subjects, we have tried

to examine aspects of the problems that are often

overlooked, as part of the search for new approaches to traditional questions.

The future of Turkey in the Middle East is without doubt a topic that meets the Institute’s criteria

for Middle Eastern work. Turkey’s long strategic

relevance to the United States and to other countries east and west has been brought home to us by

such events as the breakup of Yugoslavia, the fall of

the Soviet Union, and the emergence of independent Turkic states in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. Despite their recognition of Turkey’s

strategic location among regions in flux, scholars

and policymakers have tended to disregard the fact

that Turkey is part of the Middle East, long an unstable region. Although any Middle East specialist

will acknowledge that Turkey has both a significant

history in the region and distinctive relationships

with Israel and the Arab states, Turkey is not often

spoken of as a factor in the Middle East peace

process. Nor does one hear much about Turkey’s

relationships with its immediate neighbors—Syria,

Iraq, and Iran— although those relations have every

bit as much potential to shift as do Turkey’s relations with Europe and the states of the former Soviet Union. As Turkey finds its way in the post–

Cold War period, new developments—positive and

negative—involving Turkey and other Middle Eastern states could create new dynamics in the region

and cause a rethinking of the peace process.

To examine these issues, the Institute convened

a two-day conference entitled “A Reluctant Neighbor: Analyzing Turkey’s Role in the Middle East.”

The purpose of this June 1994 event was not only

to initiate discussion on Turkey’s relations with the

countries of the Middle East and its role in the regional peace process, but also to bring together and

into dialogue scholars and other experts from

Turkey and its neighbors. As close as they are geographically, it is dismaying how rarely they have the

opportunity to speak directly to one another about

the issues affecting their countries. The Institute

was pleased that this dialogue could occur in Washington—pleased not only for the scholars in attendance and their countries but also for the U.S.

scholars and policymakers who had the opportunity to be enriched by the discussion. 

The response to the conference was impressive:

more than 350 people attended, including a considerable number of experts from the broader Middle East and from Europe. It was pointed out that

the event was likely the largest academic conference on Turkey ever held in the United States.

Clearly, interest in Turkey and concern about the

future of the Middle East peace process are high.

The Institute would like to thank Professor

Henri Barkey of Lehigh University, an Institute

grantee, for organizing the conference. Patricia Carley, Institute program officer and author of this report, was co-coordinator. Both contributed enormously to the success of the discussion that is

reported here. 

This report is one of two publications the Institute hopes to produce from the event. In due

course, it also plans to issue an edited volume

gathering the formal papers prepared for the

conference. 

Kenneth M. Jensen

Director of Special Programs

PREFACE

viii
The radical political changes in the wake of the end of the Cold War directly affected the

international role of Turkey, a country unique in its location in both the eastern and

western worlds. Though the end of the bipolar world seemed to portend Turkey’s decline in strategic importance to the West, in fact, the changing international order has loosened the constraints within which Turkey can act, potentially redirecting its foreign policy

and, as a result, tempering its predominantly western orientation. Policies instituted by the

founder of the modern Turkish nation, Kemal Ataturk, became part of the very fabric of the

Turkish Republic. Thus, even a minor change in that orientation may have significant implications for the future of Turkey and its foreign relations. 

In recent years, changes in world politics—specifically the dissolution of the Soviet Union—

have produced considerable debate about Turkey’s rapidly developing relationship with the

newly independent Turkic republics. However, Turkey’s increasingly important links with

the countries in its immediate region have often been overlooked. To explore Turkey’s changing relationship with the countries in this region, with particular emphasis on the identification of potential points of conflict, the Institute of Peace convened a conference entitled “A Reluctant Neighbor: Analyzing Turkey’s Role in the Middle East,” which was held June 1–2,

1994, in Washington, D.C. It brought together scholars and policymakers from Turkey,

Egypt, Syria, Israel, Iran, the United States, and Europe to focus exclusively on this aspect of

Turkish foreign policy. This report recounts the highlights of the conference.

1INTRODUCTION

1
There is little doubt that Turkey occupies a

unique position in the world, in both its geographic location and its political aspirations.

Few other countries so literally define the word

“crossroads” as Turkey, lying as it does in both Europe and Asia and presenting itself as a Muslim

country that aspires to be part of the western

world.

Turkey’s Strategic Importance

Since the end of World War II, Turkey’s strategic

significance to the United States and to the North

Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as the only

member of the western alliance to border the Soviet Union has been unquestioned. Turkey more

recently demonstrated its importance to the West

by supporting the coalition in the 1991 war against

Saddam Hussein, a move that was opposed by

many in Turkey. Turkey acts as a gateway to worlds

less familiar to the West, such as the newly independent Turkic countries of Azerbaijan and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan,

and Uzbekistan) and is an important factor with

respect to other Muslim countries, with which it

has complex and sometimes troubled relations.

Concern that the end of the Cold War might decrease Turkey’s strategic importance to the West in

one aspect (its border with the USSR) is countered

by its increased potential in others. 

Keynote speaker Paul Wolfowitz of the Johns

Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies underscored Turkey’s strategic relevance. He said that there is no other country to

which the word “strategic” applies more than to

Turkey. It is perhaps a cliche these days, but

Turkey truly does play an important bridging role

between several poles: East and West; economic

backwardness and modernization; an imperial

past and a modern present; and religious obscurantism and civic modernity. Moreover, Turkey’s

contributing role in the end of the Cold War

should not be forgotten; its resolve as a NATO

member on the Soviet frontier was crucial to that

organization’s ability to stand up to the Soviet

threat.

Turkey remains important today for several reasons, Wolfowitz continued: the war in the Balkans

has demonstrated that the end of the Cold War did

not bring with it the end of conflict in Europe; the

country’s location on the Black Sea, including its

proximity to Ukraine and Crimea, remains crucial;

Turkey serves as a critical bridge to the Caucasus

and Central Asia; and, in its least analyzed role, it

occupies a strategic and possibly growing position

in the Middle East. Wolfowitz concluded by noting

that one legacy of Ataturk’s resolve to make Turkey

a clearly defined nation-state and not an empire is

the country’s reluctance (though not unwillingness) today to become involved in the affairs of the

Middle East.

To underline the points made by Wolfowitz,

Alvin Z. Rubinstein of the University of Pennsylvania declared that Turkey is simply the most important country in the Middle East. What Turkey does

or does not do will critically affect the course of

events, including stability, not only in the Middle

East but also in the Caucasus, Central Asia, the

Balkans, and the West. Cautioning those who take

Turkey’s allegiance to the West for granted, Rubinstein proclaimed that, “The growing ambivalence

in the West toward Turkey is reflected in Turkey’s

growing ambivalence toward the West.” Rubinstein commented ruefully that “no major country

in the Middle East has been less studied by American scholars or more ignored by the American

media.”

2BACKGROUND

2
Origins of Turkey’s Foreign Policy

To analyze contemporary Turkish foreign policy, it

is essential to go back to the foundation of the

Turkish Republic and to understand the critical

role and legacy of Mustafa Kemal (later Ataturk). It

is no exaggeration to say that Turkey would very

likely not exist today as a modern country without

Ataturk’s determination to establish a Turkish

nation-state and his possession of the military acumen to make it a reality. In 1919, the Ottoman Empire lay in ruins after the devastation of World War

I. The empire’s dismemberment was made official

with the signing of the Treaty of Sevres in 1920,

which stipulated that all its European territory except a small slice around Istanbul (occupied by the

British) was to be cut away; all Arab lands removed; the region around Izmir (formerly

Smyrna) given to the Greeks; the eastern Anatolian

provinces divided between an independent Armenia and an independent Kurdistan; and, finally,

large regions of south and southwest Anatolia

granted to France and Italy to administer as

spheres of influence. The last sultan, though still

nominally on the throne in Istanbul, relinquished

virtually all his powers to the British. The Straits of

the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles were demilitarized and administered not by the Turks but by a

permanent Allied commission in Istanbul, and

Anatolia was placed under the control of the Allied

Financial Commission. In 1920,

the very idea that an independent and sovereign Turkish state

could or would emerge from this

devastated and occupied territory would not have received 

serious attention. 

Yet by 1923, in the wake of

Ataturk’s startling victories over

the French, the Italians, the

British, and the Greeks, and after

he had regained control of Istanbul, the Allies were forced to sign

the Treaty of Lausanne, recognizing the establishment of the Turkish Republic. After the military

victory over the occupying powers, Ataturk went on to define the

parameters of the Turkish nationstate in virtually all walks of public and political life, including domestic and foreign policy. One of the fundamental bases for the

new state laid down by Ataturk was that the Turkish Republic was to be a modern, westernized nation, and he spent the rest of his life, until his death

in 1938, not only setting up the institutions

needed to achieve this goal, but also molding the

mind of the people in that direction. 

Ataturk’s foreign policy was oriented away from

the East and away from other Turkic and Islamic

peoples. From the very start of his military struggle

for Turkey, he firmly eschewed any form of panTurkism or pan-Islamism. Pan-Turkism was a

movement in the late nineteenth century in the Ottoman Empire promoting the ultimate unification

of the world’s Turkic peoples, most of whom, after

the Anatolian Turks, lived under Russian (and

then Soviet) tutelage. Ataturk believed that this

and other such “foolish ideologies” were responsible for the humiliating defeat of the Turkish nation

in the first place at the hands of the Allies. Not only

did pan-Turkism represent a quagmire for Turkey,

but it was not, Ataturk believed, an idea that was

consonant with the western concept of the modern nation-state. Similarly, Ataturk had little interest in maintaining historical ties with the rest of the

Islamic world. Pan-Islamism was for him as dangerous for the new state as pan-Turkism. 

Despite Turkey’s western orientation, however,

Ataturk established good relations with the new

Soviet Union, with the aim of

making Turkey a modern, western—and neutral—state. But while

the general western orientation

of Turkish foreign policy was fortified by events immediately following World War II, those

events also made it less neutral.

In 1945, Stalin demanded from

Turkey not only parts of its eastern region (the area containing

Kars and Ardahan, which had

been designated as part of Turkey

by a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union in 1921), but also partial control of the straits. Turkey

rejected both of these demands

and headed straight into the

newly formed NATO alliance.

The West also began to dominate

Turkey’s foreign economic rela3

What Turkey 

does or does not

do will critically affect

the course of events,

including stability,

not only in the Middle

East but also in the

Caucasus, Central

Asia, the Balkans, and

the West.
tions. Turkey’s relations with other countries, however, did not evaporate or become antagonistic.

Ankara has usually maintained good relations with

the countries on its periphery, although these relations have generally been limited because of its

overarching prowestern stance.

Ataturk also instituted a series of domestic reforms to reinforce the new republic’s movement

away from the Islamic world and toward western

civilization. The most important of these was the

secularization of the government and, to a certain

extent, of society—a policy that grew out of

Ataturk’s conviction that the Islamic religion as expounded by the Ottoman sultan was responsible

for Turkey’s backward economic and social state.

First and foremost, political power was now proclaimed to come from the Grand National Assembly and was not, for the first time in Turkish history, bound to religious ideology. Sharia courts

were abolished in 1925 and replaced by courts

grounded in a civil code, thereby denying clerics

power over judicial, criminal, and even social matters. By 1928, Islam was removed as the official religion from the Turkish constitution, and the state

assumed many of the functions of the old Islamic

institutions.

Another powerful reform toward modernization that moved Turkish politics and society more

firmly away from its previous orientation was the

reform of the alphabet. For centuries, Ottoman

Turkish had been written in Arabic script, though

that script was not entirely suited to the Turkish

language. Pointing Turkey to the western world,

Ataturk in 1928 decreed that Turkish would

henceforth be written in the Latin alphabet. Furthermore, many non-Turkish words—primarily

Arabic and Persian—would be discarded and replaced by “true” Turkish words (which in some

cases were fabricated). This reform moved the

Turkish people one step further not only from

their religion (since Arabic is the language of the

Prophet Muhammed), but also from their Ottoman history. Today a Turk who wants to read

tracts and documents from the Ottoman period

must first take the trouble to learn the Arabic

script. (It is ironic that, as a result of these reforms,

the Turkish language has changed to such an extent that a Turk today needs a dictionary to read

Ataturk’s speeches.)

The modern Turkish Republic was thus built on

the foundation of an almost complete break with

its past in both the foreign and domestic spheres.

It is not possible in this brief review to assess how

successful Ataturk was in his efforts. Secularism,

for example, and all its ramifications remain controversial to some segments of Turkish society.

However, Ataturk’s reforms shaped the grounding—the very definition—of the republic in a particular direction, especially for subsequent generations of ruling elites. It is not suggested here that

this orientation was—or is—unshakable; events

since the dissolution of the Soviet Union demonstrate a shift away from Ataturk’s reluctance to become involved with other Turkic peoples. This report focuses on whether a similar development—a

shift in orientation—is now occurring in Turkey’s

relations with the Middle East. What is incontestable is that Ataturk’s relevance and legacy endure, demonstrated not least by the self-examination that Turkey is currently experiencing—the

concern expressed by many inside Turkey over

whether the country’s foreign policy foundation is

threatened by its new relations with the former Soviet republics. It is important to examine any

changes in Ankara’s foreign policy against the

background of this fundamental fact of Turkish

life.

4
5

The conference opened with an examination

of the larger historical context of Turkey’s

relations with the countries of the Middle

East. In this century, those relations have been

shaped largely by the western foreign policy orientation established by Ataturk. But they have also

been colored by the Ottoman past that Turks and

Arabs share, the very past that, in the end, motivated Ataturk to seek new international alliances.

All of the countries of what is today called the Middle East, except for Iran, were once part of the Ottoman Empire. Within the empire, the Turks and

Arabs lived together for centuries, forming the

bulk (together with the Kurds) of the Islamic

umma, or community of believers. As members of

the umma, Arabs enjoyed rights and privileges that

the non-Muslim millets—minority groups such as

the Armenians, Greeks, and Jews—did not. Yet the

Turks and the Arabs remained distinct groups,

separated by language, history, culture, and ethnic

makeup, as well as by the inescapable fact that the

Ottoman Turks ruled and the Arabs were their

subjects. 

By the end of the nineteenth century, sentiments giving rise to nationalist movements elsewhere in the world had permeated the Ottoman

Empire, which by that time had lost Greece and

Egypt, as well as other territories. A small group of

intellectuals initiated a movement to promote

“ Ottoman” identity, aiming to rally different

national groups in the empire around the Ottoman ruler. Part of that movement later abandoned the effort at kindling Ottoman identity and

branched off to form instead a movement aimed at

advancing the goals of the Turkish population. In

1908, these Young Turks, as they became known,

succeeded in wresting political power from an increasingly impotent sultan and set up a new

regime. In the end, it was events during the relatively short period of Young Turk rule that so damaged relations between the Turks and the Arabs,

who were by this time themselves agitating for independence from Ottoman rule. On the one hand,

extremist Turkification policies of the Young

Turks, in the form of harsh suppression of Arab

language and culture, resulted in an angry backlash that resonates even today in Turkey’s relations with the Arab world. On the other, Arab attempts to break away from Ottoman rule drove

them to side with the British during World War I—

an act still viewed as treachery by the Turks. 

Submitting that the Ottoman past is not quite as

dead and gone as many would believe, Selim Deringil of Bogazici University noted that current

statements and actions of many people and parties

in and outside Turkey relate to the Ottoman period. Despite Ataturk’s break with the past, history,

for Turks, is still very close. For example, the Refah

(Welfare) Party in Turkey declared as its aim in the

March 1994 Turkish municipal elections the “instituting of Ottoman tradition in municipal affairs,”

without precisely defining what that entailed. In

response, an article in Turkey’s prominent newspaper Cumhuriyet on the renowned Ottoman architect Sinan declared that a great civil planner like

Sinan would never have allowed the kind of haphazard urban development advocated by the Refah Party. Furthermore, Deringil continued,

Vladimir Zhirinovsky of Russia’s curiously named

Liberal Democratic Party refers to the Ottoman

past in his pronouncements on the Balkan war.

And in the modern Turkish press the relative merits of Ottoman rulers such as Midhat Pasha and

Abdul Hamid are still debated. 

Deringil observed that even a spokesman for

the government has suggested that nostalgia for

the Ottoman Empire may derive from the fact that

Ataturk’s reforms happened so quickly that people

were not given a chance to “grieve” over the

changes. Obviously, the historical context is not as

3HISTORICAL AND

GEOSTRATEGIC

CONTEXT
completely a thing of the past as many in Turkey

believe, and people sometimes even make reference to the Ottoman past without understanding

what those allusions mean. In fact, their understanding of that past may be more important than

the reality. Deringil cited President Suleyman

Demirel’s observation that “history is tugging at

our sleeve,” noting that this quote offers a suitable

image of the Turkish perspective: Although the

Turks want to look forward, the past still has a

hold on their consciousness, compelling them to

confront their history. 

Still, as Heath Lowry of Princeton University explained, Turks only reluctantly face their past, in

part because of the revolutionary nature of

Ataturk’s reforms. One result of those changes, especially the language reform, was a quite purposeful break from Turkey’s own history. Under

Ataturk, Turkey shifted from an empire, which was

its past, to a more strictly defined country, with

two goals in mind: modernization and westernization. A consequence of this development—and one

perhaps intended by Ataturk—was that Turkey lost

the ability to view its history through the eyes of its

neighbors, either the contemporary ones in the

Arab world and other former Ottoman districts or

those from the past, whose documents could no

longer be read. The result was an escalation of the

fear and distrust between Turks and Arabs set in

motion during Young Turk rule. 

As a result, both Turks and Arabs tended

to forget their shared 400-year history, concentrating only on the recent past. For example, the Arabs

look back only to the brief five-year period of

Young Turk rule, with its policy of Turkification

and the attempted suppression of the Arabic language. In the same way, the Turks focus only on

Arab cooperation with the British during World

War I. In the meantime, Lowry continued, Turks

and Arabs have tended to overlook their shared religion. It is true that the early decades of the Turkish Republic were characterized by militant secularism, but the recent gains by the religious Refah

Party demonstrate that Islam does potentially join

Turkey and the Middle East. 

Current Regional Context

Addressing the wider geostrategic framework of

Turkey’s changing foreign policy and relations

with the Middle East, Henri Barkey of Lehigh University underscored the obvious yet critical fact

that, for the first time in many centuries, Turkey no

longer has a border with “Russia.” Correspondingly, Turkey’s once-crucial geographic position

for NATO has been reduced. Before the end of the

Cold War, Turkey’s relations with the Middle East

had always taken a back seat to its NATO membership. This situation is changing for several reasons:

(1) the Kurdish rebellion in Turkey is affecting that

nation’s relations with its neighbors (Iraq, Iran,

and Syria) and will do so increasingly; (2) the

problem of water is growing for the entire region,

and it is generating disputes with Syria and Iraq;

(3) radical changes such as the end of the Cold

War and the signing of the Israeli-PLO Peace Accords are making possible new economic linkages,

which Turkey desperately needs; and (4) a number of Gulf states are coming to see the importance

of a strong and stable Turkey as a balance to

threats from the less stable regimes in the region,

such as Iran and Iraq.

According to Barkey, Middle Eastern countries

are likely to become more concerned with

Turkey’s future role in the region. One reason is

that the demise of the Soviet Union has eliminated

the possibility of playing off the superpowers

against each other in order to garner economic aid.

Turkey and the other countries in the region will

now have to learn to stand on their own economically and compete with Eastern Europe, the former

Soviet Union, Latin America, and others for badly

needed capital and investments. The United States

will no longer readily support regimes that have irresponsible economic practices. In this competition, Turkey is somewhat ahead of its neighbors,

and its Middle Eastern neighbors are aware of this.

Additionally, the collapse of the USSR has virtually

eliminated the ideological legitimacy of one-party

dictatorships and authoritarian rule. With many

Middle Eastern regimes increasingly under pressure to democratize, and thus headed for a period

of potential instability, Turkey’s continued stability

may prove critical to the region’s political future.

Furthermore, the Kurdish rebellion in southern

Turkey compels Turkey and its neighbors to deal

with each other more seriously.

6
That said, Barkey was quick to note that even in

the face of expanded relations with the Middle

East, Turkey’s most important political relationships will continue to be with the West. The bulk

of Turkey’s commercial exports go to western

countries, and this will likely remain the case. Arab

suspicion of Turkey persists, and thus Turkey generally “runs from the region when it can.” Yet, in

light of the factors cited earlier, the time may fast

be approaching when Turkey cannot be so exclusively focused on the West.

General Ahmed M. Abdel-Halim of the National

Center for Middle East Studies in Cairo also described the way recent changes in the world have

affected the region’s relationships. One effect has

been to create an enhanced role for the United

States in the Middle East, leaving the United States

as sole arbiter of the region’s balance of power.

This has resulted in several consequences for the

geostrategic situation in the region. For example,

there is now a potentially increased role for Israel

and Turkey in the Middle East of the sort not possible before, and in Turkey’s case at least, this increasing role is widely welcomed in the region. A

stable and strong Turkey, Abdel-Halim said, is a vital component in regional peace and stability. Furthermore, Turkey should be a part of a new regional economic grouping that would include in

its first stage Egypt, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan,

the Palestinians, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states,

and at a later stage Iraq. This would, he said, be

part of the development of a “natural alliance” of

certain Middle Eastern countries.

Pan-Turkism

In response to a question on the possible emergence of a pan-Turkist movement, Deringil noted

that pan-Turkism has always been a marginal

movement in Turkey. It was only during the Young

Turk period that the ethnic Turkic element came

forth strongly in the Ottoman Empire, and at that

time the Turkic peoples in the Russian Empire had

little Turkic consciousness—they identified themselves primarily as Muslims. The movement never

resonated more widely then or now. Barkey

agreed, adding that pan-Turkism exists more in the

minds of those outside Turkey than among the

Turks themselves and usually because of some ulterior motive (as in the case of Serbian president

Slobodan Milosevic, who has proclaimed that a

menacing pan-Turkist movement is a threat to the

Serbs). 

7
Of the 20 million to 25 million Kurds in

the Middle East, some 12 million to 14

million reside in Turkey. (Other large

Kurdish populations are in Iraq and Iran, with

some also in Syria.) Turkey’s relations with its Kurdish population have been troubled and at times

violent since virtually the beginning of the Turkish

Republic. To understand why this issue began as a

“problem” for Turkey, and why it has intensified, it

is important to refer again to the origins of the

Turkish nation-state.

In addition to military victories and radical social reforms, another important legacy of Ataturk

was the consolidation of Turkish ethnicity as the

core identity of the Turkish Republic. During the

centuries of Ottoman rule, nobody in the empire

would comfortably be labeled a “Turk”; in fact, the

term was most often used as a derogatory epithet

to refer to an uncultured peasant. The ruling elites

identified themselves as Ottomans or simply as

Muslims; the rest of the Turkish population referred to themselves as Muslims or perhaps as residents of a particular village. This remained the case

even in the latter part of the nineteenth century as

the nationalist movement among the Turks in the

Ottoman Empire was developing. 

It was Ataturk who made the radical break with

the past. He built the Republic of Turkey firmly

around the idea of Turkish national identity and

language within a fixed territory and rejected the

notion of a multi-national empire. (As noted earlier, Ataturk also tried to separate Turkish identity

from the Islamic religion, but he was less successful in that endeavor.) As part of this process, the

term “Turk” was elevated from derogatory epithet

to an identity that every Turk would proudly

adopt. In the course of those early years, it became

a central tenet of the Turkish Republic that within

its borders lived the Turkish nation. Ataturk even

instituted population exchanges with Greece in order to “simplify” the population component of

Turkey. The notion that the republic might hold

people who belonged to some nation other than

the Turkish one was seen as a threat to the very

essence of the new Turkish state, and this aspect of

Ataturkist thought has changed little through the

generations.

The problem was—and is—that peoples other

than Turks found themselves inside the Republic

of Turkey, and the largest of these groups was the

Kurds. Their very existence became an issue, most

notably in 1925 and again in 1937, when the

Kurds in the southeastern part of the country rebelled and were brutally suppressed. Since that

time, the Turkish government has advanced stringent policies designed to promote the integrity of

the nation, suppressing any element of Kurdish

cultural or linguistic distinctiveness and encouraging the assimilation of the Kurds into the wider

Turkish population by declaring them to be Turks.

The use of the Kurdish language in any official or

public capacity was banned until very recently; indeed, until only a few years ago, the very existence

of the Kurdish people in Turkey continued to be

officially denied. The formation in the late 1970s of

a radicalized Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) with

a stated aim of increased autonomy for the Kurdish region took the struggle to a new level. By

1984, the PKK was resorting to violent terrorist activities. For the Turkish government, these activities signaled the ultimate intention of dismembering Turkey, and, indeed, some PKK elements have

demanded independence.

The Turkish government has responded militarily to PKK violence, often resulting in the killing of

non-PKK Kurdish villagers. In the past ten years,

the regional carnage has led to the deaths of thousands of Kurdish and Turkish civilians, as well as

Turkish soldiers and Kurdish guerrillas; journalists and others who have taken up the Kurds’

4TURKEY, THE KURDS,

AND RELATIONS

WITH IRAQ

8
9

plight have also been killed. Since the early 1990s,

tourists in Turkey and Turkish diplomats abroad

have become the targets of the PKK’s violent operations. The situation deteriorated further, reaching

its most tense and unstable level for decades in

March 1994, when six members of Parliament

from the then-legal and pro-Kurdish Democracy

Party (DEP) were arrested. The party was legally

banned the following June. The parliamentarians

are charged under the law against terrorism and

thus not only may not post bail, but face the death

penalty if convicted. 

It is Turkey’s relations with the West that have

been most affected by its actions against the Kurds.

The Turkish government has come under steadily

increasing criticism from international human

rights groups, from many Western European governments, and recently from the United States government also. Its human rights record against the

Kurds also has not helped Turkey in its attempt to

gain membership in the European Community,

now the European Union. 

Taking on this difficult subject, Ismet Imset, editor of the Turkish Daily News, observed that freedom of speech in Turkey for anyone speaking on

this issue has been significantly curtailed; the six

Kurdish deputies arrested in March were imprisoned because of speeches they made demanding

greater freedom for the Kurds, not because of any

actions they had taken. Fifty-two journalists are

currently under arrest because of their writing

about the Kurds in Turkey. This is not to say, Imset

continued, that there has not been progress on the

Kurdish issue. Five years ago it would have been

impossible even to mention the word “Kurd” or to

see it in writing in Turkey. Now, in the face of a

hundred thousand Kurds fleeing Iraq after the

Gulf War, for the first time the Turkish government

has admitted the existence of the Kurds as a distinct people. Still, other events have overshadowed

that progress, and conflict with the PKK has complicated the problem immensely. 

Imset noted that when the PKK emerged in the

1970s, it was seen at first as an outlaw organization, made up primarily of Marxist students. In

large part because it was the only Kurdish alternative in Turkey, it steadily gained strength so that by

the middle to late 1980s it had become a mass

movement. The Turkish government’s failure to

separate the broader Kurdish problem from the

narrow issue of PKK terrorism prevents the government from dealing effectively with the Kurds

(or even admitting there is a genuine Kurdish

problem) and provides an excuse not to take further steps toward democratization. The government’s policy is to crush the Kurdish rebellion militarily and only then to implement reforms. In

trying to contain the PKK in the southeastern region, the government has engaged in actions that

involve serious human rights violations. The bottom line—and the real tragedy, according to Imset—

is that Turkey can never become a fully modern,

secular state, nor a model for any other country,

until the Kurdish issue is dealt with in a realistic,

humane, and nonviolent manner.

Amatzia Baram, senior lecturer at the University

of Haifa and a 1993–94 fellow at the Woodrow

Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., made a sharp

rebuttal to Imset’s assertion that it is not possible

to solve a problem through violence. After all, he

said, both Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Hafez alAssad of Syria have shown that if a leader is prepared to go far enough, goals can be achieved

through violence. Still, he continued, the democratic government of Turkey cannot “go the whole

distance” with the course of violence in its dealings

with the Kurds and remain even remotely democratic. Baram asked, If Turkey does give the Kurds

some measure of cultural autonomy, what then becomes of Turkish identity and sovereignty? Is

some wider form of identity possible in Turkey,

some sort of modern-day “Ottoman” identity? It

might be possible, Baram stated, for Turkey to integrate the Kurds into Turkish life, but the dilemma

of defining Turkish identity remains. 

Imset responded that one solution would be the

establishment of a “constitutional citizenship” once

suggested by Turkish president Suleyman

Demirel. This would provide an alternative to the

mistaken assumption that “people can be assimilated through repression and force.” Under current circumstances, there is a complete polarization of Turkish society between Turks and Kurds:

Turks believe that all Kurds have the same ideals

and use the same methods as those of the PKK,

and Kurds believe that all Turks share the attitudes

of soldiers in the security forces who willfully destroy Kurdish villages. These erroneous beliefs

serve only to encourage PKK membership and the

government’s harsh approach. 
In conclusion, Baram outlined the wider

dilemma caused by the Kurdish problem in

Turkey. For a stable Middle East, a stable Turkey is

needed. For Turkey to be stable, it must be democratic. Yet in the Kurds, democratic Turkey confronts a major problem, unresolved since 1919,

when it began its fight to eject the foreign forces

from Anatolia and establish a Turkish nation-state.

And it is a problem, Baram said, that will not fade

or simply go away.

Turkey and Iraq

The presence of Kurds in neighboring countries

has only recently become a significant foreign policy issue for Turkey, and even now it is not always a

contentious one. During the Iran-Iraq conflict in

the 1980s, Turkey and Iraq cooperated on the Kurdish issue, even to the extent that Baghdad allowed the Turks to carry out cross-border actions

against PKK supporters who had fled to Iraq. Confrontation with Iraq over the issue began only with

the 1991 Gulf War, when Turkey sided with the

United States and its allies and supported the embargo against Iraq. Suddenly Turkey found itself in

an unaccustomed hostile position in relation to its

eastern neighbor. Immediately after the war, Saddam attacked the Kurds in northern Iraq and hundreds of thousands fled to Iran and especially to

Turkey. The countries allied against Iraq moved in

and created a safe haven for the Kurds in northern

Iraq, leaving them with de facto autonomy. 

Addressing the issue of Turkish-Iraqi relations,

Phebe Marr of the National Defense University explained that before the Gulf War, Iraq had better

relations with Turkey than with any other neighbor except Jordan. After the war, however, the situation changed radically; for example, trade was reduced to a trickle, and the oil pipeline closed

down. According to Marr, there are a number of issues today, not all of them negative, that shape

Turkey’s relations with Iraq:

Water and oil. Marr asserted that Iraq and

Turkey will eventually be pushed into uneasy,

even prickly, cooperation on these two issues.

The Southeast Anatolian Project—referred to by

the Turkish acronym GAP (Guneydogu

Anadolu Projesi)—is a large dam being built by

Turkey on the Euphrates River. It will affect

Iraq’s water supply, but Iraq does have other access to water, and the issue is not as contentious

for them as it is for Turkey and Syria. When it

was operating, the oil pipeline was advantageous to both Iraq and Turkey. Since its closing,

Turkey is losing a considerable amount of

money annually because of lost revenue from

transit rights. Both countries, according to Marr,

would like to see it reopened, although Turkey

is searching for alternative sources of income,

such as a pipeline through Baku and on to Kazakhstan that will go through Turkey. Iraq has

significant oil reserves, and a pipeline from Iraq

through Turkey makes money for both countries, so it is increasingly likely that there will be

cooperation on this matter eventually.

Demographics—the Kurds. The main question

here, according to Marr, is whether the Kurdish

issue divides or unites Turkey and Iraq, since

both want to contain Kurdish separatism. The

solutions to this issue range from minimum to

maximum autonomy for the Kurdish population in each country. For example, an autonomous region could emerge in northern Iraq

even if the apparent collapse of power there is

rectified. That said, no one except the radical

Kurdish nationalists proposes a change in state

boundaries. Indeed, Marr suggested, one

should not underestimate the extent to which

the state system has taken root in the world; it is

not going to be easy to break up any state. And although on balance it is more likely that this issue

will bring the two countries together rather than

divide them, the longer Turkey fails to solve its

Kurdish problem the greater the risk of negative

developments in Turkey’s relations with Iraq. 

Boundaries. There is no lingering irredentism in

either Turkey or Iraq, according to Marr. The issue of border control, and of maintaining the

current borders, is of great importance to both

countries.

The West. Turkey’s relations with the West, and

particularly with the United States, are a critical

factor in its relations with Iraq. Turkey’s attempts to build more conciliatory relations with

Iraq must be made with an eye toward Washington, where they are bound to cause concern.

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Domestic politics. The removal of Saddam Hussein is the best hope for a negotiated settlement

with the Kurds in Iraq, Marr concluded. In fact,

it is no exaggeration to say that Saddam is the

single most important negative factor in

Turkey’s relations with that country.

In response to Marr’s remarks, Kamran Karadaghi

of Al-Hayat newspaper in London underscored

that the key element in Turkish-Iraqi relations is

the United States. He said that if it is important to

the United States that the Kurds remain a part of

Iraq, the Americans should make a stronger effort

to get rid of Saddam, since they cannot expect the

Kurds to return to living under his rule. Furthermore, Karadaghi said, Turkey suffers very much

from U.S. insistence on economic sanctions

against Iraq. The issue of sanctions is further complicated by the fact that Turkish prime minister

Tansu Ciller claims on the one hand, that Saddam

is too strong and that sanctions will not work and,

on the other, that Saddam is weak, implying that

Iraqi Kurds should take advantage of the current

situation to get a good deal from him. Karadaghi

also raised a pointed question for the Arab

regimes: Why are people tolerant of Arab political

aspirations, particularly those of the Palestinians,

but not of Kurdish aspirations? Arabs have no inherent right to rule over Kurds, especially if they

are brutal rulers. Looking at the broader dimensions of the Kurdish problem, Karadaghi noted

that the politics of the situation have developed to

the point where the Kurds of Syria consider

Ankara, not Damascus, to be their main enemy,

and many of them actively support the PKK struggle against the Turkish government.

In response to questions about the future of the

Kurds in Iraq, Marr stated that although Kurdish

autonomy in a more loosely structured Iraq is the

most likely ultimate solution, she was not optimistic that this would happen soon. One of the

requisites for such a scenario is a democratic Iraq,

which is unlikely in the near future, certainly as

long as Saddam is in power.

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Turkey and Iran have been rivals since the

days when each was the center of an empire—Ottoman and Persian. The competition

took many forms, including the quest for territory

and power and the battle between the two largest

sects of Islam—Sunnism and Shiism. The rivalry

also involved a contest over which would be the

dominant culture in the region: the Ottoman

Turks have long sought acknowledgment of their

cultural superiority over the sophisticated Persians. 

Events in this century have changed the course

of Turkish-Iranian relations. As each shed its empire and established itself as a nation-state, the rivalry abated almost entirely. Ataturk’s inwardlooking policies were based on the premise that

the modern Turkish nation had few quarrels with

its neighbors, including Iran. Relations warmed

further when Iran adopted a western-oriented policy under the shah, and both countries became

members of U.S.-backed security organizations

such as the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO).

However, the 1979 Iranian revolution quickly

soured relations between the two. Although economic relations have gradually improved since

then, and neither country has made a point of antagonizing the other, Ankara remains cautious

about close ties to Tehran and skeptical of Iran’s

true intentions. Persistent suggestions of Iranian

support for Islamic-oriented extremist organizations in Turkey are particularly worrisome for

Turkey’s secularist leaders.

On the subject of Turkish-Iranian relations, Atila

Eralp of the Middle East Technical University in

Ankara noted the special problem that Iran poses

for Turkey. Iran’s domestic and foreign policy orientation since the 1979 revolution presents a direct challenge to Turkey’s interests. Since the revolutionary Iranian regime appeared as a factor in

international politics, Turkey has sought to restrain the increasing polarization between the

West and Islam, which has potential consequences

for Turkey’s westernization process. During the

mid-1980s, efforts were made by both countries to

improve relations. Then–prime minister Turgut

Ozal began the effort in the belief that trade links

were the backbone of Turkey’s relations with Iran

and the Middle East, and a number of economic

agreements were signed between Iran and Turkey

during his tenure. Relations between the two are of

such a pragmatic nature that Iran showed a level of

restraint in exporting its Islamic revolution to

Turkey that it did not show toward other countries

in the Middle East.

According to Eralp, the Turkish foreign policy

establishment went through a period of self-examination beginning in 1989, triggered primarily by

the dramatic changes in the international political

system. There were considerable anxieties in

Turkey over the decline in the country’s geopolitical significance, and as a result, Turkey began to

give more consideration to a regionally oriented

foreign policy, stressing such projects as the Black

Sea Cooperation Initiative, which involves the development of economic cooperation among the

countries bordering the Black Sea. The dissolution

of the Soviet Union and the independence of the

states in the Caucasus and Central Asia accelerated

this re-orientation. 

After 1991, an increasing competition between

Turkey and Iran for influence in those regions of

the former Soviet Union defined a new period in

Turkish-Iranian relations. The climax of this phase,

as described by Eralp, was the June 1992 presidential victory in Azerbaijan of Abulfez Elchibey, a decidedly pro-Turkish leader who curtailed his country’s relations with Iran. The fall of Elchibey one

year later signaled yet another point in Turkey’s relations with Iran, as some observers claimed that

Elchibey’s overtly pro-Turkish stance (which agi5TURKEY AND IRAN

12
tated the Russians as much as the Iranians), was

one of the reasons for his ouster. Although the future may bring more confrontation between the

two countries, Eralp suggested that that would not

be desirable for either country, and Turkey’s policymakers are generally careful not to escalate bilateral tensions with Iran. At the same time, they continue to operate on the principle that Islam should

not be pitted against the West and that Iran should

not be isolated. Instead, more western—including

Turkish—attempts are needed to foster cooperation with the moderate elements in Iran.

The Iranian point of view was offered in a paper

by Changiz Pahlavan of the University of Tehran,

delivered by Farhad Kazemi of New York University in Pahlavan’s absence. Pahlavan described the

cordial relations between Turkey and Iran

throughout most of this century, beginning with

the meeting between Reza Shah Pahlavi and

Ataturk not long after their nations were established in the 1920s. The two leaders had many

common concerns, including a shared opposition

to communism and a strong commitment to modernization. Good relations were made more concrete through adherence by both to several agreements such as the Sadaabad Pact in 1937 and the

Baghdad Pact in 1955 (which became CENTO in

1959), both of which were signed under the reign

of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. According to Pahlavan, the important areas of commonality and mutual understanding continued even after 1979 under the Islamic regime.

There are four broad areas of tension, however.

The first is ideology, Pahlavan said, referring to the

basic conflict between the Islamic worldview and

Ataturkist secularism. To this day, Iranian foreign

dignitaries have refused to visit Ataturk’s tomb.

Second is the issue of Turkey’s relationship with

the West and whether, in Iran’s view, Turkey is

only an ally of the West or its agent. The Iranians

believe that Turkey’s prowestern policies have

come at the expense of its Islamic heritage. A third

area of tension is Kurdistan. Although Turkey and

Iran generally have common interests vis-à-vis the

Kurds, Pahlavan asserted, they are not likely to

have a common policy toward them for a long time

to come. A fourth issue between the two countries

involves the Caucasus and Central Asia. Initially,

Turkey had great expectations for increased influence in those regions—until the real situation became apparent. The Iranian effort has also come

up against the reality of Central Asian nationalism

and the people’s unwillingness to embrace Islamic

universalism. The result is that Turkey and Iran, in

fact, have something in common in their experiences in the newly independent regions of the former Soviet Union; despite suspicions about each

other’s intentions, these relations are not necessarily a source of tension. 

Finally, Pahlavan described the way an Iranian

diplomat of today would view Turkey. There

would be four key beliefs:

The separation of church and state in Turkey is

contradictory to Islamic ideology and thus

doomed to failure.

Turkey’s role in Central Asia is too closely tied

to the West and thus has unnecessary anti-Iranian overtones.

Despite its secularist policies, Turkey, like Iran,

uses religious propaganda in Central Asia,

which may result, inadvertently, in the strengthening of Islamic tendencies there.

Turkey’s anti-Armenian policies will ultimately

lead to a confrontation between Turkey and the

West, so even that relationship is fraught with

problems.

In Pahlavan’s view, there are areas of both cooperation and tension between Turkey and Iran; however, several of the areas now seen as antagonistic,

such as the Kurdish problem and the policies in

Central Asia, need not, perforce, cause friction.

Commenting on the two papers, Shaul

Bakhash, a professor at George Mason University

and a 1993–94 fellow at the Institute of Peace,

agreed with Eralp that the primary sources of potential hostility between Turkey and Iran are the

Iranian revolution and the competition in Central

Asia. Bakhash also agreed that these issues have

generally been overcome. In fact, he said, the conflict between Turkey and Iran over these matters

was the “disaster that did not happen.” Bakhash

contended that the Iranians eventually came

around to the traditional Iranian foreign policy

view prevalent in the days of the monarchy, that

good relations with neighboring countries were

paramount. As a result, the Iranians now make a

point of maintaining cordial ties with Turkey, Pakistan, and the Gulf states. Even in Central Asia,

where Iran initially exhibited a great deal of enthusiasm, it has recognized the primary importance of

13

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stability. Tehran has not, Bakhash maintained, encouraged Islamic radicalism there and has in fact

even welcomed the return of the Russian role in

the region as a source of stability. On the issue of

Iraq, here too the Iranians and Turks have come to

understand that they have more in common than

not. Neither favors Kurdish independence. As a result, the Iranians are restrained in their dealings

with the PKK, according to Bakhash, and they are

reluctant to promote Islamic revolution in Turkey.

Similar views were expressed by Farhad

Kazemi, who noted that three important factors

define the relations between these two states. One

is that the relationship is dynamic, not static, and

contains a kind of “self-correcting” mechanism. No

matter how tense the situation becomes, the two

countries eventually find ways to cooperate. The

Iranians, for example, are now somewhat less aggressive in their antagonism toward Ataturk than

in the years immediately after the revolution, and

the Turks are currently more willing to acknowledge their Middle Eastern roots. In the face of competing ideologies, Kazemi stated, “trade and economic issues speak loud and clear” and serve to

moderate the political differences. A second factor

is the issue of exactly what constitutes the Middle

East. Both Turkey and Iran believe that the Middle

East should not be defined on strictly Arab terms,

and they share a desire to have a much wider interpretation of what constitutes the region, including

not just themselves but also Central Asia and Azerbaijan. Finally, Kazemi noted that the Kurdish issue is also important for the Iranians. While Iranians sometimes try to hide behind the belief that

the Kurds are of Iranian origin and their language

is related to Persian, these beliefs do not translate

into a Kurdish willingness to submit to Iranian political authority. The Kurds are a problem for Iran

as well as Turkey. 

Steve Grummon of the Department of State concluded by noting that the common theme of the

panel was that Iran and Turkey seem to have more

that unites than separates them at the moment—

which is not, he pointed out, what one would expect from reading the popular press.

The Azeri Turks

One issue that has recently begun to appear on the

agenda of the two countries is the presence of 15

million to 20 million Azeri Turks in Iran. Before

the fall of the Soviet Union and the opening of

Central Asia and the Caucasus to the outside

world—particularly to their ethnic kin in Turkey—

the Turkish government did not make an issue of

the Azeri Turk population in Iran. This approach

was a legacy of Ataturk’s determination not to link

the fate of the Anatolian Turks with other Turkic

peoples east of Turkey. Now, however, Turkey has

developed close relations with the newly independent Azerbaijan, strongly buttressed by Turkish

public opinion, which is sometimes even more

fierce in its support for Azerbaijan than is the government. This support extends, for example, to the

Azeri-Armenian dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh.

In light of these developments, it seems clear that

were a more overt dispute to arise between the

Iranian government and its Azeri population, the

Turkish government might be inclined—and be under public pressure—to side openly with the latter.

Even what the Azeris in Iran are called is a reflection of the problem and a potential source of

tension between Iran and Turkey. They are invariably identified as “Turks” by the Turks of Turkey

and frequently called “Turkish-speaking Iranians”

by ethnic Iranians. Kazemi said that the Azeris are

highly integrated into Iranian society. There are

very high rates of intermarriage, for example, and

in Kazemi’s opinion the vast majority of Azeris in

Iran think of themselves as Iranians who happen

to speak Turkish. (Turkmens, another Turkic

group with kin across the border in Turkmenistan,

number about a million and are not nearly so integrated, not least because most are Sunni, not

Shiia.) Kazemi asserted that this issue of Turkic

peoples in Iran is very important for Iran and

warned that attention from Turkey toward either

Azeris or Turkmens would be met with anger from

any regime in Tehran, regardless of its political

stripe. According to Kazemi, Turkey recognizes

this and so has done little to upset Tehran on the

matter.

Graham Fuller of the RAND Corporation, in a

comment from the floor, posited that the situation

between Turkey and Iran on this issue was far

more contentious than the panel described. He

suggested that on the matter of the Azeris in Iran

the debate is still open as to whether they are in

fact “Iranians who speak Turkish” or “Turks living

in Iran.” Although it may be true that the Turks do

not want to upset Iran over the Azeri issue, the

14
Azeris in Azerbaijan may do just that, and in fact

did so already under the short-lived Elchibey government, to the great consternation of Iran. The issue is far from closed, Fuller said; in fact, it may

just be opening up, and it remains a potentially serious source of friction. 

Bakhash responded that the Azeris are well integrated into Iranian society and will thus not become an issue between Turkey and Iran. Kazemi

seconded this, saying that he did not see an “Azeri

problem” in Iran. Every Iranian family, he maintained, has some Azeri blood—it is impossible to

separate the two groups. In the end, obvious disagreement remained on how this issue will develop, even on whether the Azeris in Iran are in fact

an issue at all.

15
Relations between Turkey and Syria have

not been warm for most of this century,

clouded from the start by general Arab

suspicions dating back to the Young Turk era. During the Cold War, the two countries were positioned on opposing sides—Turkey as a member of

NATO and Syria as an ally of the Soviet Union. Before that, they both claimed title to Alexandretta

(or, as the Turks call it, the Hatay region), which

was under French mandate when the Turkish Republic was founded. In 1938 a plebiscite determined that the majority of the population was

Turkish—a result strongly disputed then and now

by the Arabs. After a year of independence, Hatay

became part of Turkey in 1939. 

Antagonism between the two countries heightened in the 1970s when the Turks began construction of the GAP, the large dam project on the Euphrates River (and eventually the Tigris) that,

when completed in the mid-1980s, restricted the

flow of water into Syria. That friction was compounded by Turkish claims that the Syrian government gives safe haven to PKK members—something Syria has never acknowledged, though PKK

leader Abdullah Ocalan is now based in Syria. The

end of the Cold War has tempered the relationship

somewhat, as each no longer automatically sees

the other as the lackey of an opposing superpower.

With the end of the bipolar divide, however, Turkish-Syrian relations have become more focused on

regional issues, particularly water. 

Reviewing the Turkish-Syrian relationship,

Muhammad Muslih of C. W. Post College contended that the principal overarching issue is Syria’s

conception of how Turkey perceives its own role in

the region. Turkey portrays itself to the Arab world

as an island of stability in an unstable region. According to Muslih, this only confirms the Syrian

belief that Turkey is merely a “gendarme” serving

western interests. The water problem is a symptom of this larger problem of Syrian suspicions

over Turkey’s aims in the region. Muslih noted that

until the dissolution of the Soviet Union the two

had always been on opposing sides of the Cold

War divide.

Although Alexandretta/Hatay is not a burning

issue for Syria, Muslih argued, it is a “sleeping

question,” and “like all things that sleep, it may one

day wake up.” Three factors keep the issue alive for

Syria: Syrian patriotism; demographics—the fact

that in 1938 a significant portion of the population

of Alexandretta were Alawites and the majority are

today; and Syrian intellectuals, for whom the city

has retained its significance as a symbol of injustice against the Arabs. Muslih also pointed out another matter on which Syria and Turkey have

taken opposing positions: Syria has never recognized Israel, whereas Turkey not only recognized

but entered into cooperative agreements with Israel, deepening Syria’s conviction that Turkey

serves western interests.

Without a doubt, Muslih continued, the water

crisis is the most important single political problem between Turkey and Syria. Syrian concerns,

however, are not just about water per se but also

about its effects on other crucial strategic factors.

First, Syria is trying to recover economically, and it

will be difficult to attract foreign investment if

there are water or electricity shortages. Second,

many in Syria, Muslih explained, believe that

Turkey escalated the water crisis during Syria’s negotiations with Israel in order to force Damascus

to make concessions. The third, more general

strategic factor goes back to the issue of Turkey’s

new role in the region. Turkey’s ascendance after

the Gulf War, Muslih said, has been grudgingly accepted by Arab countries. Still, there is concern not

only that Turkey is playing the role of containing

Iran on behalf of the western powers, but also that

Ankara’s ascendance could result in the marginal6TURKEY, SYRIA, AND

THE WATER CRISIS

16
ization of Arab influence, including that of Syria. 

On the other hand, Turkey and Syria share several interests. Both want to maintain the territorial

integrity of Iraq—in Turkey’s case because it does

not want to see an independent Kurdistan on its

border, and in Syria’s because it does not want to

see an Arab country broken up. And both states

understand the need to curtail Saddam Hussein

and to curb Iraq’s ambitions in a post-Saddam era.

Yet, Muslih continued, neither contentious nor

cooperative issues between Turkey and Syria will

get much attention as long as the Syrian-Israeli

problem is not resolved. Only when a peace with

Israel is reached will Syria turn serious attention to

such issues as the water dispute. At that time Syria

will also give more attention to the border issue of

Hatay—that sleeping question—which may ultimately put Damascus and Ankara on a collision

course. On the other hand, if peace is agreed between Syria and Israel, Syria will no longer have a

reason to suspect Turkey of being a “Trojan horse”

for insinuating western aims into the Middle East. 

Addressing the water issue more directly, Gun

Kut of Bogazici University pointed out that there

are no clear principles yet in international law to

secure the rights of all users sharing river basins,

and resolving the dispute between Turkey and

Syria is hindered by the mutual suspicion that exists between upstream and downstream users. Furthermore, the water problem between these two

countries is tied to other issues, such as the PKK

and the intra-Baath conflict between Syria and

Iraq, which are major factors in the search for stability in the region.

According to Kut, Turkey’s policy of noninvolvement in the Middle East historically kept it at

a fair distance from the intra-Arab and Arab-Israeli

disputes, as Turkey pursued a policy of active neutrality, seeking good relations with all sides. During the Cold War there were more pressing issues

for Turkey as a member of NATO. Beginning in the

mid-1980s, however, the situation began to

change. The Iran-Iraq War, PKK violence, the decline of the Soviet threat, the Gulf War—all of these

combined to turn Turkey’s attention towards its

southeastern borders. The most important issue

compelling Turkey to reassess its relations with its

Arab neighbors, according to Kut, was the GAP

dam project in southeastern Turkey that precipitated the water conflict between Turkey and, primarily, Syria. 

Kut explained that Turkey has proposed plans

to share the region’s water; however, the Turkish

government has constructed a new concept that is

not accepted by the others. Calling the Tigris and

Euphrates Rivers “transboundary” water courses,

Turkey explains that they belong to one country

while they flow through that country and after

crossing a border become the property of the

neighboring country. Syria and Iraq consider the

Tigris and Euphrates to be international waters

that do not belong—at any point in their flow—to

any one country. The issue here is not water but

scarcity, Kut noted. When a commodity is scarce,

dividing that commodity up, or negotiating agreements to share it, is not a solution to the ultimate

problem of diminishing supply. Moreover, in the

case of these particular waterways, the demand

will only increase, creating a widening gap between supply and the amount needed to sustain irrigated agriculture. 

Kut claimed that the Turkish government has

long had evidence that PKK terrorists are granted

safe haven in the Bekaa Valley, controlled by the

Syrian government. Whenever the issue is raised

by the Turkish government, Syria routinely denies

complicity and then immediately raises the water

issue, making it clear that Syria is linking the two

issues and, in fact, “playing the PKK card.” Yet, according to Kut, it is in the interests of both countries to avoid such linkages. Turkey believes that it

should not have to give anything in return for asking Syria not to harbor terrorists; to accept such an

exchange would, in Turkey’s eyes, be yielding to

blackmail, a technique that could be used again on

other issues, such as the issue of Alexandretta.

Syria should not want to appear to be engaged in

blackmail, since if the water flow were released in

return for certain favors, it could just as easily be

interrupted again in the future for other reasons. 

According to Kut, a solution to the water problem could include conservation measures and a reduction in demand, for example, by importing

food rather than growing it in the area. To solve the

issue of water, Kut concluded, it is necessary to go

beyond claims of who owns the water and definitions of “international” and “transboundary” waterways. “Intra-basin cooperation will not perhaps

bring about an automatic end to all the conflicts in

the Middle East,” he said, “but it is a necessary precondition. Unless more effort is spent on lessening

the mutual suspicions, the deep historical animosi17
ties, and the general perception of insecurity prevailing in the region, the whole water issue will always be prone to degenerate into other conflicts.”

Murhaf Jouejati of the University of Utah presented the Syrian view of the issue. According to

Jouejati, water rights were not a problem until the

breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.

Before then, the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers were

technically located in the same country. Riparian

rights became a source of friction in 1970, when

Turkey launched the GAP, which itself was driven

by criticism from Turkish leftists about the poor

economic conditions for Kurds in the southeastern part of the country. As a result of this project,

however, Turkish consumption of water from both

rivers increased substantially. 

The Euphrates River alone represents 86 percent of Syria’s water supply, Jouejati said. An increase in pollution upstream means an increase in

pollution and salinity downstream, which means

that more money is needed for agricultural investment in the downstream country, Syria, where

agriculture is the mainstay of the economy. The

consequences for Syria have been dire, he continued. Internal measures to deal with the falling water supply have included the cutoff of electricity for

up to 19 hours a day (leading to such graffiti witnessed outside Damascus as: “Assad, we have

given you our loyalty, now give us some electricity”). 

Jouejati argued that Turkey’s lack of concern for

downstream riparians is not least the result of the

generally bitter relations between Turks and Arabs.

Syrian views of Turkey as an instrument of U.S.

power affect Syria’s policies toward Turkey. For

their part, the Turks considered the Arabs’ nationalist and separatist drive in the late Ottoman days

and their alliance with the British during World

War I a stab in the back. Moreover, all Syrian

regimes, regardless of political sympathies, consider Alexandretta/Hatay to be Syrian and are bitter at its loss to Turkey. Over the years, these issues

have led to few contacts between Turks and Syrians until the Assad regime. “Cooperation on issues

of ‘low politics,’ such as water sharing,” Jouejati

maintained, “can be attained only if there are ‘high

politics’ issues on which the states already collaborate.” Political conflict, for example, is a high politics issue.

To buttress his argument that political conflict is

a major obstacle to basin-wide cooperation, Jouejati cited the case of the Johnston Plan of the

1950s, which failed because of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The idea behind the U.S.-engineered plan was

that cooperation among conflicting parties over

sharing the water of the Jordan River would have a

positive “spillover effect” on the wider conflict between the Arabs and the Israelis.

Generally, Jouejati reflected, upstream riparians

are not interested in binding agreements on sharing water; downstream riparians, for whom water

is an issue of national security, are. A country may

be an upstream riparian on one river and a downstream riparian on another and may therefore take

conflicting stances on river agreements. For example, Turkey is calling for an agreement with Bulgaria on the Maritsa River, which, Jouejati noted,

Turkey calls international waters. Similarly, Syrian

calls for an agreement with Turkey contrast with

its self-interested behavior toward Iraq over the

Euphrates. In the case of the Tigris and Euphrates,

Turkey has by and large neglected the concerns of

the downstream riparians; it is not interested in

sacrificing some water for the sake of its neighbors,

nor does it seem to care about the effects of the

GAP dam on downstream countries. If a binding

agreement between Turkey (the upstream riparian) and Syria and Iraq (the downstream riparians) is ever reached, Turkey will have less water for

its own use; without an agreement, Turkey will

have more water. Accordingly, there is now no

binding agreement on the use of these two rivers.

Commenting on these presentations, Sabah

journalist and TV commentator Mehmet Ali Birand declared: “There is no water problem between Syria and Turkey.” Syria receives the amount

of water that it needs—there is no shortage. What

Damascus wants is a guarantee for the future. This

is because, in Birand’s words, “They don’t trust the

Turks and the Turks don’t trust the Syrians.” It is

true that the Turks have not been very attentive to

Syrian concerns. And when the Syrians began

training leftist groups in the 1970s, and then the

PKK in the 1980s, suspicion increased markedly.

Birand agreed that Turkey will resist signing a

binding agreement. It may sign an allocating agreement—that is, one that allocates a certain amount

of water to Syria—but an equal sharing agreement

is unlikely, certainly not until the PKK problem is

solved and perhaps not then. 

In response, Jouejati noted that the Syrian government denies supporting the PKK. Damascus

18
maintains that because its army is stationed along

the Golan front with Israel and in Lebanon, it does

not have the resources to maintain complete control over its 900-kilometer border with Turkey. If

links exist between Syria and the PKK, it would

only be part of the larger reality that downstream

riparians, if treated unfairly, sometimes feel they

must resort to forceful measures. However, Jouejati maintained, he has not seen any clear evidence

that Syria supports the PKK explicitly because of

the water issue. If the Syrian government is supporting the PKK, Jouejati continued, it is more

likely a response, a kind of “tit for tat,” to Turkey’s

harboring of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1970s. 

Birand replied that there are checkpoints every

two to three kilometers along the Turkish-Syrian

border; it is thus disingenuous to suggest that

Syria does not fully control those borders. Furthermore, according to Birand, there is convincing evidence that the PKK and its leader Ocalan are regularly received in Damascus. Whether or not Syria is

using the PKK issue to force a water agreement,

that is certainly the way that Turkey reads the situation, Birand concluded, since, as Kut had noted,

every time the Turks bring up the subject of the

PKK, the Syrians respond by mentioning the water

problem. Future water supply is clearly a source of

tension between the two countries.

19
An area of Turkish foreign policy that is

sometimes overlooked is Turkey’s relationship to the crisis at the heart of the Middle

East: the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the past, Turkey

demonstrated its distinction from its neighbors by

being the first Muslim country to recognize Israel

in 1949, and by maintaining diplomatic relations

even at the height of Arab-Israeli tensions. In 1956,

however, after the invasion of Egypt by France,

Britain, and Israel, Turkey withdrew its ambassador from Israel; representation was reduced further in the 1960s as relations between Israel and

the Arab world deteriorated. Although diplomatic

relations were not broken, Turkey continued to

support the Palestinian cause and routinely condemned Israeli actions against its Arab neighbors.

But the fact that Turkey—a Muslim country—did

not fully break off diplomatic relations is significant—and was important for Israel. Since the middle to late 1980s, relations between Turkey and Israel have warmed, and more substantive

agreements have been signed. Yet the role for

Turkey in the larger peace process has not yet been

defined. As Samuel Lewis, former U.S. ambassador

to Israel, noted, Turkey represents a kind of “gray

eminence, a potential player of great importance in

a new, peaceful Middle East.” The problem is that

“neither Arabs nor Israelis have quite figured out

how to make that happen.”

Turkey and Israel

Anat Lapidot of Tel Aviv University addressed the

issue of the peace process and the extent to which

it has a direct bearing on Turkish-Israeli relations.

Lapidot stated that although the peace process has

occurred in parallel with the recent warming in relations between Turkey and Israel, this warming

was not a result of the process per se but of the

readjustment of both countries to the new world

order. The changes in Middle Eastern politics

have, however, allowed the improvement in Turkish-Israeli relations to move ahead relatively unimpeded. To understand the dynamics of these relations today, Lapidot said, it is necessary to

examine the relationship from the standpoint of

Turkey’s foreign policy rather than Israel’s, because it is Turkey that sets the tempo and determines the nature of the relationship. 

Although there is now much good will between

Turkey and Israel, Lapidot suggested that this will

not necessarily be the case in the long run. There

are problems even now that need resolution and

others that may develop over time—for example,

the increasing pressure on Israel to get off the

fence on such issues as the Kurdish problem,

Cyprus, and the 1915 Armenian genocide. Another

potential problem is politicized Islam, which, according to Lapidot, has not been adequately addressed by many Turkish academics even after ten

years of steady growth in influence in Turkey. 

Without a doubt, the end of the Cold War has

opened up many foreign policy opportunities for

Turkey, Lapidot continued. From the late 1980s to

the end of 1991, Turkey tried to present itself as a

political and economic model to the Central Asian

republics of the former Soviet Union, a policy from

which Turkey hoped to gain points in the West as

well. However, the policy failed, Lapidot claimed,

because the Central Asians were reluctant to give

up their unique characteristics. Starting in 1992,

Turkey began pursuing Israel, rather than the

other way around, and doing so with some urgency. According to Lapidot, the peace process

demonstrated that new foreign policy opportunities would be opening up for Israel, including with

some of Turkey’s adversaries, such as Greece and

Bulgaria, so Turkey had to rush to upgrade its representation in Tel Aviv ahead of them. Israel, for its

part, has not defined its policy vis-à-vis Turkey

7TURKEY AND THE

MIDDLE EAST

PEACE PROCESS

20
since the end of the Cold War, although the need

to do so has become increasingly apparent.

Turkey’s stepped-up interest in improving relations caught Israel unaware.

Alan Makovsky of the Washington Institute for

Near East Policy suggested that, contrary to Lapidot’s assertion, it was precisely the progress in the

peace process—specifically the September 13,

1993, Declaration of Principles—that set in motion

the dramatic improvement in relations between

the two countries. According to Makovsky, the declaration freed Turkey to pursue the kind of relations with Israel that most of the Turkish security

and foreign policy establishment have long desired. Before the agreement, Turkey shied away

from overtly close relations with Israel for fear of

offending Arab sensibilities. Relations between

them have grown since then, as one of the most

noteworthy examples in a wider trend of improved

relations between Israel and Muslim countries.

Makovsky pointed out that when Turkish foreign

minister Hikmet Cetin went to Israel in November

1993 for the first-ever visit at that level, he touted

the onset of a new chapter in Turkish-Israeli relations. Turkish officials stated that topics discussed

at the meeting included a prospective free trade

agreement and security and intelligence cooperation—marking, according to Makovsky, a “radical

departure in traditional Turkish policy,” particularly public policy, toward Israel. Cetin claimed

that the two sides even discussed possible cooperation against “Syrian-sponsored terrorism,” a remarkable term for a Turkish foreign minister to

use on Israeli soil. 

Since that time, Makovsky continued, the Israeli

president and prime minister have both visited

Turkey. Interestingly, there has been almost a reversal of roles between the two countries. Previously, Israel pursued Turkey as a bridge to the Islamic countries—part of its strategy of building ties

with states bordering the Arab world. Now, as

Lapidot had noted, Turkey is pursuing Israel for

trade links and agricultural technology, and Israel

(concerned that Syria will think it is opening up a

“second front”) appears reluctant to get too publicly involved with Turkey, at least in the realm of

security cooperation. Makovsky also described

what has become almost a ritual in Turkey’s relations with the peace process players for many

years: Arab or Israeli officials would invite Ankara

to become more engaged in the process; Turkey

would answer yes, of course; and nothing would

happen. Yet, Makovsky suggested, greater involvement as a mediator in the peace process has never

been Turkey’s goal, nor was it genuinely desired by

any of the other players. Turkey seeks to participate in the process only insofar as it can derive economic benefits or global prestige, or contribute to

regional stability without risk to itself. 

Turkey and the Arab World

Ibrahim Karawan of the University of Utah addressed the topic of Turkey’s relations with the

Arab countries. Arabs who grew up in the 1960s

had several missions placed before them: first and

foremost, the liberation of Palestine, but also other

tasks such as regaining “Arabistan” (a region in

Iran inhabited by Arabs). These matters were part

of their socialization, Karawan said, part of their

education. Compared with the issue of Palestine,

Turkey has simply not been very important to

Arabs. Even the issue of Hatay/Alexandretta between Turkey and Syria has not evoked the kind of

passion that Palestine has. 

Arabs, Karawan noted, talk about Turkey’s dependence on the West, and particularly the United

States, as if many of their countries were not

equally dependent on the United States, some

even more so. Part of their criticism of Turkey may

come from the fact that they do not get the same

kind of hearing in Washington that Turkey enjoys.

Still, Karawan declared, there is now a “reinvention

of Turkey in Arab political discourse” and, within

that, there have been many characterizations of

Turkey’s potential role in the region. There is, for

example, the paradigm of Turkey as “regional caretaker,” though it is doubtful that Turkey could or

would use the necessary power to play such a role

in the face of any serious threat to the region, or a

major regional war. Turkey is also seen as a model

of economic and political development, though

here again there is reason for skepticism. Turkey

has serious economic problems of its own, and for

economic models the Arabs look to Asia, not

Turkey. Furthermore, many in the Arab world, and

especially the politicized Islamic movements, see

Turkey not as a model but as a secular country in

crisis whose problems could be solved by closer

adherence to Islamic teachings. Arabs tend to see

the Turks as having a confused identity: They are

21
accepted neither by Europe nor by the Middle

East. And so far as the peace process is concerned,

Karawan continued, Turkey is not perceived by

Arabs as having much leverage one way or the

other.

Commenting on Turkey’s relations with the

Arab world, Hisham Melhem of As-Safir wryly

noted that, although the Turks and the Arabs live

in the same neighborhood, “both have often

wished that their neighborhood had different zoning laws.” Both Turks and Arabs have allowed

themselves to remain prisoners of the past, with

Arabs, especially Syrians and Iraqis, “chafing under

the cruelty of geography.” According to Melhem,

although there are many different attitudes among

Arabs about Turkey, there is a general rule: The

closer a country is geographically to Turkey the

more problematic the relationship is. Turkey’s

closing of the Iraqi pipeline was an act not lost on

other Arabs, Melhem asserted. No one wants to

have the spigot for its resources located in Turkey.

To the question of geography is added the “bitter memory of the past.” For Arabs in the Levant,

the last, nasty days of the Ottoman Empire—the

Young Turk period—are still a vivid memory. The

earlier, and better days of the empire have generally been forgotten. The Ataturk period added another layer of suspicion, as Arabs generally view

modern Turkey’s founder as anti-Muslim and antiArab. Events during the Cold War only intensified

these suspicions. Melhem mentioned, however,

that the Arabs’ negative attitudes toward the Ottoman period may now be changing. Among some

Arab intellectuals, there is even a noticeable and

growing nostalgia for the Ottoman period, perhaps in reaction to the appalling conditions in so

many Arab countries, including the prevalence of

both low- and high-intensity conflicts. 

Melhem said that Turkey’s foreign policy has always contained a duality: It is involved in the western system of states and at the same time reflects

the reality that “whether Turkey likes it or not,” it

has a Muslim heritage and is part of the Middle

East. Ankara recognized Israel and participated in

the Baghdad Pact largely to please the West. However, the West’s arms embargo in the mid-1970s

was a great shock to Turkey; in fact, according to

Melhem, the rise of Islamic groups in Turkey dates

back to this period. In essence, the West’s action

was a way of saying to Turkey, “You don’t belong in

the West.” At the same time, while Turkey will engage in greater economic cooperation with the

Middle East, its largest trading partners will continue to be western countries. And overall, despite

a tendency in the West to exaggerate Turkey’s role

in the Middle East—just as its role in the Central

Asian republics was exaggerated three years ago

when they gained independence—that involvement will remain limited for the foreseeable future.

22
Clearly, Turkey’s relations with the countries on its periphery have not been

smooth. With the Arab world, the relationship has been tense; with countries such as Iran

and Israel, relations have been less so. Until the

collapse of the Soviet Union, Turkey’s foreign policy was fairly unequivocal in its western orientation, an orientation that was built into the very fabric of the country by its founder. However, recent

developments in the world political system made

changes in that orientation inevitable, and it was

the consensus of the conference participants that

the result was a shift eastward. The question is:

How great a shift?

Ellen Laipson of the National Security Council

staff pointed to three factors that make the issue of

Turkey and the Middle East—and the Institute of

Peace conference—more relevant in 1994 than

even two years earlier. The first is a redefinition of

exactly what constitutes “the Middle East.” Laipson suggested that the Middle East includes

Turkey today in ways that were not the case previously, because two issues crucial to Turkey’s future

resonate in many if not all other Middle Eastern

countries: the Kurdish issue, which directly affects

Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and the future of Islam and

politics, an issue central to Turkey’s future as a secular state. Second, the Middle East peace process is

paving the way for groupings of states and political

and economic networks that would have been unheard of before, as those who were once sworn enemies begin to forge new relations. Third, Turkey’s

foreign policy is undergoing a general re-evaluation, which has involved the development of relations with Turkic peoples outside Turkey (something that had been eschewed by the Turkish

foreign policy establishment since the founding of

the republic) and the demise of the nation’s primary enemy, the Soviet Union. Now, instead of one

hostile neighbor to the north, Turkey is surrounded by smaller, unstable countries. The old

regional categories that defined Turkey’s foreign

policy no longer apply. This situation may allow

Turkey to consider the opportunities and challenges from the Middle East in a new light.

Looking to the future of Turkey’s foreign policy

and its place in the world, four scenarios were outlined by Graham Fuller of the RAND Corporation.

Fuller was careful to point out that these scenarios

were not offered as probabilities, but as “food for

thought” in a discussion about Turkey’s developing role in the world. The first is a “straight-line”

scenario under which Turkey will continue to be

strictly allied to the West and leery of involvement

in the Middle East. According to this scenario,

Turkey will continue to pursue a liberal free-market economy as it follows the general U.S. foreign

policy line and, as an element of that line, continue

to act as a link between the United States and the

Middle East.

The second scenario entails a nationalist course,

with an emphasis on the ideology of pan-Turkism.

In its broadest application, this course was not

possible in the past; now, most of the world’s Turkic peoples reside in independent states. The Turkish nationalist Alparslan Turkes, long-time head of

the Nationalist Action Party (Milli Hareket Partisi),

is now an important figure in Turkish politics. Although he has been on the Turkish political scene

for decades, Turkes has been a fringe figure until

now; his increasing popularity has been aided by

the great enthusiasm of the Turkish population for

ties to the other Turkic peoples. Frustration over

the deteriorating Turkish economy, the continued

impasse on the Kurdish problem, Armenian territorial gains in Azerbaijan, and the West’s determined indifference to the plight of the Bosnian

Muslims just might, Fuller opined, add up to a

more stridently nationalist Turkey, determined to

lead and even avenge the Turkic peoples of the

23

C8ONCLUSION: TURKEY’S

FUTURE ROLE IN THE

MIDDLE EAST
world. The downside to this scenario would likely

be an ardent hostility on the part of Russia and

Iran (among others) and a possible deterioration

in Turkey’s relations with the West, including the

United States.

A third potential scenario for Turkey involves

the renewal and strengthening of the Turks’ Islamic identity. Although the Turks still have not

reached a full reconciliation with Islam, nor a truly

comfortable understanding of where their religion

fits into their secular ideology, there is now a much

greater acceptance of—and pride in—the Ottoman

past, when the sultan was not only the ruler of the

Turkish people, but also the caliph, head of the

world’s Muslims. An Islamist course for Turkey

need not mean Islamic fundamentalism such as

that in Iran, Fuller continued. It may involve only a

greater recognition of Turkey’s historical and present role in the Islamic world. On the other hand,

as in the previous scenario, resurgent Turkish national or even religious fervor might look to the

Arabs like resurgent Turkish imperialism.

The final speculative scenario offered by Fuller

involves Turkey’s establishment, together with several other countries, of a greater Middle East democratic federation. In this scenario, Turkey would

maintain its generally moderate and secular orientation and would seek out other countries in the

region with similar values. Possible partners in this

federation include Egypt, Iraq, and Iran, though of

course a change of government would be a prerequisite for Iraq or Iran.

Other than the first—straight-line—scenario,

Fuller stressed that he was not suggesting that any

one of these outcomes was likely. Other variables

not discussed could affect Turkey’s future, such as

the course of U.S. policy, the final outcome for the

Muslims in Bosnia, how politics develop in the

other Middle Eastern countries, the evolution of

security in the Gulf, and the future of Arab nationalism. The point in outlining these scenarios was

not to predict, but to underscore that Turkey has a

full and rich past involving many traditions that

could recur. No country’s past is ever buried and

forgotten forever, and Turkey is no exception.

Turkey’s ability to forge a new role for itself in

the Middle East was analyzed in a different vein by

Philip Robins of the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London. Robins contended that

Turkey’s role in the region will remain limited. In

other regions of the world, Turkey plays an active

and high-profile role. In the Middle East, in contrast, Turkish policies have been reactive, cautious,

and tentative. Whatever its drawbacks, this prudence provides a brake on what otherwise might

be impulsive actions of the Turkish government. 

Robins offered five factors that hinder Turkey’s

ultimate ability to carve out a more proactive role

in the Middle East. First, Turkey has a different political culture from most of the Middle East countries, mainly because the political process over the

decades has become more formalized in Turkey

than elsewhere in the region. Politics in Turkey

have become institutionalized to a degree not

found in most other Middle Eastern countries. Second is the fact of Turkey’s geographic marginalization; the bottom line is that Turkey sits at the edge

of the Middle East. Third is the draw of a competing foreign policy agenda—the Middle East is not

as important to Turkey as such areas as the

Balkans, the former Soviet Union, and Cyprus. 

The fourth factor inhibiting Turkey’s role in the

Middle East is what Robins characterized as

Turkey’s own foreign policy contradictions. As examples, he cited the Turks’ support for a Kurdish

safe haven in Iraq in the face of a denial of the existence of a Kurdish problem in their own country

and Ankara’s close relationship with Saudi Arabia,

even though it is known that the Saudis financially

support opposition Islamic groups in Turkey. The

fifth factor that Robins suggested will inhibit a

greater Turkish role in Middle East politics is the

unpredictability and importance of Russia and the

nature of its relations with Turkey. Recently, for example, Turkey has let Russia take the upper hand

in negotiations on the conflict in NagornoKarabakh, despite Turkey’s keen interests there.

And the Turks acquiesced to the presence of Russian troops in Bosnia. They are also beginning to

feel great pressure from Russia on the issue of access through the straits. All of these are signs that

Turkey is still very susceptible to Russian foreign

policies that may contradict Turkey’s own interests.

Despite these factors, and despite the fact that

Turkey is uniquely a member of many subsystems

of states—the Balkans, the Black Sea region, the

western flank, and the Middle East—Robins said

Turkey cannot simply ignore the Middle East. The

states of the region will not let Turkey, as a regional

power and as an economic factor, ignore them.

Furthermore, Robins asserted, the Kurdish insur24
gency will inevitably push Turkey toward greater

dealings with neighboring countries—for example,

to contend with the power vacuum in northern

Iraq. Ankara cannot escape the fact that Turkey

borders on Syria, Iraq, and Iran and has major

problems with all three. 

Mehmet Ali Birand asked the question that has

tormented Turks since the founding of the republic: What are Turks? Europeans? Middle Easterners? Where do they belong? This eternal question

can have, according to Birand, only one answer for

the people: “We are Turks.” Turks generally know

that once they had close relations with the Arabs

but then something happened and the Arabs

stabbed them in the back, leaving

the Turks feeling that they were

better off without them. In fact,

Birand said, the Middle East is

seen as “quicksand” that is best

avoided. The problem, according

to Birand, is that “we use a different language—we simply don’t

understand each other.” Turkey’s

foreign policy has been based on

keeping as far as possible from

the intricacies of the Middle East. 

The Arabs, on the other hand,

view Turkey as a U.S. agent, making it an object of suspicion and

giving it an image that Turkey has

done little to dispel. But if the

Turks are agents of the Americans, Birand asked, what about

the Arab regimes of Egypt’s

Hosni Mubarak, or Jordan’s King

Hussein? The Arabs also view

Turkey as a Muslim country of

sorts and as a symbol of stability,

more or less. However, Turkish

diplomacy had not adapted itself

to the new world realities yet; Turkey still lacks a

clear policy toward the Middle East.

Iraq represents Turkey’s greatest problem, according to Birand. Turkey’s help to the United

States in the Gulf War was based on genuine fear

of the extent to which Saddam was arming himself. Also, the embargo against Iraq has exacerbated Turkey’s “Kurdish problem” by leading Iraq

to provide a safe haven for the PKK. To deal with

this problem, Turkey must improve its relations

with Iraq, including eliminating the embargo. 

The most important role for Turkey in the Middle East, according to Birand, is as a model of a secular state. If Turkey is lost to the Sharia, to Islamic

radicals, it will be the end of the struggle in the

world between secularists and religious radicals. A

second role Turkey must play relates to water,

where some level of cooperation will be necessary.

The third most important issue for Turkey is its

stability, and here Birand referred again to the Kurdish question. “Turkey cannot solve the Kurdish

problem through the [military] policies it pursues

today.” And while the PKK cannot win the war either, it gains strength from the discontent of the

Kurdish people. The Turkish government must

therefore satisfy the Kurdish population socially, economically,

and politically, and not simply try

to solve the problem through the

application of force. Birand

agreed with Robins that the Middle East is not, nor will it soon be,

at the top of the list of regions

critical for Turkey’s foreign policy. The West is number one and

is likely to remain so. Russia, the

Caucasus, and Central Asia are

also of great significance. Relations with Israel and with Arab

countries will develop, but they

will not supplant the existing priorities.

Morton Abramowitz of the

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace encapsulated the

issue of Turkey’s future role in

the Middle East. Abramowitz saw

little reason to project the development of a serious pan-Turkist

movement and suggested that, as

the Turkic world knows, panTurkism is more of a “buzzword” for western academics and think tanks than a relevant ideology for

Turkey’s future. This does not mean, of course,

that Turkey cannot play a constructive, if modest,

role in the future of the Turkic states. 

Abramowitz stated that, contrary to earlier remarks, Turkey never offered to send troops to the

Gulf War, despite U.S. wishes. Most of the Turkish

public was either opposed to or at least skeptical of

going to war with a neighboring country. The

Turkish military was firmly opposed to becoming

25

Abramowitz 

stated that,

contrary to earlier

remarks, Turkey never

offered to send troops

to the Gulf War, despite

U.S. wishes. Most of

the Turkish public was

either opposed to or

at least skeptical of

going to war with a

neighboring country.
embroiled in any land combat with Iraq.

Abramowitz explained that he raised this point to

highlight the “tenuous nature” of Turkish-Arab relations and the caution and conservatism—or realism—of the Turkish military, who remain a leading

determinant in Turkey’s foreign policy.

According to Abramowitz, Turkey’s policy toward the Middle East since the end of the Adnan

Menderes government (of the 1950s) has been for

the most part “on the mark.” Turkey’s role in the region needed to be cautious, limited, and largely

confined to trade and investment, since Turkey

had to be leery about being drawn into Middle

Eastern quarrels—especially since it did not have

the economic and political wherewithal to be a major player. What is more, Turkey was not particularly welcomed by Middle Eastern countries in any

case. Turkey’s future role in the region will be determined primarily by internal developments in

Turkey. Of those, the two most important are the

economy and the Kurdish problem; if they are not

resolved, Turkey’s ability to influence the wider

area is going to remain low. Turkey’s Middle East

policy will be further affected by what happens in

the religious sphere. That issue arouses considerable debate in Turkey, and there are many different

views of its significance, though there is generally

an increased level of concern. The potential influence of the Refah Party cannot be ignored. How

this issue plays out in the end will depend in part

on the policies and effectiveness of the other Turkish political parties and on whether they increase

the Islamic element in their platforms to enhance

their appeal to the Islamic interests of the electorate. Abramowitz commented that, absent other

developments, there seems to be “more rhetoric

than reality” in the “Islamic component” of Turkish foreign policy.

Turkey’s involvement in the Middle East will

thus remain limited, Abramowitz concluded, with

the exception of its relations with the three neighboring states of Iran, Iraq, and Syria, where many

problems exist and are likely to remain. These include water, political aspirations and ideologies,

religion, boundaries, the development of unconventional weapons, and the PKK. The very political nature of these three states generates concern

for Turkey. Iraq will, in Abramowitz’s opinion,

prove the most difficult problem, and policies toward Iraq will continue to reflect conflict between

the objectives of Turkey’s foreign and domestic

policies. On the one hand, Turkey does not want

to see a Kurdish state on its border; on the other,

Turkey knows that the return of centralized rule in

Iraq, whether under Saddam or under a successor,

is likely to result in more waves of Kurdish

refugees to Turkey and Iran. As the Kurdish problem drags on, the Turks are increasingly inclined

to make peace with Saddam, in the belief that they

can and must live with him or his successor. This,

in turn, according to Abramowitz, will complicate

relations with the West, particularly the United

States, and render the future of the Kurdish security zone very uncertain. Thus, Abramowitz declared, “Iraq is a profound dilemma for Turkey because the Kurdish issue for Turkey is such a

profound dilemma.”

Abramowitz finished by noting that, “since

World War II, Turkey’s policy in the Middle East,

from a western perspective, has been derived from

the fact that it is not a bridge but a bulwark and a

beacon for others in the area.” A stable and economically dynamic, increasingly secular and democratic state is a “rare bird” in the region and one of

great value to the world. Despite its very serious

problems, Turkey has the capacity to maintain itself in this role. Moreover, Abramowitz concluded,

“If Turkey resumes rapid rates of growth, maintains its cohesion, and deals with the Kurdish issue

in some real fashion, it could indeed become a

more significant force in the changing politics of

the Middle East.” 

26
Ahmed M. Abdel-Halim is an analyst at the National

Center for Middle East Studies in Cairo.

Morton Abramowitz is president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former U.S. ambassador to Turkey. 

Marshall Adair is director of the Office of Southern European Affairs at the Department of State where he is responsible for the Turkey desk, among others.

Shaul Bakhash, a 1993–94 fellow at the United States

Institute of Peace, is the Clarence Robinson Professor of

History at George Mason University and a leading expert on contemporary politics and society in Iran. 

Amatzia Baram, a 1993–94 fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, D.C., is senior

lecturer in the Department of the Modern History of the

Middle East at the University of Haifa.

Henri Barkey, the principal organizer of the Institute of

Peace conference, is associate professor in the Department of International Relations at Lehigh University. 

Mehmet Ali Birand is a journalist for Sabah, a widely

read Turkish daily, and editor and producer of the television news program 32nd Day, which focuses on

Turkey’s international and domestic development. 

Selim Deringil is associate professor in the Department

of History at Bogazici University in Istanbul. 

Yakup Atila Eralp is chairman of the Department of International Relations at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. 

Graham E. Fuller is senior political analyst at the RAND

Corporation and a former U.S. Foreign Service officer in

Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, North Yemen, and

Afghanistan. 

Robert Greenberger is diplomatic correspondent at the

Wall Street Journal.

Stephen Grummon has since 1989 been a member of

the Policy Planning staff at the Department of State,

where he is responsible for the Persian Gulf and South

Asian regions. 

Ismet Imset is a Turkish journalist and editor of the

English language newspaper the Turkish Daily News. 

Murhaf Jouejati is a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Utah. 

Kamran Karadaghi is a senior political correspondent

for the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper, covering

Iraqi, Kurdish, and Turkish affairs. 

Ibrahim Karawan is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Utah.

Farhad Kazemi is professor of politics at New York University and a specialist on comparative and international

politics and Middle East affairs. 

Gun Kut is professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Bogazici University

in Istanbul. 

Ellen Laipson has served since September 1993 as Director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the National Security Council staff and previously served as the

national intelligence officer for Near East/South Asia at

the Central Intelligence Agency. 

Anat Lapidot is an instructor in the Department of the

History of the Middle East at Tel Aviv University and a

research associate at the BESA Centre for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University.

Samuel W. Lewis served as Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State from February 1993 to February 1994, as president of the United

States Institute of Peace for five years, and as U.S. ambassador to Israel.

Heath W. Lowry is Ataturk Professor of Ottoman and

Modern Turkish Studies and chairman-designate of the

Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. 

Alan Makovsky is senior research associate at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, working on Arab-Israeli and Turkish issues. 

Phebe Marr is senior fellow at the Institute for National

Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. 

Hisham Melhem is the Washington-based correspondent for As-Safir (a Lebanese daily) and Radio Monte

Carlo. 

Muhammad Muslih is associate professor of political

science and director of the Department of International

Relations at C. W. Post College, Long Island University. 

Changiz Pahlavan is currently lecturer at Tehran University and recently completed a year as visiting fellow at

St. Antony’s College, Oxford. 

Philip Robins is the head of the Middle East Program at

the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Chatham

House, London. 

Alvin Z. Rubinstein is professor of political science at

the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow at the

Foreign Policy Research Institute. 

Paul D. Wolfowitz is dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of

Advanced International Studies, the Johns Hopkins University, and former under secretary of defense for policy

under Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney. 

27

CONFERENCE

PARTICIPANTS
28

Patricia Carley is a program officer at the United States Institute of Peace. She co-organized the Institute conference “A Reluctant Neighbor: Analyzing Turkey’s Role in the Middle East.” At

the Institute, she works primarily on issues involving the former

Soviet Union and southern tier countries, and she has co-convened an Institute study group examining Russian-Ukrainian

relations. Previously, she was a staff adviser at the Commission

on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the congressional

Helsinki Commission), where she authored numerous reports

on the former Soviet republics, including the Central Asia section of Human Rights and Democratization in the Newly Independent States (1993). She has

also worked as a consultant on Central Asian affairs to various agencies, including the World

Bank and the RAND Corporation, and is the author of several articles on the politics of Central

Asian countries. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
29

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan federal institution created and funded by Congress to strengthen the nation’s capacity to promote the peaceful

resolution of international conflict. Established in 1984, the Institute meets its congressional

mandate through an array of programs, including grants, fellowships, conferences and workshops, library services, publications, and other educational activities. The Institute’s Board of

Directors is appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate.

Board of Directors

Chester A. Crocker (Chairman), Distinguished Research Professor of Diplomacy, School of

Foreign Service, Georgetown University

Max M. Kampelman, Esq. (Vice Chairman), Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Jacobson,

Washington, D.C.

Dennis L. Bark, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford

University 

Thomas E. Harvey, former general counsel, United States Information Agency

Theodore M. Hesburgh, President Emeritus, University of Notre Dame

William R. Kintner, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania

Christopher H. Phillips, former U.S. ambassador to Brunei

Elspeth Davies Rostow, Stiles Professor of American Studies Emerita, Lyndon B. Johnson

School of Public Affairs, University of Texas

Mary Louise Smith, civic activist; former chairman, Republican National Committee

W. Scott Thompson, Professor of International Politics, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy,

Tufts University

Allen Weinstein, President, Center for Democracy, Washington, D.C.

Members ex officio

Ralph Earle II, Deputy Director, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

Toby Trister Gati, Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research

Ervin J. Rokke, Lieutenant General, U.S. Air Force; President, National Defense University

Walter B. Slocombe, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

Richard H. Solomon, President, United States Institute of Peace (nonvoting)

ABOUT THE INSTITUTE
The views expressed in this report are those of the authors or conference participants alone.

They do not necessarily reflect views of the United States Institute of Peace.

United States Institute of Peace

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First published January 1995
United States 

Institute of Peace

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