UNITED STATES , ·

AR.lVIYWAR COLLEGE
PRESS
Carlisle Barracks, PA

TURKEY'S NEW REGIONAL SECURilY ROLE:

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE UNITED STATES

Richard Weitz ,..,.~ ....

U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

r:;o.a.
STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE
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 Strategic Studies Institute
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TURKEY’S NEW REGIONAL SECURITY ROLE:

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE UNITED STATES

Richard Weitz

September 2014

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 FOREWORD

Since the Cold War era, when the United States

began heavily investing in Turkey’s military and de-
fense operations, the United States and Turkey have
enjoyed a fruitful and mutually beneficial relation-
ship. Because of Turkey’s geographic location, politi-
cal stability, and recent economic success, the country
has served as a strategic ally in U.S. foreign policy.
The Arab uprisings in particular have challenged the
Turkish-U.S. partnership. For a country that was al-
ready struggling to balance its position as a regional
power with the imperative of maintaining good rela-
tions with its Western allies, the increasing instability
in the region has forced Ankara to rely more on the
United States than it would prefer. Although the Syr-
ian conflict has underscored to Turkey the value of its
security ties with the United States, the war has also
exposed deep differences between the two countries
on fundamental issues. While presently partially bur-
ied, these differences could easily rise to the surface in
coming years.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director
Strategic Studies Institute and
U.S. Army War College Press

v
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

RICHARD WEITZ is Senior Fellow and Director of

the Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hud-
son Institute. His current research includes regional
security developments relating to Europe, Eurasia,
and East Asia, as well as U.S. foreign and defense
policies. Dr. Weitz is also an expert at Wikistrat and
a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for a New
American Security (CNAS). Before joining Hudson in
2005, Weitz worked for the Institute for Foreign Policy
Analysis, Center for Strategic and International Stud-
ies, Defense Science Board, DFI International, Inc.,
Center for Strategic Studies, Harvard University’s
Kennedy School of Government, and the U.S. Depart-
ment of Defense. Dr. Weitz has authored or edited
several books and monographs, including Rebuilding
American Military Power in the Pacific: A 21st-Century
Strategy (2013); Global Security Watch-China (2013); two
volumes of National Security Case Studies (2012 and
2008); War and Governance: International Security in a
Changing World Order (2011); The Russian Military To-
day and Tomorrow (2010); Global Security Watch-Russia
(2009); China-Russia Security Relations (2008); Mis-
managing Mayhem: How Washington Responds to Crisis
(2008); The Reserve Policies of Nations: A Comparative
Analysis (2007); and Revitalising U.S.–Russian Security
Cooperation: Practical Measures (2005). Dr. Weitz holds
a B.A. with Highest Honors in government from Har-
vard College, an M.Sc. in international relations from
the London School of Economics, an M.Phil. in politics
from the Oxford University, and a Ph.D. in political
science from Harvard University.

vii
 SUMMARY

Until a few years ago, the relationship between

Washington, DC, and Ankara, Turkey, was perenni-
ally troubled and occasionally terrible. Turks strongly
opposed the U.S. 2003 invasion of Iraq and have sub-
sequently complained that the Pentagon was allowing
Iraqi Kurds too much autonomy, leading to deteriorat-
ing security along the Iraq-Turkey border. Disagree-
ments over how to respond to Iran’s nuclear program,
U.S. suspicions regarding Turkey’s outreach efforts
to Iran and Syria, and differences over Armenia, Pal-
estinians, and the Black Sea further strained ties and
contributed to further anti-Americanism in Turkey.
Now Turkey is seen as responding to its local chal-
lenges by moving closer to the West, leading to the
advent of a “Golden Era” in Turkish-U.S. relations.
Barack Obama has called the U.S.-Turkish relationship
a “model partnership” and Turkey “a critical ally.”
Explanations abound as to why U.S.-Turkey ties have
improved during the last few years. The U.S. military
withdrawal from Iraq removed a source of tension
and gave Turkey a greater incentive to cooperate with
Washington to influence developments in Iraq. Fur-
thermore, the Arab Awakening led both countries to
partner in support of the positive agenda of promoting
democracy and security in the Middle East. Americans
and Turks both want to see democratic secular govern-
ments in the region rather than religiously sanctioned
authoritarian ones. Setbacks in Turkey’s reconciliation
efforts with Syria, Iran, and other countries led Ankara
to realize that having good relations with the United
States helps it achieve core goals in the Middle East
and beyond. Even though Turkey’s role as a provider
of security and stability in the region is weakened as

ix
a result of the recent developments in Syria and the
ensuing negative consequences in its relations to other
countries, Turkey has the capacity to recover and re-
sume its position. Partnering with the United States is
not always ideal, but recent setbacks have persuaded
Turkey’s leaders that they need to backstop their new
economic strength and cultural attractiveness with the
kind of hard power that is most readily available to
the United States. For a partnership between Turkey
and the United States to endure, however, Turkey
must adopt more of a collective transatlantic perspec-
tive, crack down harder on terrorist activities, and
resolve a domestic democratic deficit. At the same
time, Europeans should show more flexibility meeting
Turkey’s security concerns regarding the European
Union, while the United States should adopt a more
proactive policy toward resolving potential sources of
tensions between Ankara and Washington that could
significantly worsen at any time.

x
 TURKEY’S NEW REGIONAL SECURITY ROLE:
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE UNITED STATES

INTRODUCTION

During its past decade under the ruling Justice

and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi
or AKP), Turkey became a much more prominent
global actor due to its dynamic diplomacy, strength-
ening economy, and the security vacuum in its tur-
bulent neighborhood, which created a demand for
the greater foreign policy activism Ankara was now
able to provide. The “zero problems with neighbors”
policy, which has been the cornerstone of the Turk-
ish AKP party’s foreign policy under Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Ahmet
Davutoğlu, aims at resolving all Turkey’s problems
with neighbors, or at least minimizing them as much
as possible. Guided by the philosophy of Davutoğlu,
the dominant strategic thinker of the AKP even be-
fore he became foreign minister, Turkey has sought to
improve its political relations with its key neighbors
by strengthening mutual economic links and by mov-
ing its position on prominent issues, such as Israel
and Iran’s nuclear program, closer to the mainstream
international view even if that differed from the po-
sition favored by the United States and most North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) governments.
The goal has been to strengthen Turkey’s economy,
achieve greater regional stability, and thereby raise
Ankara’s global influence. The Turkish leadership
recognized that regional conflict and competition
would persist, but hoped the parties would keep these
negative elements constrained to enjoy the positive
benefits of improved economic relations and a more

1
secure region, which would provide Turkey with the
“strategic depth” Ankara needed to become a great
power. Turkey’s rapid economic growth is facilitat-
ing the modernization of the Turkish Armed Forces
(TSK) and the country’s domestic defense industry.
Its large, predominately moderate Muslim popula-
tion provides Ankara with one of the largest and most
readily deployable armies in Europe. Turkey’s loca-
tion astride multiple global hotspots—the Balkans, the
Caucasus, the Middle East, etc.—widens NATO’s geo-
graphic perspective. Turkish strategic thinkers have
traditionally seen their country as surrounded by un-
stable, potentially hostile geographic regions. Turkish
foreign and defense policy has sought to reduce this
instability—and ideally transform Turkey’s pivotal
geopolitical position from that of a liability into an
advantage—by partnering with the United States and
other NATO countries. Being more flexible, however,
recent Turkish foreign policy has also become less pre-
dictable, which complicates Ankara’s relations with
Washington and other traditional partners. Within
Turkey, newly empowered societal actors such as eth-
nic lobbies, business associations, influential civilian
politicians, and a resurgent religious establishment
have pushed for changes in long-established foreign
and defense policies. Conversely, the Turkish mili-
tary, previously the dominant security actor, has lost
influence, weakening a traditional force favoring close
ties with the United States. The AKP has managed to
exploit Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union
(EU) to justify stripping the TSK of political powers.

2
EUROPEAN SECURITY

Turkey has presented both a challenge and an op-

portunity to NATO and the EU as they restructure
their roles, missions, and capabilities to address Eu-
rope’s 21st-century security challenges. Since NATO’s
foundation in 1949, the Alliance has played a crucial
role in Turkey’s security strategy and contributed to
its integration with both Europe and the United States.
During the Cold War, the Turkish government relied
on its NATO membership and its bilateral alliance
with the United States to backstop Turkey’s security.
The pro-Western elite that dominated the country’s
foreign and defense policies viewed Turkey’s affilia-
tion with NATO and ties to the United States as defin-
ing and ensuring its status as a core member of the
Western camp.
NATO simultaneously defended Turkey against
the Warsaw Pact and benefited from Ankara’s efforts
to deter Soviet adventurism. Though confrontations
occurred between Turkey and fellow Alliance mem-
ber Greece over Cyprus and other issues, these con-
flicts actually highlighted NATO’s additional value in
moderating differences between Athens and Ankara.
Turkey has not only benefitted from NATO’s support,
but has also contributed heavily to the Alliance’s effort
to promote security in the Euro-Atlantic region and
beyond. Turkey serves as the organization’s vital east-
ern anchor, controlling the straits between the Black
Sea and the Mediterranean Sea and sharing a border
with Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Although the Cold War is
over, NATO’s importance for Turkey remains. With
much of Europe paralyzed due to the Euro crisis and
with U.S. attention drifting eastward, Turkey has the
opportunity to emerge as one of NATO’s new leaders,

3
providing Ankara adopts more of a collective transat-
lantic perspective and stops trying to import its bilat-
eral disputes with Israel and the EU into the Alliance’s
multinational deliberations. Having been a member
of NATO since 1952, an aspirant for EU membership
for over a decade, and disposing of one of Europe’s
most powerful military forces, Turkey must perforce
be a key component of any effective European secu-
rity architecture. Yet, finding an appropriate place for
Ankara in the evolving EU-NATO balance has proven
exceptionally difficult given the country’s continued
exclusion from the EU and dispute with the govern-
ment of Cyprus.
Turkish officials have waged a protracted battle to
influence EU security decisions and compel Greek Cy-
priots to reach a political settlement with their Turkish
minority. In pursuit of these ends, they have proved
willing to block EU-NATO cooperation on important
security issues. A recurring problem is that Turkey is
a member of NATO but not the EU, whereas Cyprus
belongs to the EU but not NATO. The two countries
have used the consensus rules of each organization
to prevent one organization from cooperating with
the other on important security issues. In particular,
Turkish objections to the possible leaking of sensitive
NATO military information to Cyprus have limited
ties between the EU and NATO since Cyprus joined
the Union in 2004. With no security arrangement in
place, EU officers on the training mission for Afghan
police are forced to improvise on the ground for their
own protection with local International Security As-
sistance Force (ISAF) commanders.
These mutual antagonisms have constrained
NATO-EU cooperation in general, and disrupted the
joint NATO-EU security missions in Afghanistan,

4
Kosovo, and in the Gulf of Aden in particular. For
example, there is no comprehensive EU-NATO agree-
ment on the provision by ISAF of security for the Eu-
ropean Union Police Mission in Afghanistan (EUPOL)
staff and no possibility to exchange classified and
often critical information. Consequently, EUPOL has
had to conclude individual agreements with Provin-
cial Reconstruction Team (PRT) nations and has even
been obliged to hire a private company to guarantee
its security and to maintain an extremely tight secu-
rity policy. Moreover, Turkey and the United States
did not conclude bilateral agreements with EUPOL.
All this has slowed down EUPOL’s deployment
and hampered its effectiveness.1 The AKP’s dominant
form of security discourse, with frequent references to
multilateralism, soft power, and critical dialogue, re-
sembles more closely that used by EU rather than U.S.
officials, who try to “keep all options on the table,”
including the use of military force. But Turkey has al-
ways relied on the United States as well as NATO to
provide such power when it is needed. For example,
Turkey insisted on giving NATO control of the 2011
Libyan intervention.2 Having NATO, rather than an ad
hoc coalition or one led by the EU or United States, will
likely remain Ankara’s preference as long as Turkey is
excluded from the EU.3

NATO

When NATO was formed in April 1949, Turkey

was not initially invited to join. Washington was re-
luctant to commit to defend distant Turkey, and had
also rejected Turkish proposals for a bilateral alliance
or a unilateral U.S. security guarantee. NATO’s West
European members did not want to risk diluting the

5
U.S. economic and other assistance they were receiv-
ing. Although some Turkish leaders wanted to pur-
sue a more neutral foreign policy following NATO’s
snub, Turkish policymakers continued to pursue
NATO membership, believing the Alliance offered
Turkey the optimal Western anchor. Turkey’s key
contribution to the U.S.-United Nations (UN) Korean
War effort augmented Ankara’s renewed membership
campaign. In September 1951, NATO invited Turkey,
along with Greece, to join the Alliance. The United
States was hesitant to extend its involvement in the
Middle East due to its commitments in Europe and
Asia.4 Yet, with the outbreak of war in Southeast Asia,
the decline of British influence in the Middle East, and
the threat of Soviet aggression in the Mediterranean,
the United States began to not only see the importance
of the Middle East but also the importance of Turkey
as a potential ally. At the time, several factors impeded
Turkey’s admission into NATO. Influential European
leaders considered Turkey as part of the Middle East
and did not want to extend the Marshall Plan to Tur-
key.5 Nonetheless, London, United Kingdom (UK),
and Washington pushed for Turkey’s admission into
NATO, primarily because of its “guardianship” of the
Dardanelles and Bosporus. Under the Montreux Con-
vention, Turkey could close these straits to the Soviet
Navy in wartime.6
Turkey has since made major contributions to
Western security. During the Cold War, Turkey
helped constrain the Soviet Navy in the Mediterra-
nean, provided one of the largest armies in Europe,
and hosted key NATO military facilities. NATO
planners were concerned with strategic weaknesses
that could be exploited by the Soviet Union if war
were to erupt between the Alliance and the Union of

6
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). NATO’s boundaries
stretched from the North Cape in Norway to Mount
Agri in eastern Turkey, and while central Europe was
the primary focus of NATO’s defense, its northern
and southern flanks were dangerously exposed. Not
only did NATO have to contend with Soviet ambi-
tions in the Mediterranean, but it also had to deal with
the deterioration of British influence in the Middle
East and the disunity between the Arab states. The
Middle East and the Mediterranean are also important
because of vital transportation and communications
lines and the raw materials located in the region.7 In
addition, Turkey not only played an important role
in intelligence gathering, early warning, forward bas-
ing, logistics, and training, but also served as a valu-
able link between the Middle East and the West. This
was demonstrated during the U.S. landings in Leba-
non in 1958 and the Jordanian civil war in 1970. Un-
til its military intervention in the Cyprus crisis, Tur-
key was “a strong element of stability in the eastern
Mediterranean.”8
The end of the Cold War, however, changed this
relationship.9 Turkey cooperated with the United
States in the 1991 Gulf War and contributed to NATO-
backed missions in the former Yugoslavia and Libya.
But as the 1990s unfolded, Turkey suffered escalating
terrorist violence in the southeast region, a major eco-
nomic crisis, increased political polarization, a secu-
rity vacuum in neighboring northern Iraq (which the
PKK exploited), and perceived diminished Western
interest and support.10 The September 2001 (9/11) at-
tack on the World Trade Center marked a new era in
NATO’s history, but it also led to a change of Turkey´s
role within the Alliance’s structure. The more diverse
security environment in the post-9/11 world has led

7
to NATO engagements far beyond the Euro-Atlantic
area, and provided new importance to Turkey, given
its geographical and cultural position in contempo-
rary “out of area” missions.11 There are three main de-
velopments that gave Turkey a more significant role
in the organization. First, NATO’s attention expanded
to include a wider geographical focus, reaching coun-
tries with a strategic distance away from the Euro-At-
lantic geography. This included a specific focus on the
Middle East and countries located in Turkey’s neigh-
borhood. Second, the allies reached a consensus to in-
clude terrorism in NATO’s agenda, creating a need for
new means and strategies, which largely depended on
local knowledge that Turkey could contribute regard-
ing its region. Third, Turkey has close physical and
other connections with Afghanistan.12
Turkey brings other important assets to the NATO
Alliance. It is the only predominantly Muslim member
of NATO and boasts one of the world’s most dynamic
economies. The country’s rapid growth is allowing
the country to enhance its military forces through both
foreign purchases and an improving domestic defense
industry. Thanks to its large population and the geo-
graphically broad perspective of its national security
community, Turkey has one of the largest and most
readily deployable armies in Europe. With a force of
over 600,000 personnel and a military budget of close
to $19 billion, Turkey has the second largest military
in NATO.13 Turkey borders three security hotspots of
concern for the Alliance: the Balkans, the Caucasus,
and the Middle East. Turkey has contributed heavily
to the NATO-led ISAF in Afghanistan, commanding
ISAF on multiple occasions and stationing more than
1,700 troops in Kabul. Turkey has made substantial
contributions to the reconstruction of the country.

8
One such example is the Vardak Provincial Construc-
tion Team, which was established in November 2006.
Under its auspices, Turkey had provided $200 mil-
lion worth of aid by 2008.14 At the same time, Turkey
has deployed soldiers to Afghanistan to train Afghan
soldiers and police belonging to the Afghan National
Security Forces. Turkey’s training mission, its eco-
nomic assistance, and its regional diplomatic initia-
tives aimed at reconciling Afghanistan and Pakistan
are essential to promoting Afghanistan’s security and
post-conflict reconstruction. President Abdullah Gül
has said that, “As stakeholders in the region, we can-
not expect that the United States and other Western
powers solve the problems by themselves. We should
shoulder our responsibilities.”15 In addition, by con-
structing roads, Turkish firms are building stronger
economic relations and diplomatic ties between Af-
ghanistan and other countries.16 With its involvement
in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, Turkey can not
only take a stand against Taliban extremism, but also
provide NATO with leverage against Iran.17
Turkey’s influence in the Balkans, another area of
concern for NATO, remains strong, especially since
Ankara has improved relations with Serbia. Turkey
has made contributions to the Kosovo Force (KFOR),
the Stabilization Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina
(SFOR), and the follow-on mission led by the Europe-
an Union Force Althea.18 For years, Turkish warships
have been helping patrol the Black Sea and eastern
Mediterranean against terrorists and other threats to
these vital lifelines. Ankara has supported expanding
NATO’s roster of members and partners since the Al-
liance’s enlargement promotes stability in neighbor-
ing regions. Current Turkish efforts focus on assisting
Georgia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and

9
Herzegovina in their efforts to join NATO at some
point. In terms of NATO’s “new missions,” Turkey
is playing a vital role in promoting NATO’s energy
security by serving as a vital conduit for oil and gas
reaching Europe from Eurasia, especially the Caspian
basin and Russia. Turkey’s energy partnership and
overall good relations with Russia, despite differences
over the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty
(CFE) and Syria, have helped buffer Russia-NATO
tensions on many issues. In the future, Turkish diplo-
mats could help resolve the protracted conflicts in the
former Soviet Union involving Armenia, Azerbaijan,
and Georgia.
Ankara has also played a critical role in the Eu-
ropean Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA), which
is designed to deal with the threat posed by Iranian
short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles to U.S.
assets, personnel, and allies in Europe.19 When the
Obama administration announced the EPAA, it was
in Turkey’s interest to integrate the U.S. program into
NATO to present a transatlantic missile defense proj-
ect as a NATO rather than a U.S. plan to its neighbors.
In September 2011, Turkey agreed to host in Malatya
a forward deployed AN/TPY-2 early warning radar
system, operational since January 2012, as part of the
EPAA ballistic missile defense program. Turkey has
also played an important role in advancing NATO’s
security in the Middle East. From August 2004 to June
2013, Turkey hosted NATO’s Allied Air Command
Headquarters. This Air Command, located in Izmir,
was part of Allied Joint Force Command Naples and
safeguarded almost three million square miles of air-
space across NATO’s southern region. The Air Com-
mand in Turkey played an important role in Operation
UNIFIED PROTECTOR against Libya.20 Turkey today

10
hosts NATO’s Land Command headquarters, which
is also located in Izmir, in addition to one of NATO’s
six “Rapid Deployable Corps,” which are high readi-
ness headquarters that can be quickly removed to lead
NATO troops on missions within or beyond NATO
territory.21 As part of NATO’s nuclear sharing arrange-
ment, Turkey is reported to host U.S. tactical nuclear
weapons on its territory at Incirlik Air Base.22 Turkey
and NATO have been aligning their policies toward
Syria throughout the crisis there. Turkey is playing
a crucial role in promoting NATO’s energy security
by serving as a vital conduit for oil and gas reaching
Europe from Eurasia, especially the Caspian basin
and Russia.
From Washington’s perspective, Turkey has an
exemplary nuclear nonproliferation record. Neither
the collapse of the Eastern bloc, nor the wars involv-
ing neighboring Iraq, which under Saddam Hussein
sought nuclear weapons and used chemical ones, nor
Iran’s nuclear ambiguous ambitions have prompted
Turkey to pursue nuclear weapons. Of particular im-
portance to Turkey’s foreign policy are arms control
and disarmament treaties. Turkey became a party to
the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
in 1979 and to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in
2000. Turkey also joined the Chemical Weapons Con-
vention in 1997 and the Biological Weapons Conven-
tion in 1974. In 1996, Turkey became the founding
member of the Wassenaar Arrangement regarding
export controls of conventional weapons and dual-
use equipment and technologies. Turkey joined the
Missile Technology Control Regime in 1997, the Zang-
ger Committee in 1999, the Nuclear Suppliers Group
in 2000, and the Australia Group that seeks to ensure
that exports do not contribute to the development of

11
chemical or biological weapons that same year. Tur-
key supports the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI),
which was launched by President George W. Bush
during a speech in Krakow, Poland, in May 2003.
Turkey joined, as initial partner state, the “Global
Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism” (GICNT),
launched by Presidents Vladimir Putin and Bush, fol-
lowing a joint statement in St. Petersburg, Russia, in
July 2006. Turkey hosted the Initiative’s second meet-
ing in Ankara in February 2007. Turkey became a sig-
natory to the Hague Code of Conduct against Ballistic
Missile Proliferation (HCOC) at the conference held
in The Hague, the Netherlands, in November 2002.
Furthermore, Turkey joined the “Convention on Pro-
hibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Con-
ventional Weapons” (CCW) and its three Protocols
(Protocol I, Amended Protocol II, and Protocol IV) in
2005. Under the provisions of the Convention, Turkey
is obligated to destroy its stockpiled anti-personnel
land mines by 2008 and to clear mined areas by 2014.
In order to destroy the stockpiled anti-personnel land
mines, the “Turkish Armed Forces Munitions Dispos-
al Facility” was built and has been operational since
November 2007.
Turkey’s nonproliferation bona fides were high-
lighted by the March 26-27 Nuclear Security Sum-
mit in Seoul, Korea. Turkey’s delegation reported
progress in adopting international treaties against
nuclear terrorism, supporting UN and International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) efforts in these areas,
holding training courses for its customs and nuclear
workers on nuclear security issues, participating in
anti-nuclear smuggling initiatives, shipping danger-
ous highly enriched uranium spent reactor fuel to the
United States for more secure storage, and upgrading

12
the safety and security regulations for its emerging ci-
vilian nuclear energy program, especially the Akkuyu
Nuclear Power Plant project.
Nonetheless, several developments could move the
environment in a more adverse direction. Most obvi-
ously, unambiguous evidence could arise that Iran is
pursuing nuclear weapons, which would compel Tur-
key to reassess its nuclear weapons policies. Turkey’s
plans to expand its domestic nuclear energy program
would, for the first time, provide its government with
the scientific, technical, and industrial foundations to
pursue genuine nuclear weapons options, as Iran’s
own development of the capacity to make nuclear
weapons has demonstrated to Ankara and others. But
Turkey’s leaders might still decide that, even if Iran
developed a small nuclear arsenal, they would be bet-
ter off continuing to rely on NATO and Washington
as well as Turkey’s powerful conventional military,
bolstered by national and multinational missile de-
fenses, rather than pursue an independent Turkish
nuclear force as a means of deterring even a nuclear-
armed Iran.

EUROPEAN UNION

Turkey has been bidding to join the EU since 1959,

only 2 years after the organization’s inception. An-
kara achieved this goal on September 12, 1963, with
the signing of the Agreement creating an association
between the Republic of Turkey and the European
Economic Community (EEC). This agreement aimed
to move Turkey toward entry into a customs union
with the EEC, both as an achievement in itself and as
a means to facilitate Turkey’s accession into the EEC
as a full member.23 This was accomplished with the
1963 Ankara Accession Agreement and its Additional

13
Protocol, which envisaged eventual EU membership;
in 1995, Turkey joined the EU Customs Union. Tur-
key gained the right to export its goods duty free to
EU countries though the freedom of movement was
restricted to goods; Turks wishing to enter the EU still
require an entry visa.
Negotiations toward Turkey’s accession to the EU
officially began on October 3, 2005. This process re-
quires that the parties negotiate and close all 33 chap-
ters of the EU acquis communautaire (the corpus of EU
laws and policies). The opening and closing of indi-
vidual chapters is subject to unanimity among the 27
EU member states, as is the final decision to conclude
an Accession Treaty, making the whole process vul-
nerable to national vetoes and blackmail. All 27 EU
governments must vote to open and close each chap-
ter as well as to admit each new member.24 As of now,
only 13 chapters have been opened to Turkey; the
European Council suspended eight chapters in De-
cember 2006. Austria, Cyprus, France, and Germany
have blocked another nine chapters.25 Turkey started
accession negotiations with the EU at the same time
as Croatia, which will soon join the EU. Fifteen other
countries have joined the EU since 1987, when Turkey
applied for full membership. Not only has Turkey’s
membership drive stalled while the EU has grown
from 12 to 27 countries, but the EU has declined other
Turkish priorities, such as being extended the visa-
free entry privileges offered by all EU members to one
another’s citizens under the Schengen Treaty. Egemen
Bagis, Turkey’s Minister for EU Relations, has called
these travel restrictions “not fair” since “Turkey is the
only EU candidate country, whose citizens are still
subject to visas.”26

14
 Since coming to power more than a decade ago,
the ruling AKP has used the EU entry requirements
as a justification and catalyst to promote economic
and political reforms at home that have also served
to strengthen the Turkish economy and to curtail the
power of the Turkish military. Public opinion polls
show that Turkey’s EU membership drive continues
to enjoy strong support among the country’s elite
despite falling popular support for membership. In
a January 2013 opinion survey, 87 percent of experts
still favored joining the EU, while only 33 percent of
the public were in favor of persisting.27 The other main
political parties still officially support Turkey’s quest
for EU accession.
Yet, the question of Turkish accession has been
problematic for many years. Many Europeans have
been concerned about Turkey’s poor human rights
record, restrictions on media freedoms, potential mis-
carriages of justice, constraints on Kurdish rights, and
nonrecognition of the Republic of Cyprus. Disputes
with EU countries over various Turkish domestic
and foreign policies have led Turkish leaders to lose
faith that Ankara will soon be invited to join as a full
member. EU members have become preoccupied with
organizational reform, economic restructuring, and
integrating recent members. Efforts to develop a Eu-
ropean Security and Defense Identity (ESDI) distinct
from NATO have presented challenges for Turkey
due to its limited influence on EU decisionmaking. In
addition, many Europeans characterize the accession
negotiations that formally began in October 2005 as a
decades-long process that might not lead to full mem-
bership even if Turkey completes them successfully.
Numerous domestic and external issues have neg-
atively affected the negotiation process. Supporters of

15
EU membership for Turkey argue that the AKP has
managed to stabilize the economy and suppress the
scope for military coups since it came to power in 2002.
It has built good ties with international donor organi-
zations and can count on the support of the European
Commission in its dispute with the Constitutional
Court in regards to its legitimacy.28 Critics argue that
Turkey is mostly located in Asia. Also, the proxim-
ity to security areas such as Iraq, Iran, and Syria does
not appeal to some EU leaders. They argue that EU’s
Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) is not ready to
shoulder more responsibility in the Middle East, and
that Turkey’s membership would link the otherwise
fairly peaceful and quiet EU more strongly to a very
volatile region in security terms. As for Turkey’s new
political stability, critics argue that the AKP achieved
this through suppression of government critics. The
recent mass protests against the Erdoğan government
have reinforced these concerns.
Public opinion in several EU countries, such as
Austria and France, has opposed Turkey’s member-
ship. This fact became significant when both govern-
ments announced they would hold referendums on
Turkey’s accession. In addition, the 2004 entry into
the EU of the Republic of Cyprus, not recognized by
Turkey, further complicated matters since, once hav-
ing joined, Cyprus could veto Turkey’s entry. The Cy-
priot government has blocked six chapters of Turkish
accession negotiations, arguing that Ankara needs to
normalize relations with them before being consid-
ered as a potential EU member.29 When Cyprus held
the rotating EU presidency during the last 6 months
of 2012, Turkey–EU relations froze solid with no prog-
ress in their negotiations and minimal official contact
between Turkey and the EU. Leading EU countries,

16
such as France and Germany, openly expressed their
unease regarding Turkey’s joining the EU and instead
proposed establishing a “privileged partnership”
for Turkey short of membership, which Ankara has
rejected. As a result, talks between Ankara and Brus-
sels became rather quiet, stale, and unproductive
throughout the following years and leading up to the
present. Turks have become frustrated by these nego-
tiations, which have been stalled for years. The EU’s
protracted crises have also considerably decreased
Turkish interest in the organization.
The official reason given for suspending the acces-
sion negotiations with Turkey was Ankara’s refusal to
apply the Customs Union between the EU and Tur-
key to the Republic of Cyprus.30 Vessels flying Cypriot
flags are barred from entering Turkish ports.31 On July
20, 1974, Turkey invaded and occupied a third of the
island after a Greek initiated coup attempted to secure
power and annex the island to Greece.32 The Turkish
government seized for its citizens the northern section
of the island, which they then self-declared to be the
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. The rest of the
island, besides the small segment that is currently be-
ing occupied by UN Peacekeeping forces, is known
as the Republic of Cyprus. The problem is that the
Turkish government refuses to recognize the Republic
of Cyprus because of their dispute over the rightful
possession and subsequent governance of the island
as well as the Northern Cyprus blockade currently in
place. The Republic of Cyprus has been a member of
the EU since 2004 and, as a result, many EU countries
have banded together in support of that entity. The
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is recognized
by the international community, including the EU, as
an “occupied part of the Republic of Cyprus.”33 Tur-

17
key does not recognize the ethnically Greek Republic
of Cyprus. EU nations such as France and Germany
have unequivocally said to the Turkish government
that they need to treat Cyprus the same as any other
EU member state, starting with recognizing them as a
sovereign nation. However, leadership from Ankara
is standing its ground firmly in refusing to make such
acknowledgments, even if it means possibly terminat-
ing their chance at joining the EU.34
France has played a lead role in impeding Turkey’s
accession in recent years. The French government led
the effort in 2006 to suspend the negotiations after
Turkey refused to recognize the Republic of Cyprus.
France vetoed 11 out of the 35 chapters, which caused
the accession talks to virtually halt (only eight remain
suspended as of early-2013).35 Relations rapidly dete-
riorated when the French Senate approved a bill that
would punish those who deny internationally recog-
nized genocides. Turks saw this legislative measure
as an explicit reference to their denial of the Armenian
genocide in 1915.36 Many Turkish officials argued that
the bill was a campaign strategy by then French Presi-
dent Nicholas Sarkozy aimed at recruiting votes from
the Armenian population in France.37
In retaliation to the proposed bill, Turkey imposed
immediate political, military, and economic sanc-
tions. For example, Turkey did not renew permission
for French military planes to use Turkish airspace.38
These sanctions were quickly lifted and a French court
eventually negated the bill, but relations between the
two countries remained cold throughout the Sarkozy
presidency.39 However, since Sarkozy left office in
2012, France has had a revamped policy regarding
Turkish accession. President Hollande has openly
stated his support for Turkey’s becoming an EU mem-

18
ber at some point.40 Following his election in 2012, his
administration advocated opening some of the eight
chapters of the accession talks that were closed.41 In
February 2013, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told
his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoğlu of his will-
ingness to open Chapter 22 of the acquis regarding “Re-
gional Policy and Coordination of Structural Instru-
ments.”42 According to the European Commission, this
chapter consists:

mostly of framework and implementing regulations,

which do not require transposition into national legis-
lation. They define the rules for drawing up, approv-
ing and implementing Structural Funds or Cohesion
Fund programs reflecting each country’s territorial
organization. . . . Member States must have an insti-
tutional framework in place and adequate administra-
tive capacity to ensure programming, implementing,
monitoring and evaluation in a sound and cost-effec-
tive manner from the point of view of management
and financial control.43

This was followed by Angela Merkel’s trip to An-

kara in late-February 2013, where she not only sup-
ported the opening of Chapter 22, but also suggested
potentially opening other chapters to advance the
accession talks.44
Germany’s backing of France in welcoming the re-
sumption of accession talks between Turkey and the
EU was a major shift for Berlin. Germany has long
been an opponent of Turkish accession despite having
one of the largest Turkish populations outside of the
native country. Chancellor Merkel was the first to pro-
pose a “privileged partnership” between Turkey and
the EU as an alternative to full membership. Many
Germans have long held a position of not wanting

19
Turkey to become a member state, despite its boom-
ing economy and critical geographic location. Other
EU officials have expressed concerns about the EU
needing Turkey more than vice versa due to Turkey’s
more dynamic economy and increased foreign policy
options. German officials have also adopted a more
positive attitude toward Turkey’s accession drive. In
2012, German Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle,
said that:

We, the Europeans, should open chapters to negotia-

tions with Turkey in the first half of 2013. Otherwise,
in the upcoming term, our interest in Turkey may be
greater than Turkey’s interest in us.45

Gunther Oettinger, Germany’s EU commissioner, said

that the EU could eventually “crawl to Ankara on its
knees to beg the Turks to join the EU.”46
Meanwhile, Turkish officials are maneuvering,
such as by threatening to abandon the EU and seek
membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organiza-
tion (SCO), to give Ankara more leverage in the acces-
sion negotiations. On October 12, 2011, the EU Com-
mission released a “Positive Agenda” document that
listed and rated progress being made between Turkey
and the EU. It offered favorable conclusions regard-
ing Turkey’s political reforms in key areas. The new
EU approach is seen as a complement rather than a
substitute for EU membership, since it could impart
new momentum to the accession process as well as
prepare Turkey better for it. The positive agenda in-
cludes eight areas of joint interest: political reforms
in Turkey, visas, the EU acquis, migration, energy,
trade, foreign policy dialogue, counterterrorism, and
further participation of Turkey in EU programs. Joint

20
EU-Turkish Working Groups have been formed to see
how progress can be made regarding these issues. The
newly created EU External Action Service has estab-
lished a special Turkey team to support this process.
Turkey’s excellent economic performance during
the past decade, contrasted with the overall economic
weakness within the EU, has made Ankara a more at-
tractive partner for the Union. In fact, former Turk-
ish Foreign Minister Yaşar Yakış has expressed the
opinion of many Turks when he argued that Turkey
should delay negotiating with the EU over accession
since Turkey’s bargaining position will improve as the
Turkish economy continues to perform much better
than the EU average. Turkey’s economy is projected
to grow for the next decade at an average rate of 6.7
percent per year.47 It would already rank as the sixth
largest among EU members. Turkey’s geography also
makes it a natural conduit for EU trade and investment
flowing eastward to Eurasia and the Middle East, and
oil and gas from the Caspian Basin entering the EU.48
As a partial EU member, Turkey offers a large
market for European goods and simultaneously acts
as a gateway to markets in the Middle East and North
Africa.49 For Berlin, this is especially crucial, given
that Germany sustains its economy through exports.50
Conversely, Ankara’s continued interest in joining
the EU results in part from Turkey’s economy still
being oriented toward Europe. Although the percent-
age of Turkish trade involving the EU has continued
to decline over time, some 38 percent of its imports
originated from the EU in 2011, whereas 46 percent
of Turkey’s exports go to EU members.51 Those shares
amounted to $85 billion and $58 billion, respectively.52
These trade volumes have kept increasing despite
the current Euro crisis and the more rapid growth of

21
Turkey’s economic links with Russia and many other
countries. Turkey’s imports from the EU increased by
35.1 percent and 19.8 percent in 2010 and 2011, respec-
tively, while exports grew 18.4 percent and 12.7 per-
cent in those same years. Approximately two-thirds
of Turkey’s foreign direct investment still comes from
the EU.53
But one might wonder how long Germany will
hold this more flexible position. Merkel’s encouraging
approach toward Turkish accession was partly due to
the forthcoming German national elections in 2014.
In the 2009 election, the Christian Democratic Party
(CDP) eased its anti-Turkish position in order to ap-
peal to the 690,000 Turkish voters54 and 3 million resi-
dents of Turkish origin living in Germany.55 The CDP
might be preparing for a similar electoral gambit on
this occasion. In addition, although Germany has now
come out in favor of opening of a new chapter in ne-
gotiations, the German government has conditioned
expanding the renewed EU-Turkey talks to cover
additional chapters to Turkey’s applying its Ankara
Agreement to the Republic of Cyprus.56 By enunciat-
ing this condition, the Merkel government has indi-
cated its willingness to engage more with Turkey in
the field of European integration, but stands firm on
the matter of its accession to the EU. Indeed, the chap-
ter opened is relatively minor and not subject to much
controversy, unlike the chapters concerning human
rights or Cyprus. Hence, Merkel’s change of position
is more symbolic than significant.
Many other EU leaders naturally want to focus on
addressing the EU’s internal problems before serious-
ly discussing Turkish accession.57 Germany’s reaction
to the recent thaw between France and Turkey is fur-
ther complicated by the differing views among parties

22
within Germany. Merkel’s CDP is much less favorably
disposed to accession than the Free Democratic Party
and the Social Democratic Party, which both officially
favor full Turkish accession into the EU.58 The CDP
prefers granting Turkey only partial membership in
order to maintain good relations with one of Germa-
ny’s biggest economic partners.59 Even though Merkel
reassured Turkey about the accession process, she did
not promise full accession.60 Finally, despite the po-
litical pivots made by Germany and France, Turkey
still faces many hurdles in the accession process. For
example, France is still blocking four Chapters, while
Cyprus is blocking another six, making full accession
improbable in the near future. 61

TROUBLED TRIANGLE: NATO, THE EU,

AND TURKEY

Despite the difficulties with making progress in the

EU admission process, European leaders are aware
that Europe’s security cannot be separated from Med-
iterranean security, and there have been various at-
tempts to establish a sustainable relationship between
EU and Turkey. The task of redefining a security rela-
tionship between EU and Turkey has proved difficult,
mostly because of EU’s internal problems with defin-
ing the limits of integration and responsibility within
defense and security policy. As a result, it will most
likely continue to be in Turkey’s interest to maintain
NATO as the most powerful institution for defense
and security in Europe even while Turkey continues
to participate in military and civilian ESDP missions.
Indeed, Turkey has been the most active participant
in ESDP missions among countries outside of the EU,
and more active than many EU-states as well.62

23
 In 1992, Turkey was granted associate status in
the Western European Union (WEU) as a means to
allow for an EU-Turkey security partnership to de-
velop even without granting Turkey full membership
in the EU. Turkey was directly involved in planning
and preparing WEU operations in which NATO assets
and capabilities were to be used, thanks to Ankara’s
status as one of the six “associate members” (Turkey,
Hungary, Iceland, Norway, Poland, and the Czech
Republic) that had membership in NATO and the
WEU. Turkey could attend its bi-weekly ambassador-
level meetings, send officers to the WEU defense plan-
ning cell, and have Turkish parliamentarians attend
the sessions of the WEU Assembly. Turkey also had
the right to participate fully in WEU decisions when
they involved collective NATO assets.63 But Ankara
lost this favorable situation when the EU decided to
end the WEU’s role in the ESDI and develop the ESDP
wholly within the EU instead. Turkey subsequently
found itself marginalized in the European security
system and feared that the EU could potentially oper-
ate in its areas of interest without Ankara’s having any
input to the decision.64
NATO and the EU have sought to cooperate more
effectively to address European security challenges.
This collaboration has included sharing high-value
but scarce assets, developing mutually profitable di-
visions of labor, and conducting joint operations, as
in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and against Somali pirates.
A priority is to avoid the creation of gaps, needless
redundancies, institutional rivalries, or tensions be-
tween countries belonging to one but not the other—
such as Turkey and the United States. After decades
of informal talks between their officials and member
governments, NATO and the EU established formal

24
institutionalized relations in 2001 in response to the
EU’s expanding range of security and defense activi-
ties, as manifested in its ESDP. (Technically, it is the
ESDP rather than the EU per se that has institutional
ties with NATO).65 The 1992 Maastricht Treaty had
designated the WEU as the EU’s defense component.
Its main responsibility was to undertake the “Peters-
berg tasks” (humanitarian missions, search and res-
cue operations, crisis management, peacekeeping,
peace enforcement, and environmental protection).
Maastricht also established an intergovernmental
Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). NATO
and the WEU had developed extensive cooperation
over the preceding decades. Welcoming potential EU
contributions for the Petersberg tasks despite NATO’s
also performing the same types of missions, NATO
governments agreed in 1994 that the WEU could use
NATO collective assets, following the approval of the
North Atlantic Council (NAC), for Petersberg-type
missions under the EU Common Foreign and Security
Policy. The Alliance likewise approved the concept of
Combined Joint Task Forces, whose “separable but
not separate” deployable headquarters could be used
for EU- as well as NATO-led operations. In June 1996,
the NATO foreign ministers meeting in Berlin sought
to promote an ESDI within the Alliance in an effort
to encourage European members to assume more of
NATO’s roles and responsibilities by strengthening
their defense capabilities. Under what became known
as the “Berlin Plus” agreement, the ministers further
agreed to make NATO assets available for WEU-led
crisis management operations.
Meanwhile, European governments also took
steps to strengthen the EU’s security and defense role
independent of NATO. At their December 1998 sum-

25
mit in St. Malo, France, the British and French govern-
ments issued a joint statement that affirmed the goal
of establishing an ESDP within the EU. The following
December, however, the European Council meeting in
Helsinki, Finland, transferred the EU crisis manage-
ment role from the WEU to the EU. At the November
2002 Prague Summit, the NATO members consented
in principle to making NATO assets and capabilities
available for EU-led operations in which the Alliance
was not militarily engaged. The EU-NATO Declara-
tion on ESDP issued in December 2002 defined the po-
litical principles that would govern their relationship:
effective mutual consultation; equality; institutional
decisionmaking autonomy; respect for member states’
interests; and the coherent, transparent, and mutu-
ally reinforcing development of their military capa-
bilities.66 The declaration affirms NATO’s continued
role in crisis management and conflict prevention (as
well as collective defense), while stating that the EU’s
growing activities in the first two areas will contribute
to their common goals.
In March 2003, NATO and the EU finalized adop-
tion of the Berlin Plus agreements that allows the
EU to use NATO’s collective assets and capabilities
for EU-led crisis management operations, including
NATO’s command arrangements, logistics assistance,
and assistance in operational planning, when NATO
as an institution is not involved in the operation. Only
EU members that are either also NATO members or
that have joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP)
Program, and thereby established a bilateral security
arrangement with NATO, are eligible to use these
NATO assets.67 At the end of that month, the EU be-
gan its first Berlin Plus operation when its Operation
CONCORDIA replaced the NATO-led Operation AL-
LIED HARMONY in the former Yugoslav Republic

26
of Macedonia. After the transition, some NATO as-
sets supported the EU-led follow-on operation.68 An-
other Berlin Plus operation began in late-2004, when
the EU’s Operation ALTHEA replaced the NATO-led
Stabilization Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina.69
As originally formulated, the Berlin Plus agree-
ment Arrangement between NATO and the EU meant
that the non-EU European NATO allies could contrib-
ute to EU-led operations without participating in the
decisionmaking process regarding these operations.
Consequently, Turkey decided to use its decisionmak-
ing powers in NATO to stall implementation of Ber-
lin Plus agreements to force the EU to accept a more
favorable arrangement from Ankara’s perspective. In
December 2001, Turkey, the UK, and the United States
signed the Ankara Document, which guaranteed that
NATO members not in the EU could participate in
ESDP decisions when contributing to them. The EU
heads of state and government adopted the document
during their Brussels Summit in October 2002 as the
“ESDP: Implementation of the Nice Provisions on the
Involvement of the non-EU European Allies.” This
Nice Implementation Document served as the basis
of the December 2002 NATO-EU Joint Declaration
that was adopted by the North Atlantic Council on
December 13, 2002, and the decision of the December
2002 European Council session in Copenhagen, Den-
mark, that the Berlin Plus agreements would apply
only to EU members that also belonged to NATO or
had joined its PfP Program. The Copenhagen Summit
also agreed that Turkey could participate in EU-led
operations in its geographic vicinity if Ankara wanted
to do so.70
Turkey has since become the largest contributor to
ESDP missions of any non-EU country and has even

27
contributed more than some EU members. According
to many Turkish officials, however, the EU failed to
live up to this commitment, resulting in Turkey being
asked to contribute to ESDP operations that Ankara
had little input in planning or initiating. In December
2002, the EU issued a declaration of intent to estab-
lish nine 2,000-troop battle groups by 2007 as rapid
reaction units for foreign crises. The EU has had two
battle groups on permanent standby since 2007, but
the failure of EU member governments to agree re-
garding how, when, and where to employ them has
prevented them from ever being used.71 In November
2004, the Turkish government declared its intent to
contribute forces and capabilities to the battle groups,
but in June 2007, Ankara withdrew its air and naval
contributions due to its exclusion from ESDP deci-
sionmaking structures.72 Further use of the Berlin Plus
agreements has been limited due to their inapplica-
bility to the short time frames intended for many EU
crisis-response operations as well as their political and
structural complexity.73 By contrast, in the ground op-
erations in Kosovo and Afghanistan, as well as in the
maritime counterpiracy mission off Somalia, when
EU and NATO missions have overlapped, the EU and
NATO have established various ad hoc command
and communications arrangements for these parallel
operations.74
Since 2007, NATO and the EU have had some two
dozen common member countries. But since both
institutions decide many important security and de-
fense issues by consensus, countries that have mem-
bership in one organization but not the other can exert
substantial negative influence on the level of coop-
eration between the institutions. At present, NATO
members Canada, Iceland, Norway, Turkey, and the

28
United States are not EU members, while the tradi-
tionally neutral or nonaligned EU members Austria,
Cyprus, Finland, Ireland, Malta, and Sweden are not
NATO members, though four of the five (Malta since
April 2008 but still not Cyprus) have joined NATO’s
PfP, which allows for institutionalized cooperation
between members and partners in support of NATO
goals. All these countries participate in official NATO-
EU meetings. With Malta’s entry into PfP in 2008 and
France’s re-entry into NATO’s Integrated Military
Command in 2009, Cyprus has become the main out-
lier within the NATO-EU partnership. Cyprus is not a
PfP member and, partly due to a Turkish veto, does not
have a security agreement with NATO for exchanging
classified documents. As a result, it uniquely cannot
participate in official NATO-EU meetings, though in-
formal meetings including Cyprus do occur. The row
has led Greece and Cyprus to object to any Turkish
participation in the development of the ESDP while
Turkey has blocked the Greek Cypriots from joining
EU-NATO meetings and from taking part in ESDP
missions using NATO intelligence and resources.
Turkish objections to sharing sensitive NATO
military information with the government of Cyprus,
which joined the EU in May 2004 despite its fail-
ure to adopt a UN-backed political settlement with
the island’s Turkish minority, has limited formal
NATO-EU intelligence sharing since then.75 The Cy-
prus government, sometimes assisted by Greece and
other EU members, has retaliated by blocking Tur-
key’s participation in certain EU defense activities,
such as the work of the European Defense Agency. A
recurring justification is that Turkey has not complied
with its obligations under its accession negotiations to
open its ports and airports to Cypriot-registered ships

29
and aircraft.76 The dispute has impeded a range of pos-
sible EU-NATO cooperation. The various EU-NATO
institutional arrangements and meetings in Europe
have been constrained by an inability to hold formal
sessions with an agreed agenda or the authority to
reach substantive decisions.77 These mutual antago-
nisms have also disrupted the joint NATO-EU secu-
rity missions in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and in the Gulf
of Aden off Somalia. Thanks to its full membership
in NATO, Turkey has the ability in principle to deny
the use of any NATO collective assets for any future
EU-led mission.
When the December 2000 EU Summit in Nice,
France, decided to exclude non-EU-NATO members
from the EU’s security and defense decisionmaking
mechanisms, Ankara’s national security community
worried that it could have little impact on EU policies
that could affect Turkey’s security. It also anticipated
that the EU would therefore pay less attention to Turk-
ish concerns than would the WEU and NATO. More
generally, Turkish policymakers were concerned about
the EU’s lack of will and ability to defend Turkey. In
addition to the often grudging support for Ankara
against the PKK terrorists and periodic denunciations
of an “Armenian genocide” that many Turks deny
ever occurred, many West European governments
proved reluctant to render Turkey military assistance
during the 1991 Persian Gulf War with Iraq. Due to
its persistent capabilities-expectations gap, moreover,
the EU did not (and still does not) look like it would
soon develop more robust military assets comparable
to those available to NATO, thanks largely to its U.S.
membership. Conversely, there was the theoretical
possibility that, in a confrontation between Turkey
and Greece, the WEU would be obliged to side with
Athens simply due to its EU membership.78 Finally,

30
some Turkish policymakers resented that, due to the
barriers placed on Turkey’s desired accession to the
EU, the former Soviet bloc countries that would soon
join the EU would have more influence on the orga-
nization’s European security policies than Turkey, a
long-standing Western ally within NATO.79
Turkey aspires to a leadership role in the Alliance,
but Turkey’s contributions risk being overshadowed
by its petty efforts to limit NATO’s ties with Israel and
the EU. Turkey’s love-hate relationship with the EU
is a major complicating factor for Turkey’s NATO re-
lationship. Even setting aside its frustrated EU mem-
bership ambitions, Turkey’s security relationship with
the EU remains so problematic as to threaten its ties
with NATO. The most immediate problem is the para-
lyzing effects of the Turkey-Cyprus dispute on insti-
tutional cooperation between NATO and the EU. The
dispute with the EU, along with those with France and
the United States in recent years, helps explain why
opinion polls show that popular support for NATO
is lower in Turkey than in any other member country.
Turkish diplomats initially refused to allow EU lead-
ers to attend NATO’s May 2012 heads-of-state summit
in Chicago on the grounds that the EU was making
no greater contribution to NATO than the 56-mem-
ber Organization of Islamic Conference, then led by
Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, a Turkish national, and other
international organizations. In the end, the EU lead-
ers were allowed to attend some NATO sessions but
not others.
Turkey’s relations with NATO have also suffered
from various other problems, including de facto Turk-
ish-Russian collusion to limit NATO’s presence in
the Black Sea, diverging threat perceptions regarding
Iran, and Ankara’s opposition to the appointment of

31
Rasmussen as NATO’s Secretary General due to his
stance, when head of the Danish government, on the
Danish cartoon portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad.
Nonetheless, Turkish policymakers definitely pre-
ferred having a transatlantic institution of which An-
kara was a core member dominate European security
than having EU structures potentially displace it.

THE MIDDLE EAST

Turkey’s geostrategic position between Europe

and the Middle East has made the country an impor-
tant NATO ally and an essential partner for both the
United States and European countries. With its secular
values, it has been important for Turkey to preserve
its Western ties. Although Turkey has never ignored
its proximity to the Middle East, Ankara tended to col-
laborate the most with Iran, Israel, or other non-Arab
states. But during the past decade, Turkey broke with
Israel and reengaged in the Arab world after years of
estrangement.80 In Washington and Ankara, expecta-
tions were high that Erdoğan’s successful “Turkish
Model”—a moderate Sunni government with a dy-
namic economy tied to the United States--could be
exported.81
The Obama administration assigned Turkey
an important role in advancing U.S. interests in the
Middle East while allowing Washington to stay in
the background in a component of a “lead from be-
hind” foreign-policy strategy.82 For both Turkey and
Washington, trying to manage the difficult political
transitions in the Middle East has become the primary
issue in the Ankara-Washington relationship.83 This
partnership has seen both progress and setbacks. With
fresh self-confidence, the government in Ankara tried

32
to meet these expectations using the soft power of its
model along with skillful diplomacy. Of course, given
the situation in the region today, the “zero problems”
phrase has become something of a joke for Ankara.
Following some transient improvements, Turkey’s re-
lations with Iraq, Iran, Syria, Israel, Egypt, and other
Middle Eastern governments have regressed to their
troubled mean and sometimes even worse. Ankara
is the only government not to have an ambassador
in Cairo, Damascus, and Tel Aviv simultaneously.
At the cost of some popularity, Erdoğan is seen as
the champion of radical Sunni policies in the Middle
East rather than a renewed Ottoman leader. Turkey’s
troubles with its neighbors have helped drive Ankara
back toward the United States, which has the hard
power even if it chooses not to use it, but Turkish-U.S.
differences regarding many Middle Eastern issues
are acute.

Syria.

Since the Syrian crisis began, Turkey and the

United States have been effectively coordinating their
policies. They first sought to induce Bashar al-Assad,
whom Washington was trying to wean away from
Iran, to introduce reforms demanded by the moder-
ate protesters. But after Assad only made fig-leaf re-
forms designed to divide the opposition and reduce
foreign resistance, Washington and Ankara demand-
ed a change of regime in Damascus. They have since
imposed various sanctions on the Syrian government,
but these measures have been challenged by China,
Iran, and Russia. Although Turkey and the United
States have followed similar paths regarding Syria,
the journey has proven far costlier to Turkey. Bilateral

33
trade between Turkey and Syria reached $2.5 billion
in 2010, making Turkey Syria’s largest trading part-
ner, but has since collapsed, as have various Turk-
ish visions of establishing a free trade agreement, a
customs union, or other region-wide economic struc-
tures. In addition, Turkey has accepted more than
600,000 refugees from its neighbor in accordance with
Ankara’s “open door” policy to those fleeing the civil
war.84 Additionally, both the Syrian National Council
and the Free Syrian Army have used Turkey as a base
for organizing their resistance against Assad’s forces.
Turkey has also supported the war against Assad by
quietly allowing the passage through its territory of
volunteers from Muslim countries to fight in Syria.
In addition, some sources claim that the Syrian reb-
els have received weapons and other military support
transported through Turkey and funded by Qatar and
Saudi Arabia. The Turkish government has denied
this claim on several occasions.85 Even so, the confron-
tation with Syria has contributed to negating Turkey’s
“zero-problems” policy toward its neighbors. In con-
trast, the United States had few economic or diplomat-
ic ties with Assad’s regime, so lost little in calling for
his removal and imposing sanctions on his country.
It is easy to forget that the relationship between
Turkey and Syria significantly improved after the
AKP came to power in November 2002. When Prime
Minister Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Davutoğlu be-
gan their intense effort to improve the relations with
the country’s neighbors, Syria became one of the most
important targets. The Turkish effort to strengthen
relations with Syria resulted in frequent meetings be-
tween Erdoğan and Assad bolstered by growing dip-
lomatic and commercial ties between the two coun-
tries. On December 22, 2004, Turkey and Syria signed

34
a free trade agreement (the Association Agreement) in
Damascus, which entered into force in January 2007.86
In many ways, Syria became a showcase symbol of
Turkey’s new foreign policy strategy of zero problems
with neighbors. But Erdoğan misjudged when he
believed he could persuade Assad to accept needed
reforms.87 As the situation in Syria became worse dur-
ing the summer of 2011, Davutoğlu went to Damascus
to encourage Assad in person to end his repressive
policies. The mission failed. Following Assad’s con-
tinuing use of violence against his own people, Tur-
key drastically changed its policy toward Syria. Both
countries withdrew their diplomatic representatives
and suspended the Association Agreement.88 Erdoğan
became one of the first leaders to call for Assad to
leave power.89
Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war and Tur-
key’s willingness to harbor Syrian rebels and refugees,
Turkey has been subjected to a series of cross-border
attacks. In an April 2012 incident, Syrian soldiers
opened fire on Syrian rebels and refugees in the Turk-
ish town of Kilis, killing two Syrian refugees and
wounding some two dozen people.90 The downing of
a Turkish fighter plane over Syrian air space in June
2012 was but the most prominent of several incidents
of the deteriorating security situation between the
two countries.91 Following the incident, the Turkish
government decided, with Washington’s encourage-
ment, to request assistance only under Article 4 of the
North Atlantic Treaty, which provides for urgent con-
sultations if a NATO member considers its security
interests threatened.
Turkey did not seek Article 5 protection, which
calls for collective defensive actions to counter threats,
because few NATO members want to employ military

35
force against Syria. The Alliance justified deploying
Patriot air defense missiles in southern Turkey as a
purely defensive “precautionary measure” to counter
any threat emanating from Syria.92 NATO’s Patriot
Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) Missile Interceptor
Batteries are some of the most sophisticated air and
missile defense systems in Western inventories. Com-
bined with the high accuracy of their radar sensors
and targeting systems, the Patriots can intercept for-
eign warplanes and short-range ballistic missiles as
far as 100 kilometers (km) away, allowing them to
command an area well beyond the Turkish-Syrian
border—all of northern Syria to include the embattled
towns of Aleppo and Homs.93
While the earlier 1990 and 2003 Turkish requests
for Patriots from NATO provoked major intra-Alli-
ance divisions, on this occasion the NATO decision-
making process went more smoothly. Davutoğlu
and other Turkish diplomats engaged in lengthy and
comprehensive consultations with the other NATO
governments even though only Germany, the Nether-
lands, and the United States have the PAC-3s.94 NATO
largely has remained aloof from the Syrian crisis,
but with the Patriot systems have come hundreds of
NATO troops to operate, maintain, and protect the Pa-
triot interceptors, their radars, and their other support
elements. In effect, the NATO personnel have become
a “trip wire” that makes NATO military intervention
more likely following future Syrian-Turkish border
clashes. This tactic has seemingly worked. Since the
missiles arrived, there have not been any further ma-
jor airstrikes against Turkish territory. The Syrian mil-
itary has likely been more cautious in its operations
near the Turkish border. Even so, NATO has not tried
to use its Patriots to establish a no-fly zone over Syr-

36
ian airspace, which the systems have the capacity to
do. Such a step would make it easier for the guerrillas
to establish camps and troop concentration across the
border in Syrian territory.
Some Turkish officials and commentators have
called for Turkish military intervention to protect Syr-
ia’s civilians or Ankara’s economic and security inter-
est.95 The Turkish government has reinforced its bor-
der and authorized more flexible rules of engagement
for the TSK to respond to potential threats from Syrian
forces approaching the Turkish border. Turkey has
experienced numerous cross-border attacks by Syrian
government forces, terrorist attacks by groups linked
to the Assad regime, and a surging number of Syrian
refugees taking up residence in Turkey—whose num-
bers have exceeded by several orders of magnitude
the burden Turkish leaders said at the beginning of
the war they could tolerate. If Turkey does intervene
militarily, the Obama administration would likely
again follow its “lead from behind” strategy and, as in
Libya, provide primarily low-profile intelligence and
logistics support for the Turkish military. Washing-
ton has been concerned that the failure to uphold its
perceived “red lines” in Syria will decrease U.S. cred-
ibility and encourage Iran, North Korea, and other
countries to challenge other declared U.S. red lines.
But although Ankara and Washington have had their
opportunities to intervene more directly in the Syr-
ian conflict, they repeatedly have declined to exploit
possible pretexts for employing their armed forces to
remove Assad.
Neither Turkey nor the United States wants to
intervene militarily in the Syrian war. Ankara has
declined to exploit several opportunities that would
have served as pretexts, including cross-border shoot-

37
ings and shelling against refugees fleeing into Turkey.
On paper, the TSK should be able to defeat the di-
vided and weakened Syrian military, but the Turkish
military has fought only irregular PKK guerrillas for
the past few decades and lacks experience in invading
and occupying a foreign country. An invading Turk-
ish military might be welcomed as liberators by Syrian
Sunnis, but the country’s Kurds and Alawites would
more likely respond negatively to a Turkish occupa-
tion force and perhaps even respond with an anti-
occupation insurgency such as those that harassed the
U.S. Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps the main
Turkish concern is that, once Turkish forces occupy
Syria, they will become bogged down trying to sup-
press the fighting among the various factions.
The Syrian regime is not without means to retaliate
for whatever measures Turkey and the United States
adopt in support of Assad’s opponents. In partner-
ship with Iran, the Syrian government could resume
its pre-1998 practice of providing extensive support
for the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Many PKK
operatives were born or based in Syria. The recent
upsurge in PKK attacks against Turkish targets may
be a Syrian-Iranian warning to Ankara to moderate
its pressure on Assad. Even excluding the PKK factor,
a Turkish decision to intervene on behalf of Assad’s
opponents risks labeling Turkey as a regional cham-
pion of Sunni Arabs, despite Turkish efforts to define
the Syrian crisis as a humanitarian issue rather than a
sectarian one. Although Turkey and the United States
have called for Assad’s removal, the incumbent presi-
dent is not the center of gravity, in Clausewitzian
terms, of the war, as Maummar Qaddafi was in Libya.
Whereas Qaddafi’s death ended his unique regime,
in Syria the regime’s power resides with the security,

38
business, and political elites. This system of collective
rule, which has a sectarian orientation due to the large
numbers of minority Alawites among the elite, could
easily result in a continuation of Assad’s policies even
if the incumbent president leaves office.
The Turkish authorities have allowed members of
the opposition Syrian National Council and the Free
Syrian Army to organize on Turkish territory, but the
disunity of the Syrian opposition factions remains a
problem. Even many Syrians are reluctant to embrace
these opposition bodies for fear that they will become
dominated by Sunni extremists. Although Turkish
and U.S. officials have sought to purge al-Qaeda op-
eratives from their ranks, the Turkish authorities have
proven less sensitive to the concerns of Syria’s non-
Sunni ethnic and sectarian groups. Turkish and U.S.
officials have long been considering the option of es-
tablishing a border buffer zone or safe areas deeper
inside Syrian territory, where refugees could find safe
shelter without entering Turkish territory. But the ex-
perience in the Balkans in the 1990s made clear that,
unless backed by air strikes and robust ground forces,
the adversary will not respect these safe havens.
Both governments would like to avert further
civil strife and achieve a rapid transition to a stable
and prosperous Syria under a new government. They
also want to prevent extremist groups from exploiting
the chaotic situation to break Syria apart or transform
the country into a terrorist safe haven. U.S. officials
share Turkish worries about the adverse regional re-
percussions for Kurdish autonomy in Syria. If Assad
is overthrown and the Syrian state disintegrates, then
the Iraqi government and state might soon follow,
creating the possibility of greater ties among Kurds
in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and potentially Iran. Turkish

39
leaders note that a continuation of the Syrian fighting,
which has already spread to parts of Lebanon, risks
provoking a wider sectarian war that will hurt Tur-
key even if its troops refrain from directly intervening
in Syria. Meanwhile, the Kurds in Syria are gaining
the kind of autonomy enjoyed until now only by the
Kurds of northern Iraq. In order to concentrate Syrian
forces elsewhere, the regime has withdrawn its troops
from Kurdish-dominated towns in northern Syria and
allowed a major Syrian Kurdish movement, the Dem-
ocratic Union Party (PYD), to take charge of municipal
administration to prevent the Syrian Free Army from
seizing the region.96 Turkish officials suspect the PYD
of having links with the PKK. Erdoğan warned that,
“We will not allow the terrorist organization to pose
a threat to Turkey in Syria; it is impossible for us to
tolerate the PKK’s cooperation with the PYD.”97 U.S.
officials are also worried about the adverse regional
repercussions for Kurdish autonomy in Syria. If Assad
is overthrown and the Syrian state disintegrates, then
the Iraqi government and state might soon follow,
creating the possibility of greater ties among Kurds in
Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and potentially Iran. U.S. officials
join Turks in asserting that:

we are equally clear that we don’t see for the future

of Syria an autonomous Kurdish area or territory; we
want to see a Syria that remains united . . . any move-
ment towards autonomy or separatism . . . would be a
slippery slope.98

Given the reluctance to employ direct military

force against Syria, the Turkish and U.S. governments
favor less costly options that nonetheless go beyond
the current sanctions. The United States and several
European governments have been providing com-

40
munications equipment, training, and other forms
of nonlethal assistance to the guerrillas. Some Gulf
countries reportedly are supplying weapons as well
as fighters and trainers. As a result, the Assad regime
has remained in power thanks to even greater support
from Russia, Iran, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, whose
decision last year to send large numbers of armed
fighters to Syria saved Assad at a critical time in the
war. The Syrian regime has skillfully polarized the
conflict to exploit popular fears that an insurgent vic-
tory would result in Sunni extremists dominating the
new regime, which would suppress Syria’s non-Sunni
minorities and transform the country into a Taliban-
style regime and an al-Qaeda bridgehead.99 The oppo-
sition has been divided into feuding political leaders
and indeed depends on al-Qaeda-affiliated groups for
its best fighters. Since neither Turkey nor the United
States is prepared to send large numbers of ground
forces to Syria to attain these goals, they are increasing
the likelihood of post-Assad civil strife in Syria, with
adverse consequences for neighboring countries.
The Syrian conflict has had an ambiguous impact
on Turkish-U.S. relations. It has directed their poli-
cymakers to focus on strategic issues at a time when
both sides are eager to diversify the partnership. Since
the Syrian Civil War, Ankara and Washington have
been preoccupied with harmonizing their Middle
East and Syria policies. The conflict presents both
countries with the prospect of relying on a weak, di-
vided, and increasingly extremist guerrilla force, or
using their own forces directly in Syria, which would
entail a difficult post-conflict stabilization and prob-
able state-building missions. For the past few years,
Turkey and the United States have undertaken many
limited measures designed to remove the Assad gov-

41
ernment, but none have succeeded. They have pur-
sued the relatively low-cost policy option of seeking
to induce Assad to give up voluntarily in some form
of managed political transition to a broader and more
representative regime. Yet their efforts to organize a
credible Syrian government-in-exile have been frus-
trated by divisions and jealousies among Assad’s op-
ponents. With extensive Turkish backing, the military
opposition has grown stronger, but has proved unable
to achieve decisive victories. If anything, the military
balance has shifted in favor of the Syrian government,
though Assad’s forces lack the strength to win the
war quickly.
Neither the Turkish nor the U.S. governments have
considered Assad’s removal a sufficiently vital nation-
al interest as to warrant the use of their own troops
in Syria. Turkey would like the Pentagon to do it, but
U.S. policy has focused on keeping the conflict largely
contained within Syria, which has succeeded thus far,
and more recently securing the elimination of all its
chemical weapons. U.S. policymakers have increas-
ingly recognized the dangers of repeating past policy
failures in Syria. As in 1979, the United States risks
replacing an odious dictator who nonetheless has not
threatened core U.S. national security interests with
an extremist religious regime whose members would
be ideologically prone to attack the United States and
its regional allies in Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon. As in
the 1980s when Washington inadvertently allowed al-
Qaeda to exploit the war against the Soviet occupation
of Afghanistan to develop a powerful regional base
and network, in Syria the United States risks the trans-
formation of a popular uprising against an unfriendly
regime into a Sunni-defined jihad that could easily ex-
tend against American and other Western targets.

42
 At worst, a Taliban-like regime will take power
in Damascus and encourage the new al-Qaeda linked
network of Syrian fighters and their foreign support-
ers to extend their guerrilla campaign to neighboring
countries. Removing Assad is also not a critical vital
interest for the United States. Washington has lived
with the Assad dynasty for decades and can prob-
ably continue to do so. Assad’s removal could weaken
Tehran’s influence in the Middle East, but would nei-
ther prevent Iran’s acquiring nuclear weapons nor
necessarily facilitate an Arab-Israel peace agreement.
The Assad regime may miscalculate and finally force
Ankara’s or Washington’s hands, but the most likely
scenario for the next few years is a continuation of
the current crisis, with the possibility of a renewed
Ankara-Washington rift.
Turkish leaders would have liked to see more vig-
orous actions by the Obama administration against
the Assad government. In an interview with The Wash-
ington Post, President Abdullah Gül stated that he did
not see the U.S.-Russia framework agreement on elim-
inating Syria’s chemical weapons as leading to a com-
prehensive solution to the crisis. He also implied that
dealing with Assad to secure their elimination was
immoral, given Assad’s crimes; only his overthrow
would bring an enduring solution to the country’s
security threats.100 That the United States and Russia
reached the Syrian agreement without Turkey’s par-
ticipation, let alone consent, likely reinforced Turkish
animosity to the agreement. In a reversal of the Iraq
situation a decade ago, the beleaguered Turkish gov-
ernment has increasingly pressed the United States to
adopt a more assertive stance in a neighboring Arab
country. Turkish officials have called for arming the
rebels, establishing no-fly zones to negate the devas-

43
tating effects of Syrian air power, and making a great-
er effort to deny foreign arms shipments to the Syrian
government.
In contrast, Washington remains uncomfortable
regarding the skills and ideological inclinations of the
Syrian insurgents, and tensions have grown between
Washington and Ankara over how to handle the ex-
tremist element of the Syrian resistance. Although
opposed to al-Qaeda, whose affiliates have conducted
terrorist attacks inside Turkey against Western and
other targets, the Turkish government has allowed
Sunni militants a free hand in using its territory to train
and equip fighters for the Syrian campaign. Ankara
has also permitted Qatar and Saudi Arabia to provide
lavish funding for the most extremist factions within
the resistance. The narrative advanced by these Gulf
monarchies—that what is occurring in Syria is an op-
pressed Sunni population finally overthrowing an op-
pressive Iranian-back regime—resonates well among
the Sunnis of Syria, Iraq, and even many Turks. Sunni
militants in Syria are some of the most effective as
well as dogmatic opposition fighters. Iraq’s own Sun-
ni militants are obtaining weapons and combat train-
ing that they will likely later use against the Baghdad
government. Their hope is that, if Assad falls and a
Sunni-led regime takes charge in Damascus, then the
Iraqi Sunnis will receive even more assistance since
they could benefit from the direct support of the new
Syrian government as well as the assistance of many
returning Syrian veterans and renewed enthusiasm
for Sunni-based insurgencies.
Turkish officials continuously have denied the
claim that they have supported radical groups like
Jabhat al-Nusra, but, until recently, the government in
Ankara has turned a blind eye to the issue. An affiliate

44
of al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra is a Sunni jihadist faction
that fights alongside the more moderate Free Syrian
Army against the Assad regime. Many of its mem-
bers are foreigners who are primarily from Middle
Eastern countries such as Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Ara-
bia, and Pakistan.101 However, international pressure
combined with fears of domestic blowback has led the
government to adjust its strategy toward Syria’s ex-
tremist groups. For example, the arrests of suspected
al-Nusra members in Turkey were followed by deadly
car-bombings in Reyhanli.102 Gül has since stated that
these radical groups threatened Turkey’s security.103
Ankara is especially concerned with the growing
presence near its borders of Jabhat al-Nusra and other
fighters connected with the al-Qaeda linked Islamic
State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).104 A related concern
is that the radicals will gain the military upper hand
in Syria and attack the moderate opposition, weaken-
ing its international support and legitimacy.105 Turkey
has now begun a stricter border control and a more
sensitive evaluation of which opposition groups to
support. The authorities have been taking measures
to prevent Turkish youth from joining radical Islamist
groups.106 The United States should continue to sup-
port these efforts, presumably with low-profile Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency and other intelligence assets.
U.S. officials have parried Turkish proposals to
consider the option of establishing a border buf-
fer zone or safe areas deeper inside Syrian territory,
where refugees could find safe shelter without enter-
ing Turkish territory. Turkey created a similar zone
in northern Iraq in 1991, which allowed more than a
million Iraqi Kurds to escape Saddam Hussein’s ex-
pected retribution for their failed 1991 uprising after
the Kuwait war. Ankara and Washington could also

45
apply the model used in Iraq and the former Yugosla-
via in the 1990s and create no-fly zones, safe havens,
and humanitarian corridors to protect Syrian civilians
and accelerate the disintegration of the Syrian army
by enticing more military defectors, who could flee to
the zone with their families. At one point, Davutoğlu
reportedly expressed interest in establishing such
a corridor that would extend from the sea, perhaps
even to Cyprus, rather than near the Turkish border.
But the lesson of the 1990s is that, unless backed by
air strikes and robust ground forces, the adversary
will not respect these safe havens. Assad’s military is
considerably stronger than Qaddafi’s, so any no-fly
zone would need to be robustly enforced. It would
need to begin with a preemptive strike against the
Syrian military to destroy its planes and helicopters,
degrade its ground forces and command and control
networks, and weaken the morale of the Syrian forces.
Then it would resemble the no-fly zone established
over northern and southern Iraq after 1991 by the
United States and other NATO governments, which
required repeated strikes against Iraqi targets (such
as air defense units) to prevent Saddam’s forces from
re-grouping. It is doubtful that Chinese and Russian
governments would provide UN authorization for
any such enforcement measures, so the Turkish and
U.S. governments would need to justify the measures
on the basis of self-defense. U.S. officials point to
significant differences between the Libyan and Syr-
ian situations, notably the lack of an authorizing UN
resolution as well as greater divisions within the Arab
League and NATO about the wisdom of intervening.
In the absence of more universal regional support or
a more sold backing in international law, U.S. officials
are more reluctant to employ force in Syria.

46
Iraq.

Turkey has several core interests in Iraq: cultivat-

ing ties with the various Iraqi factions; preventing the
PKK from using northern Iraq as a base of operations;
balancing the influence of Iran; securing access to
Iraqi oil and other economic opportunities; and gener-
ally seeking to promote stability in a key neighboring
region. In particular, a mixture of defensive and of-
fensive motives has been driving Turkish policy to-
ward Iraq. The defensive consideration is the convic-
tion among Turkish leaders that Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki’s divisive policies, designed to weaken his
rivals for power and rally Shiite partisans behind him,
are leading Iraq back toward sectarian civil war. They
fear that renewed confrontation could undermine
Turkey’s economic interests in Iraq, present Ankara
with yet another humanitarian crisis on its border,
and undermine Turkey’s carefully crafted policy of
containing Kurdish nationalism in Iraq within tightly
constrained limits. Another defensive goal of Turkey
is to keep Iranian influence in Iraq limited. Although
Ankara has sought to develop better ties with Iraq’s
Shiite majority, Turkey generally has sought to bal-
ance Tehran’s use of some Iraqi Shiites as its main lo-
cal proxies by supporting various Sunni and Kurdish
leaders in Iraq. Ankara does not want to wage a proxy
battle with Iran on Iraqi soil, but it wants to ensure
that a coalition government in which Turkish inter-
ests are represented rules Baghdad. Turkish leaders
also aim to ensure that Iraqi Kurdistan is governed by
leaders that will take Ankara’s economic and especial-
ly security interests into account. Al-Maliki naturally
resents what he sees as Turkish efforts to contain his
power and divide and rule parts of Iraq. The Turkish

47
government has employed several tools in pursuit of
these goals in Iraq—diplomatic initiatives, economic
ties, and, when necessary, military power.
Turkey suffered security and economic problems
as a result of the 2003 Iraq War, but the conflict did
enhance Ankara’s regional influence by deepening
the power vacuum that had emerged after the 1991
Persian Gulf War. The AKP government has filled this
vacuum by extending its influence in many neighbor-
ing countries in what some observers describe as a
“neo-Ottoman” policy, a label rejected by AKP lead-
ers. Turkey’s influence in Iraq has grown considerably
in recent years as Turkish policymakers have adopted
more inclusive policies and as economic and cultural
intercourse between Iraqis and Turks has grown. But
sources of tension do exist in the relationship. The
Turkish military regularly violates Iraqi sovereignty
by attacking PKK targets in northern Iraq, sometimes
through large cross-border ground invasions. Some
Iraqis still suspect that Turkey would like to establish
de facto control over northern Iraq, which used to be-
long to the Ottoman Empire. If the situation in Syria
stabilizes, then that country rather than Turkey could
provide the main oil pipeline conveying Iraqi crude
to European markets. Turkey and Iraq have regu-
larly disputed access to water and the management
of shared waterways, with Iraqis objecting in the past
to various Turkish dam projects that could reduce the
flow of water to downstream countries like Iraq and
Syria. Should Iraq ever come under the control of a
government hostile to Turkey, Ankara could use the
KRG as a buffer to shield Turkey from Baghdad as
well as a means to exert pressure on Iraqi policies. But
Turkish officials have been careful to refrain from dis-
cussing such an option for fear of exacerbating wor-

48
ries that Ankara’s real objective is to recover northern
Iraq, the former Ottoman vilayet of Mosul.
The United States and some Arab governments
have generally encouraged Turkey to expand its pres-
ence in Iraq. Not only does Turkey help dilute Iranian
influence, but Turkish business activities also generate
economic growth and jobs in Iraq, helping the country
recover from decades of war and civil strife. Further-
more, many U.S. leaders still see Turkey’s Islamic-
influenced, but essentially secular, political system as
a model of the type of political and social system that
could work well in Iraq, with its large Sunni minority
and secular tradition, or at least as offering a superior
alternative to that of an Iranian-style Shiite autocracy.
Even religious Turks such as AKP leaders espouse a
moderate form of Sunni Islam that exudes tolerance
toward Shiites and other Islamic minorities. This trend
is likely to continue as U.S. influence in Iraq declines
further in coming years with the withdrawal of U.S.
troops and the natural deeper integration of Iraq into
mainstream Middle East politics. By helping keep Iraq
out of Tehran’s orbit and linking Baghdad to the West,
Ankara increases its own regional influence and en-
hances its value as a strategic partner of Washington
and Persian Gulf governments.
The nadir of Turkish influence in Iraq occurred
after the Anglo-American invasion of March 2003.
Despite the offer of billions of dollars of U.S. aid, the
Turkish parliament voted against a reluctant proposal
by the new AKP government to allow the U.S. mili-
tary to attack Iraq through Turkey’s southeast border
during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF). Instead,
the Pentagon had to spend considerable time reposi-
tioning its troops to enter Iraq through its southern
border. The George W. Bush administration partly

49
blamed the Turkish parliament’s decision for the sub-
sequent emergence of the anti-Western insurgency
in Iraq. In 2005, Secretary of Defense Donald Rums-
feld claimed that, “If we had been able to get the 4th
infantry Division in from the north through Turkey
. . . the insurgency would have been less.”107 By then,
Turkish public opinion had turned solidly against
Washington’s Iraq policies. Turks perceived the U.S.
promotion of an autonomous Kurdish quasi-state in
northern Iraq, the Kurdistan Regional Government,
as inspiring Kurdish separatism in Turkey and pro-
viding a de facto sanctuary for PKK terrorist attacks
on Turkish civilians, which escalated following the
Anglo-American invasion. Another source of concern
was how Turkey’s exclusion from the occupying co-
alition combined with the tensions between Ankara
and Washington had minimized Turkish influence in
post-Saddam Iraq.
Since 2007, the Turkish and U.S. Governments have
cooperated more effectively with the Turkish military
to counter PKK activities in northern Iraq. Before then,
Ankara had complained repeatedly that Washington
was paying insufficient attention to Turkey’s security
interests in northern Iraq, especially PKK activities in
the KRG. But the deaths of 13 Turkish soldiers in a
border clash in October 2007 led the United States to
provide intelligence and other assistance to the Turk-
ish military, which conducted air and ground attacks
against PKK targets in northern Iraq. The more precise
Turkish attacks minimized Kurdish civilian casualties
and therefore KRG complaints.108
Since then, in line with the AKP’s “zero prob-
lems” with neighbors policy, Erdoğan, Gül, and other
Turkish policymakers have sought to balance unilat-
eral military action with the application of soft power

50
means of influence in Iraq, primarily by deepening cul-
tural, education, and business ties with Iraqis. In July
2008, Turkey and Iraq signed a joint political declara-
tion that established a high-level strategic cooperation
council aimed at establishing a “long-term strategic
partnership.” The agreement also calls for joint efforts
to prevent terrorists and illegal arms from moving
across their border. The council has since served as
a discussion forum for the prime ministers and oth-
er high-level government officials of both countries.
They have met several times a year to improve coop-
eration regarding energy, security, diplomatic, and
economic issues.
The reorientation in Turkey’s policy toward Iraq
culminated in Gül’s March 23-24, 2009, trip to Iraq, the
first official presidential-level visit to the country in 33
years. The trip also resulted from a sustained Turk-
ish campaign to improve ties with the KRG. In 2009,
Turkey opened consulates in Erbil (the KRG capital),
Basra, and Mosul—major regional centers of Kurdish,
Shiite, and Sunni influence, respectively—in a tangible
display of support for a unified Iraq.109 Within Iraq,
Turkish leaders first developed extensive ties with
Iraq’s Sunni minority, which until Saddam Hussein’s
overthrow in 2003 ruled over Iraq’s other minorities
as well as its Shiite majority. Turkey then improved
relations with the leaders of Iraq’s Kurdish minority,
who prudently distanced themselves from the PKK
and embraced the economic opportunities offered by
the Kurds.
In addition to reaching out to Iraq’s Sunni and
Kurdish minorities, the AKP has also attempted to
develop ties with Iraqi Shiites, including reaching out
to populist Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, by training
lawmakers belonging to al-Sadr’s party in parliamen-

51
tary protocol. In addition, a Turkish consortium par-
ticipated in an $11 billion renovation project in Sadr
City, Baghdad’s largest Shiite neighborhood. In Octo-
ber 2009, Turkey opened a consulate in Basra, a Shiite-
dominated southern port city and Iraq’s only large
seaport in a major oil-producing region. To further
signal his government’s desire to reach out to Iraqi
Shiites, Erdoğan became the first modern Turkish
leader to attend the Shiite commemoration of Ashura
(in December 2010) and visit Imam Ali’s tomb in Najaf
(in March 2011), one of the most important Shiite sites
in Iraq.
During Iraq’s March 2010 national elections, Turks
generally supported the more secular Iraqi National
Movement bloc led by Ayad Allawi rather than the
Shiite-dominated State of Law Coalition led by al-
Maliki. Turkish officials view al-Maliki less as an Ira-
nian puppet than as an ambitious strongman who has
exploited the post-war weakness of competing Iraqi
political and social institutions to accrue and exercise
near dictatorial powers. Turkish policymakers are also
concerned that the new Iraqi government and military
are too weak to govern the fissiparous Iraqi state ef-
fectively. Turkish policymakers want an Iraqi regime
that can keep “peace at home, peace in the world,”
and not fall under the control of another foreign gov-
ernment, in this case Iran.
The governments of Saudi Arabia and the other
conservative Persian Gulf minorities consider Turkey
a useful ally for promoting moderate Sunni causes in
Iraq against either Sunni extremists belonging to al-
Qaeda or Shiite militants backed by Iran. Turkey’s
relations with many Arab governments have im-
proved in recent years as Turkey has moved toward
mainstream Arab positions regarding Israel and other

52
issues. Al-Maliki and his allies naturally disliked An-
kara’s interference in their domestic affairs, though
Turkey’s financial and other support to al-Maliki’s
opponents was considerably less than that provided
by some Persian Gulf monarchies.
Pressure from Turkey, the United States, and other
foreign governments during the coalition formation
talks did succeed in inducing the Iraqi rivals to form
what looked to be a nominally multiparty government
in which power is divided between al-Maliki, Allawi,
and other Iraqi leaders. But al-Maliki exposed the frac-
tures within the Iraqi government and shattered the
facade of unity by trying to arrest Vice President Tariq
al-Hashimi, the highest-ranking Sunni official in the
Iraqi government, on charges of running a terrorist
death squad. Al-Maliki then threatened Kurdish lead-
ers after they provided al-Hashemi, who enjoys good
ties with Turkey, with sanctuary in the KRG on the
grounds that he would not receive a fair trial in Bagh-
dad.110 Alarmed by the prospects of renewed civil war
and Iraq’s possible break up, Erdoğan called al-Maliki
by phone on January 10 and urged him to reconcile
with his colleagues in order to avoid the “irreversible
chaos” that would result from renewed ethnic and re-
ligious wars among Iraqis, which could engulf other
Muslim countries. In response, al-Maliki told the U.S.-
sponsored al-Hurra Television network on January 13
that, “Turkey is playing a big role that might bring
disaster and civil war to the region, and Turkey will
suffer because it has different sects and ethnicities.”
The two governments summoned each other’s
ambassadors to complain about their respective coun-
try’s behaviors.111 Later several rockets were fired at
the Turkish embassy in Baghdad.112 No one was hurt,
and no one claimed responsibility, but the Turks natu-

53
rally suspect the incident was a warning orchestrated
by al-Maliki’s forces. Relations worsened after Turkey
gave refuge to Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi,
who arrived on April 9 and has taken up indefinite
residence in a luxury apartment in Istanbul, where he
continues to denounce al-Maliki while undergoing
medical treatment and enjoying round-the-clock po-
lice protection and elite patronage.113
Al-Maliki’s harsh rhetoric regarding Turkey was
partly motivated by his suspicions that Turkey was
colluding with his enemies in the United States and
various Arab governments against him. His rhetoric
about Turkey sharply escalated after Davutoğlu and
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ex-
pressed their unease at the situation in Iraq in a Feb-
ruary 13, 2012, joint press conference. Clinton stressed
that it was important “that the Iraqi Government be
an inclusive one in which all Iraqis believe that they
have a stake in the future of a united Iraq.” She went
on to add that:

the foreign minister and I had a good discussion about

Iraq and how we can work together to strengthen their
democracy, help to settle political differences between
various factions.

Clinton pointedly added that:

We encourage Turkey to continue to play an impor-

tant role in trying to reach out to Baghdad, to many
different personalities within the political system, and
we’ve encouraged other nations in the region to do the
same. We think Turkey’s played a very constructive
role. But we share the concern about the need to dem-
onstrate unequivocally a commitment to an inclusive
Iraqi Government that represents all Iraqis.

54
Davutoğlu replied that:

Iraq is the backbone of the stability in our region. If

there is no stability in Iraq, there cannot be stability in
our region. We have been always saying Iraq is like a
small Middle East. We have all sectarian, ethnic com-
munities, religious communities in the Middle East we
have in Iraq.

But Davutoğlu went on to insist that:

The welfare of all Iraqis, regardless of their ethnic

or sectarian background, that is the only demand of
Turkey. . . . We see all Iraqis as our eternal neighbors,
brothers and sisters. Their welfare is our welfare.
If they have any problem, any pain, it is us, we feel
the pain.

Davutoğlu added that the Iraqi constitution re-

quires power sharing among its communities, and that
Turkey considers that principle essential for the “suc-
cess of the Iraqi democracy,” adding that, “If there is a
successful Iraqi democracy, that will be a good model
for other countries as well.”114
The PKK issue has also contributed to the general
deterioration in relations between Ankara and Bagh-
dad. Turkish leaders have complained that security
along the Iraq-Turkish border has declined and that
the PKK has been exploiting this opening to intensify
attacks against Turkey. Dozens of Turkish security
personnel died in the summer of 2011. On October 29,
2011, the PKK launched its most successful attack to
date, killing 24 Turkish soldiers and wounding many
more, in an ambush in Hakkari province. In response,
around 10,000 Turkish security personnel, including
elite special forces units in addition to regular con-
scripts, engaged in a major military operation in the

55
border region against the PKK. Although most Turk-
ish forces stayed inside Turkish territory, some 2,000
Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq to search
for and destroy PKK units and facilities. Gül told vis-
iting U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on De-
cember 16, 2011, that Turkey feared its border secu-
rity situation would worsen now that all U.S. troops
were leaving Iraq.115 Ankara has sought to minimize
its costs and rely on Iraqi forces to deal with the PKK
fighters inside Iraq. The leaders of both the Iraqi cen-
tral government and the KRG in northern Iraq have
denounced the PKK attacks and not resisted Turkish
military operations on their territory, but they lack the
means to eliminate the PKK forces in Iraq themselves.
Meanwhile, the Turkish government has encour-
aged the expansion of Turkish-Iraqi economic ties.
In addition to commercial considerations, Turkish
officials have sought to make Iraq’s economic health
depend more on its sustaining good relations with
Turkey, which increases Ankara’s leverage over Ba-
ghdad’s policies. Most of Iraqi Kurdistan’s trade and
foreign investment involves Turkish firms, but even
Iraqis located elsewhere understand that Turkey is the
most prosperous and industrialized of Iraq’s neigh-
bors, offers routes to and from Western markets, and
provides an exit to the Mediterranean Sea for Iraqi hy-
drocarbons.116 Furthermore, economic exchanges with
Iraq especially benefit southeastern Turkey, where
Turkey’s discontented Kurdish population lives. One
means of reducing their dissatisfaction is to improve
their standard of living.
Between 2003 and 2011, overall yearly bilateral
trade between Iraq and Turkey increased from $940
million to $11 billion.117 Iraq has become Turkey’s
second largest trading partner, after Germany. More

56
than half of Turkey’s trade with Iraq involves the
KRG.118 Turkey’s main exports to Iraq include ma-
terials, machinery, and construction products, basic
food and cleaning materials, and electrical and elec-
tronic products. In contrast, about the only items that
Turkey imports from Iraq are hydrocarbon products
such as crude and fuel oil. In 2009, Turkey began im-
porting oil directly from the KRG after Iraq’s central
government could not agree on a new oil law due to
disputes over revenue sharing and other issues. On
August 7, 2007, Turkey and Iraq signed a memoran-
dum of understanding that Iraqi natural gas would be
supplied to Turkey and via Turkey to Europe.119 After
Baghdad, politicians failed to agree on a new oil law,
Turkey began importing oil directly from the KRG in
2009. The oil pipeline that runs from Kirkuk in Iraq
to Ceyhan in Turkey transports one-fourth of Iraq’s
crude oil exports. The flow assures the authorities in
both Kurdistan and beyond considerable revenue,
while helping secure Turkey’s position as a major
energy bridge between the Middle East and Europe.
Meanwhile, Turkey is helping Iraq meet its own en-
ergy demands. Turkish firms have invested in oil and
gas exploration and production projects throughout
Iraq. Even excluding the oil sector, Turkey has become
Iraq’s largest commercial investor. Turkish firms have
invested in hotels, housing, and the energy sector in
Iraq. These companies provide manufactured goods
and other products. By early-2012, 740 Turkish firms
had negotiated $2.5 billion in construction contracts in
the KRG alone.120 Altogether, more than 1,000 Turk-
ish companies had invested in Iraq, concentrated in
the construction, irrigation, solid waste management,
pharmaceutical, agriculture, and tourism sectors.121
Turkish firms had undertaken more than $11 billion

57
worth of construction projects in Iraq since 2003.122
Hundreds of Turkish contractors in Iraq are working
on approximately $16 billion worth of projects.123
Turkey has sought to exert influence in Iraq by
means other than force, economics, and energy. Tur-
key has been utilizing “soft power” and projecting an
image of pop culture over its border.124 In addition,
Turkey helped double the number of out-of-country
training opportunities that NATO could offer Iraqis
in 2010 for internal security training.125 In Decem-
ber 2005, Turkey encouraged efforts in Iraq to bring
together the Sunni Arab Party representatives and
U.S. ambassador in Istanbul, in an effort to head off
the burgeoning Sunni-led insurgency.126 Turkey also
hosted programs to train hundreds of Iraqi politi-
cians in democratization for all of Iraq’s various eth-
nic and sectarian political parties.127 In August 2009,
Davutoğlu unsuccessfully sought to mediate between
Iraq and Syria after Iraqi officials blamed the Syrian
government for helping several massive bombings
in Baghdad’s Green Zone. Nonetheless, the recurring
Turkish military interventions in northern Iraq under-
score that Turkey still relies on military power as its
ultimate security guarantee in northern Iraq.

Kurdish Connections.

In their conflicts with Baghdad, Turkish policy-

makers have had what a few years earlier would have
been a surprising ally: Iraq’s Kurds. Turkey enjoys
considerable support and influence in northern Iraq
due to its deep cultural, education, and especially
business presence there. Previously Ankara refused
to deal with the KRG, but now Turkish officials strive
to cooperate with it. One senior Turkish Foreign
Ministry official argued that:

58
 Turkey has no problems with Iraq and Syria, but has
problems with al-Maliki and al-Assad’s policies. Our
relations with the rest of the region and with many
partners are in their best state for years.128

Although Turkey’s outreach effort has failed to

make much progress with respect to Iraq’s Sunnis,
Ankara has become the dominant actor in northern
Iraq. The year 2009 saw a major change in Turkey’s
approach to the KRG. Before then, Turkey had es-
chewed official contact with the KRG based in Ebril
and sought to constrain its autonomy and regional
influence. Ankara feared that the KRG’s emergence as
a quasi-independent state would encourage separat-
ist tendencies among Turkey’s own Kurdish minority,
estimated to number as much as 20 percent of the pop-
ulation. Instead, the Turkish authorities pursued their
interests within Iraq primarily by engaging with the
occupying powers and, as it gained more influence,
Iraq’s central government in Baghdad. This latter ap-
proach was similar to how Ankara worked in the past
with Iraq to contain Kurdish influence. But this strat-
egy, while yielding gains in the 1960s and 1970s, has
proved less effective since the 1991 establishment of a
Kurdish autonomous region and especially since 2003
due to the decentralized nature of political authority
in post-Saddam Iraq.
Attempts to use the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITC),
established in 1995 to consolidate several smaller po-
litical parties and therefore strengthen the influence of
Iraq’s Turkmen minority, as a local proxy also failed
to yield major benefits. Ankara has backed Turkmen
objections to the incorporation of the city or region of
Kirkuk into the KRG since having control of the area’s

59
oil resources would bolster the KRG’s wealth and au-
tonomy, and perhaps embolden its leaders to declare
independence.129 Although the local Turkmen are ea-
ger to partner with Ankara, Baghdad, and Iran (many
are Shiites) to contest Kurdish influence in Kirkuk
and other areas, they lack much political strength and
have been able to elect only a couple of members to the
Iraqi national parliament in each election. As a result,
Ankara found itself with little influence in northern
Iraq despite that border region’s vital importance to
Turkey’s security.
In 2009, the Turkish government reversed course
and adopted a more flexible and embracing policy
toward the KRG as well as its own Kurdish minor-
ity. After having for years avoided direct contact with
the KRG, whose existence Turkish nationalists feared
would encourage separatist sentiments among their
own Kurds, Turkey now engages directly with the
KRG, which still enjoys considerable autonomy but
whose leaders have committed to remaining part of a
unified Iraqi state and to suppressing PKK operations
in their area of control. KRG pressure reportedly con-
tributed to the PKK’s decision to declare a ceasefire in
August 2011.130
For their part, Turkish officials currently prefer a
strong KRG that has the power to control its border
and internal security, promote economic develop-
ment that provides opportunities for Turkish traders
and investors, and provides Kurds with an alternative
successful model to that of supporting the PKK. Many
Kurds in Turkey as well as Iraq support the KRG as
their best means of achieving limited autonomy in a
situation in which Kurds cannot establish an indepen-
dent country. Turkey’s 2010 opening of a consulate in
Erbil signified Turkey’s new approach by recognizing

60
the KRG as a core constituent element within the fed-
eral state of Iraq. Turkish officials have also developed
ties with moderate Kurdish leaders such as Iraqi Pres-
ident Jalal Talabani and KRG President Massoud Bar-
zani, who regularly visit Ankara as honored guests.
Ankara’s elevated role in the KRG has also enhanced
Turkey’s influence in Baghdad since Turkey has be-
come the most powerful foreign actor in a region of
vital importance to the Iraqi government.131
Although Turkey’s overall economic exchanges
with Iraq have increased considerably in recent years,
its economic presence has become particularly promi-
nent in Iraqi Kurdistan, especially its trade, energy,
and construction sectors. In the KRG, 80 percent of
goods sold are imported from Turkey.132 The border
between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan has never been
more open, as 1,500 trucks daily pass through the 26-
lane main border crossing of Ibrahim Khalil. A few
years ago, the main Turkish presence in northern Iraq
was military. Although some Turkish troops now
quietly remain in northern Iraq, Turkey’s most vis-
ible presence is its pop culture, especially cinema, and
Turkish goods. Turkish clothes, furniture, toys, build-
ing materials, and other products flood the malls and
shops throughout Iraqi Kurdistan.
Turkish investment is also flourishing, with more
than half the registered foreign firms operating in
Iraqi Kurdistan—almost 800 of the 1,500 registered
foreign companies—being Turkish.133 Many Turkish
business leaders see Iraqi Kurdistan as both an area
of economic opportunity in itself as well as a transit
zone for increasing Turkish trade with more distant
regions in the Middle East. If the KRG were a separate
country, then it would rank among Turkey’s top 10
trading partners.

61
 Turkish political leaders want to strengthen their
border security by working with Iraqi Kurdish au-
thorities against the PKK. They also hope that the
increased economic exchanges across the border will
bring greater prosperity to the traditionally economic
backward regions where many of Turkey’s Kurds,
which constitute one-fifth of Turkey’s population,
reside. Iraqi Kurds appreciate that their economic
development depends heavily on attracting Turkish
investment, as well as being able to trade with Turkey
and beyond, by means by transiting Turkish territory.
The KRG is landlocked, and Turkey offers the optimal
connecting route to European markets. During a June
2010 trip to Turkey, Barzani observed that, “Turkey
is a gateway for us to Europe as we are a gateway for
Turkey to Iraq and the Gulf countries.”134 Kurds at-
tribute several Turkish advantages, including lower
prices and more flexible contract terms than other
foreign sellers.135
Ironically, Kurdish nationalism now has also been
encouraging Kurdish-Turkish reconciliation. Iraqi
Kurds appreciate that, under current conditions, they
can best deepen ties with Turkey’s Kurds by having
good relations with Turkey. At least for the time be-
ing, the possibility of establishing a unified Kurdish
political entity is excluded, so keeping the borders as
porous as possible is their best option. However, as
long as the PKK insurgency persists, it will remain an
impediment to deeper cross-border economic and po-
litical ties among Kurds and with their neighbors.
Turkey’s counterinsurgency operation on both
sides of its border with Iraq highlights the recurring
problem confronting Turkish governments and mili-
tary in their fight against Kurdish terrorists: the insur-
gents’ area of operations, like the Kurdish population

62
itself, straddles across Turkey’s borders with other
countries—namely Iraq, Iran, and Syria. The govern-
ments of all four countries share an interest in sup-
pressing Kurdish separatism and violence, but they
have also found Kurdish terrorism useful tools to
pressure the other countries. These transnational ties
mean that, despite their large scale, Turkish military
operations cannot suppress the insurgency for long.
Its vigorous nature might at best deter further foreign
backing for actions by the PKK against Turkey as well
as provide the maneuvering room the Turkish govern-
ment needs to make the concessions required in the
new constitution to address Kurdish grievances—but
it remains unclear whether the ruling AKP will so use
this opportunity.

Iran.

The relationship between Turkey and Iran is

fraught with baffling contradictions. One might ex-
pect the inherent religiosity of both the AKP and Iran,
despite Sunni-Shite theological differences, to sustain
good ties, but the contrasts between the Islamic Re-
publican and the “Turkish Model” have resulted in
an acute rivalry during the Arab uprisings, as both
have held themselves out as a paradigm of Islamic de-
mocracy. At first, the presence of two overtly Islamist
parties in charge of Ankara and Tehran encouraged a
Turkish-Iranian reconciliation, but then their religious
orientations became a source of their divisions. Tur-
key’s secular political parties and national security es-
tablishment, which dominated Turkey’s foreign pol-
icy until a decade ago, generally perceived Turkey’s
Islamic neighbors, Iran and Syria, as potential threats,
and sought to develop security ties with Israel, the
other important non-Muslim state in the Middle East.

63
 The Islamic orientation of the ruling AKP has
meant that current Turkish and Iranian leaders now
share a common devotion to Islam and animus to-
ward Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. However,
the religious element, which had previously buoyed
the relations between the two, became a source of di-
vision as Erdoğan began to displace President Mah-
moud Ahmadinejad and other prominent Iranians
as the most popular Muslim leader among the Arab
masses due to the AKP’s public attacks on Israel and
their support for various pro-Palestinian initiatives
such as the controversial “freedom flotillas” seeking
to defy Israel’s blockade of Gaza.136 During his trium-
phant tour to Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia in September
2011 and at other times, Erdoğan recommended that
the new regimes in the Arab world follow Turkey’s
secular democratic model, whereas Iranian govern-
ment representatives have told them to establish an Is-
lamic Republic, as in Iran.137 Since then, their religious
devotion has become an even more direct source of
tensions as Turkish leaders have backed Sunni oppo-
nents of Shiite governments (as in Iraq and Syria) and
Sunni governments facing mass Shiite opposition sup-
ported by Iran (as in Bahrain).138
The AKP deviated from Washington’s policy re-
garding Iran’s nuclear program, though its approach
has corresponded to the mainstream international
view. While Turkish officials do not want the Islamic
Republic to obtain nuclear weapons—members of
Turkey’s still influential military establishment have
suggested that Turkey would rapidly follow Iran in
acquiring nuclear weapons for reasons of security and
prestige—Turkish officials do not object to Iran’s pur-
suit of limited nuclear energy activities under appro-
priate international monitoring. The current Turkish

64
government insists that any country should have the
right to engage in all civilian nuclear activities, includ-
ing uranium enrichment and the other phases of the
cycle needed to produce nuclear fuel, provided it ap-
plies traditional IAEA safeguards and complies with
other nonproliferation norms.139
In contrast, most of Turkey’s NATO allies remain
adamant that Iran must cease enriching uranium or
engaging in other sensitive nuclear activities until
Tehran convinces the international community that
its nuclear program has only peaceful purposes. Turk-
ish leaders have sought to mediate the nuclear dispute
between Tehran and the West. In 2010, they worked
with Brazil to achieve a confidence-building exchange
of enriched uranium between the parties. Months of
diplomatic efforts by Erdoğan and President Lula Ina-
cio da Silva of Brazil to mediate the Iranian nuclear
dispute appeared to achieve results when they an-
nounced an agreement in Tehran on May 17. In their
trilateral statement, the three governments declared
that Iran was prepared to “deposit” 1,200 kilograms
(kg) of its low-enriched uranium in Turkey in return
for the delivery within 1 year of 120-kg of uranium
enriched to the higher level needed for Tehran’s medi-
cal research reactor.140 After the West rejected that pro-
posal, Turkey’s initial reaction was to stand behind the
Tehran accord. Turkish officials claimed that Obama
and other U.S. officials had earlier supported their ini-
tiative, though in retrospect they may have failed to
give it proper attention due to an expectation that it
had little chance of success.141
In the months of recriminations that followed,
Turkish officials denounced what they described as
the hypocrisy of Western governments in approach-
ing nonproliferation issues. They said that these coun-

65
tries repeatedly have sought to sanction Iran despite
its government’s signing the Nonproliferation Treaty
(NPT) and the absence of any concrete proof that Ira-
nians are seeking nuclear weapons.142 In addition, they
have made special deals with India despite the Indian
government’s refusal to adhere to the NPT. Erdoğan
was especially incensed by what he saw as the West’s
deliberately overlooking Israel’s nuclear weapons
program. Turkey wants to prevent other countries,
such as Israel, from employing—or threatening to
employ—force against Iran to attack its nuclear facili-
ties. Turkish officials consider counterproductive the
“dual-track” approach adopted by Western countries
toward Iran—combining offers of cooperation with
threats of attack and sanctions. Instead, they argue
that the best way to prevent Iran from seeking nuclear
weapons is to address the underlying sources of inse-
curity that might induce Tehran to seek them. Rather
than rely on threats and sanctions, they want to offer
Iran security pledges in return for reciprocal Iranian
guarantees that Tehran will not use its nuclear activi-
ties for military purposes.
Accordingly, Turkish officials have generally op-
posed sanctioning Iran.143 First, Iran is Turkey’s second
largest supplier of natural gas.144 Turkey is not blessed
with sufficient energy resources to meet its needs and
cannot afford to cut trade ties with one of its most
significant energy partners. Turkish policymakers
have felt obliged to accept the mandatory sanctions
imposed by the UN Security Council, but they have
tried to resist applying the supplementary sanctions
adopted by Western governments, which include not
purchasing Iranian energy or selling Iran precious
metals.145 Turkey currently imports about 25 million
cubic meters of natural gas per day from Iran through

66
a direct pipeline.146 This flow amounts to almost one-
third of Turkey’s total annual gas consumption and
helps balance Turkey’s energy dependence on Russia,
which provides Turkey with most of its gas, some oil,
and is building Turkey’s first nuclear power plant.
Second, the people of Turkey and Iran have a broad
cultural and historical relationship. One-third of Irani-
ans are Azeri Turks, and Tehran is the second-largest
Turkish-speaking city in the world. Turks are there-
fore reluctant to support sanctions that harm the Irani-
an people.147 In the absence of convincing evidence to
the contrary, Turkish officials had reservations about
imposing economic and other sanctions against Iran
by the UN Security Council or by individual coun-
tries, which severely hurts Iran’s neighbors and key
economic partners, including Turkey. Rather than rely
on threats and sanctions, Turks urge the United States
and its allies to offer Iran security pledges in return
for reciprocal Iranian guarantees that Tehran will not
use its nuclear activities for military purposes. These
Turkish-U.S. differences, currently overshadowed by
Turkish-Iranian divergences over Iraq and especially
Syria, could become more serious in the future. Tur-
key might also change its benign nuclear weapons
policies in coming years. Most obviously, unambigu-
ous evidence could arise that Iran is pursuing nuclear
weapons, which some Turks have said would require
Turkey, refusing to accept military inferiority regard-
ing Iran, to do likewise. Turkey’s plans to expand its
domestic nuclear energy program would, for the first
time, provide its government with the scientific, tech-
nical, and industrial foundations to pursue genuine
nuclear weapons options, as Iran’s own development
of the capacity to make nuclear weapons has demon-
strated to Ankara and others.

67
 In September 2011, Turkey committed to host a
U.S. AN/TPY-2 ballistic missile defense (BMD) early
warning radar at Malatya as part of NATO’s defense
against Iran’s growing missile capabilities. Turkey
made the controversial decision to reinforce Ankara’s
security ties with the West despite Iranian objections.
The decision was both presented and facilitated by the
restructuring of the U.S. missile defense architecture
in Europe by the Obama administration, which relo-
cated the initial U.S. deployments out of East Central
Europe and toward the Balkans, Black Sea, and eastern
Mediterranean regions. The new structure, with the
interceptor missiles based in Romania and on nearby
U.S. warships, offers Turkey greater BMD coverage as
well as the opportunity, though publicly unsought, to
play a major role in that architecture. Despite Turk-
ish lobbying not to identify Iran as the main target of
the NATO BMD network, Iranian leaders and media
clearly consider the decision to host the radar in the
face of Iranian and Russian opposition an unfriendly
act.148 But the decision has proven useful in silencing
Western critics of the AKP’s Eastern orientation and
has been overshadowed by the more serious differ-
ences between Ankara and Tehran regarding Syria.
The same pattern of initial reconciliation followed
by renewed divisions has occurred with respect to
other regional security issues. In addition to renounc-
ing security ties with Israel, the AKP pleased Iran by
seeking to reconcile with its Syrian ally, President
Bashar al-Assad. In the process, the new leaders in
Turkey managed to dampen Syrian support for the
PKK, a policy that Tehran soon followed. Turkey and
Iran each have large Kurdish minorities (some 14 mil-
lion Kurds live in Turkey and approximately 5 million
live in Iran) whose members sometimes are so dissat-

68
isfied with the policies of their central governments
that they engage in anti-regime terrorism. Turkey and
Iran each face major Kurdish terrorist groups based in
Iraq. Besides the anti-Ankara PKK, the Free Life Party
of Kurdistan (PJAK) has attacked Iranian targets from
its strongholds in Iraq’s Qandil mountain range.
A few years ago, Turkish and Iranian authorities
began exchanging counterterrorist intelligence and
coordinating military strikes against Kurdish terror-
ists in northern Iraq.149 But more recently, the AKP
has supported Assad’s opponents, irritating Tehran
in the process.150 Although a few years ago the AKP
was able to overcome decades of confrontation and
develop good ties with the Syrian government, the re-
gime’s brutal killing of thousands of protesters has led
the AKP officials to support Syrian opposition forces
seeking to change the current regime.151 Iranian lead-
ers have complained about Turkey’s becoming the
main regional backer of the armed opposition seek-
ing to overthrow Assad. Iranians consider preserving
a friendly regime in Damascus a vital national interest
for Iran.152
A more recent dispute has been Turkey’s suc-
cessful appeal in November 2012 that NATO deploy
Patriot air defense systems on Turkish soil to defend
Turkish territory against Syrian air and missile strikes.
Iranian analysts fear the Patriots could serve as the ba-
sis of a no-fly zone that would deprive the Assad re-
gime of one of its few advantages over the insurgents.
Ahmadinejad canceled a planned visit to Turkey that
December, which the Iranian media said was in pro-
test to the deployments.153 Turkey has also declined to
send high-level officials to events in Iran, such as the
2012 Non-Aligned Movement Summit in Tehran.

69
 Furthermore, it seems that some Iranian support
has resumed to the PKK, which also receives help from
Assad’s regime. PKK military leader Cemil Bayik, who
has close ties to Iranian hardliners, has been one of the
most vocal opponents of peace talks with the Turkish
government. He has pledged to defend Iran and Syria
from alleged Turkish plots to change their regimes.
Earlier media reports claimed that Iranian authorities
had briefly “detained” PKK leader, Murat Karayilan,
when Iranian officials learned of impending Turkish
air strikes against his PKK camps. The Iranians sup-
posedly then released Karayilan when the bombing
ended rather than remand him to Turkish custody.
Turks speculated that Iranian authorities wanted
to keep Karayilan and the PKK active as a potential
source of leverage or a bargaining chip with Turkey.154
Turkish-Iranian differences regarding Iraq have
also become a major source of bilateral tension. Most
Turkish officials do not want Iran to dominate Iraq.
They fear that Iranian leaders seek a weak and divided
Iraq that is unable to contest Tehran’s drive for region-
al primacy. They also perceive Iran as wanting a sub-
servient Shiite coalition to rule Baghdad that would
not resist Iranian political and economic control over
Iraq. In contrast, Turkey favors a strong but demo-
cratic Iraqi state ruled by a coalition of political forces
that can maintain domestic stability as well as contrib-
ute to regional security.155 These conditions would be
favorable for reviving Iraq’s hydrocarbon production,
which would benefit Turkey as a key transit state for
Iraqi oil and gas, and restoring Iraqi economic growth,
which would support Turkish investors and traders.
These different strategic visions have seen Turk-
ish and Iranian groups often back opposing political
forces in Iraq. Even the nuclear issue has lost its ability

70
to sustain good Turkey-Iran ties. Ankara gained some
credit in Tehran in 2010, when it sought to galvanize
a confidence-building agreement between Iran and
the West over its nuclear mediation. Turks have since
expressed irritation at Iranian ingratitude for their ef-
forts to mediate between Tehran and the West. Iranian
carping often includes threats as well as criticisms.156
Erdoğan has since stopped accepting at face value
Iranian pledges never to develop nuclear weapons,
telling an American journal that Turkey would feel
compelled to seek nuclear weapons, too, if Iran ever
acquired them. Iran subsequently proposed Kazakh-
stan and other countries as suitable hosts for holding
future rounds of the Iranian nuclear negotiations,
excluding Turkey.157
The economic ties between the two are deep, even
though Iran has proven to be an unreliable partner and
a graveyard of Turkish investment capital. Trade be-
tween the two is large—Turkey-Iran trade rose above
$10 billion in 2011 and now exceeds $15 billion.158 The
two parties even have agreed to start using their own
currencies in their bilateral commerce to help achieve
their goal of tripling Iran-Turkey trade to $30 billion
within a few years.159 But trade with Iran is frustrat-
ing for Turkish entrepreneurs. Many deals announced
with great fanfare never pan out—a pattern one sees
in Iran’s relations with many other countries. As such,
Turkey is making progress in having Azerbaijan, Iraq,
and eventually Turkmenistan replace Iran as major
suppliers of gas and oil.160
Iran’s role in the Turkish economy looks set to de-
cline further as Turks deepen their ties with the more
dynamic economies in Asia and elsewhere. Turkish
and Iranian officials have discussed arrangements
whereby natural gas from Iran and Turkmenistan

71
could flow to European markets via Turkey.161 But U.S.
officials have criticized Turkey’s energy and economic
ties with Iran, which Washington has been seeking to
isolate. UN, U.S., and European sanctions forced the
Turkish Petroleum International Co. to abandon a $7
billion deal to develop a part of Iran’s enormous South
Pars field.162
Although Turkey consistently has voiced oppo-
sition to sanctions against Tehran, the country has
at times benefited from those sanctions, which have
eliminated competition from other foreign firms that
Turkish businesses would have to contend with in a
sanctions-free environment. Furthermore, UN sanc-
tions prohibit countries from paying for Iranian goods
in dollars or euros, which forces Iran to use any earn-
ings to buy local goods such as food and medicine
rather than purchase nuclear-related equipment with
hard currency. But the Turkish authorities have toler-
ated a “gas-for-gold” sanctions-circumventing scheme
whereby Iran has used Turkish lira to purchase gold
that Iranians can sell elsewhere in exchange for West-
ern currency. The corruption scandal that came to light
in December 2013 revealed the Turkish government
allowed the state-owned Halkbank to circumvent the
sanctions by exploiting the loophole that permitted
Turkey to pay for Iranian energy imports with gold.163
The renewed Turkish-Iranian tensions of recent
years mark a regression to the historic pattern for
their relationship. Clashes between the imperial am-
bitions of the Turkish-centered Ottoman Empire and
the Safavid Persian dynasties shaped regional politics
for centuries. Relations between Ankara and Tehran
were strained even during the 1990s. Turkey’s strong-
ly secular leaders accused Iranians of seeking to pro-
mote religious fundamentalism in Turkey and other

72
countries; Iranians criticized Turkey’s strict rules
against religious expression, such as the banning of
headscarves in public institutions. Turks opposed the
Iranian practice of rule by clerics while Iranians criti-
cized military rule in Turkey. Both governments sus-
pected the other of promoting terrorist and separatist
movements against them. Turkey and Iran also have
diverging interests in Central Asia. Both would like to
increase their influence in a region where they were
the dominant players in previous centuries. Ankara is
particularly drawn to the Turkic nations, whereas Iran
feels closest to Tajikistan. It has only been in the last
decade that Turkey, under AKP rule, has improved its
relations with the Iranian government, and some early
gains have more recently been reversed.
Iranian leaders have resisted breaking entirely with
Turkey. They already have enough potential adversar-
ies and lack any genuine allies, so having a powerful
neighbor that opposes using force against Iran is still
a great advantage. Turkey and Iran have not fought a
war since the 17th century, and the popular mood in
both counties is against another bilateral armed con-
flict any time soon. In public, influential Iranians have
been attributing some of their tensions with Turkey to
U.S. machinations and Western plots. Iranians want
Turkey to continue to refrain from sending their own
military forces into Syria. Without them, the Assad re-
gime might survive for years in a stalemated civil war,
with the opportunity growing over time that a new
Turkish government might come to power.
Meanwhile, Turkey and Iran are establishing a
joint university, a joint economic commission, and
more transit and border terminals.164 Even beyond
economic ties, Turkish leaders fear that isolating and
threatening Tehran could further radicalize Iranian

73
foreign policy, which, at least in regards to Turkey,
has been rather pragmatic. An alienated Iranian gov-
ernment might deepen its ties with terrorist organiza-
tions, intervene more deeply in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and take other actions designed to retaliate against
the United States and its allies, like Turkey. A war be-
tween Iran and the West would prove disastrous since
Turkey’s regional interests would severely suffer, as
they did during the confrontation between the West
and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.165 Turkey suffered heavy
economic losses during the years in which the UN
Security Council imposed sanctions on Saddam Hus-
sein’s government and then as a result of the Western
invasion of the country. The losses from a war today
involving Iran would be even greater.
Nonetheless, the Turkey-Iran relationship is
primed for problems due to their differing geopo-
litical and sectarian interests. They have already re-
sumed their historic pattern of eschewing direct wars
by competing against one another by proxy in Iraq,
Syria, and Azerbaijan. After decades in which one
or the other country was clearly dominant, we now
have a dangerous equipoise in which both these
non-Arab regimes consider themselves rising pow-
ers that deserve preeminent say in the region. But
by definition, at most only one of them can gain
that primacy.

EURASIA

Although many earlier successes of the AKP’s zero

problems policy have failed to endure, Turkey’s rela-
tions with Russia, Central Asia, China, and even Af-
ghanistan are still better than a decade ago. Turkey’s
relations with Russia are generally good despite dif-

74
ferences over Syria, the South Caucasus, Turkey’s de-
pendence on Russian energy, Moscow’s noncompli-
ance with the CFE Treaty, and other issues. Thanks to
their ties with NATO and the United States, Turkish
policymakers have been able to accept these differenc-
es with general nonchalance. Moscow has not become
overly irritated by Turkey’s confrontations with Syria,
Moscow’s main client in the Middle East, or Turkey’s
support for NATO’s missile defense architecture
in Europe. Turkey has likewise accepted Moscow’s
moves to establish a Eurasian economic bloc with sur-
prising nonchalance. Yet, differences over Syria, and
now the Crimea, confront Turkey’s Russia policy with
its most serious challenge in decades. For now, the
improved relationship with Russia has also enabled
Turkey to better support U.S. goals in Central Asia.
Russia no longer fears Ankara’s influence in Central
Asia and might even welcome a Turkish presence to
help counterbalance China’s growing presence in the
region. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Turkey has
strived to carve out a space for itself in the Central
Asian region, among its Turkic brother-nations. Turk-
ish involvement in the region increased tremendously
with the War in Afghanistan, which Turkey has sup-
ported and participated in with vigor and enthusiasm.
Turkey has spearheaded mediation efforts in the re-
gion, particularly between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Through the 1990s, Russia countered Ankara’s efforts
to exert influence in the region, and only in recent
years has Turkey been able to expand its cooperation
with former Soviet Central Asian nations beyond a
strictly cultural context. Turkish firms have begun to
dominate in the region in many sectors, from banking,
to telecommunications, food processing, and textiles.
Erdoğan, having failed to overcome the impasse that

75
currently hinders EU membership, has courted closer
relations with the SCO as a means of exercising influ-
ence in Central Asia. Turkey has recently attained the
status of “dialogue partner,” but there are significant
obstacles to fuller membership, and major doubts as
to the degree to which the SCO, with its limited eco-
nomic and security capabilities, could replace the EU
and NATO.

RUSSIA

The AKP has pursued better Russian-Turkish rela-

tions. The two countries have developed a sustained
economic and security partnership, centered on grow-
ing tourism, energy flows, and overlapping security
concerns in their shared neighborhoods of Central
Asia, the Caucasus, the Balkans, and the Middle East.
Several factors explain the mild Turkish response,
limited to declarations of principles and feared conse-
quences. Turkey now receives more than half its natu-
ral gas from Russia, as well as large deliveries of oil
and support for its planned nuclear energy program.
Annual trade now amounts to some $40 billion. Mu-
tual investment has also grown, with Turkish firms
helping construct the Sochi Olympics complex in
Russia.166
During the past decade under the AKP, Turk-
ish and Russian interests converged more than they
differed. Both countries have sought to reduce ter-
rorism, increase oil and gas transit through Turkey,
and limit disruptive political upheavals in Central
Asia and neighboring regions, given the risks of such
chaos spilling across their borders. Neither govern-
ment wants Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, but both
Ankara and Moscow do not object to Iran’s pursuit

76
of limited nuclear activities under appropriate inter-
national monitoring. In addition, Turkey and Russia
want to prevent other countries from employing force
against Iran to attack its nuclear facilities.
Russian officials no longer evince concern about
Turkey’s growing economic and cultural presence in
Central Asia and, as evidenced by Moscow’s low key
response to Turkey’s decision to host a NATO mis-
sile defense radar, no longer consider Turkey a ma-
jor military threat. Turkey and Russia largely have
set aside their Cold War adversarial mindsets in the
former Soviet space. The Kremlin, protective against
U.S. and West European intrusions, no longer evinces
much concern about Turkey’s growing economic and
cultural presence in the Turkic nations of the South
Caucasus and Central Asia. Russians may even wel-
come Turkey’s growing economic presence in Central
Asia as a means of diluting China’s growing economic
prowess there. Despite Moscow favoring Armenia
and Ankara siding with Azerbaijan, Russia and Tur-
key have managed to keep their differences over the
Nagorno-Karabakh dispute under control. Even in
the case of Georgia, Turkey has managed to maintain
good relations with Tbilisi without antagonizing Mos-
cow, though Turkish efforts to lessen Russia-Georgia
antagonisms have largely failed.
The independent policies Ankara pursued toward
regional security issues presumably lessened Mos-
cow’s concerns about Turkey serving as an anti-Rus-
sian stalking-horse for Western interests in the region.
Policymakers in both countries have shared the belief
that other NATO countries, particularly the United
States, have paid insufficient attention to their con-
cerns in these regions. A few years ago, analysts even
spoke of an “Axis of the Excluded” between them.167

77
Although Turkey has since strengthened its ties with
NATO and the United States, Russian analysts still
cultivate Turkey as a rising power. It has a dynamic
economy, newly flexible foreign policy, and shares
with Russia the experience of being physically part of
Europe but practically treated as a peripheral country
not suitable for membership in core European clubs
such as the EU.168
The Black Sea region has represented another geo-
graphic region of overlapping mutual concern to both
Turkey and Russia. In recent years, Russian-Turkish
security cooperation in this area has been sufficiently
extensive and exclusionary as to worry the West about
the two countries establishing a de facto condomin-
ium in the region, which represents the main route
through which Caspian oil and gas reaches Europe.
For example, Moscow and Ankara have worked to
limit the presence of Western navies in the Black Sea.
In particular, they have resisted Alliance proposals
to enlarge the scope of NATO’s Operation ACTIVE
ENDEAVOUR, currently active in the Mediterranean,
into Black Sea waters. Russian policymakers do not
want NATO to establish a major military presence in
another region neighboring the Russian Federation,
while Turkish officials also oppose any steps that
might lead to a review of the 1936 Montreux Conven-
tion, which grants Turkey special privileges as pos-
sessor of the Bosporus Straits, including the power to
limit the size of warships from nonlittoral states that
enter the Black Sea.
Since 2006, Russian warships have been participat-
ing in Black Sea Harmony, a Turkey-led multinational
initiative launched in 2004 designed to counter ter-
rorism, narco-trafficking, and weapons of mass de-
struction (WMD) proliferation in the south Black Sea

78
region by tracking suspicious vessels and conducting
security checks on ports.169 The two navies track ves-
sels and exchange data about possible illegal activi-
ties. Russian and Turkish government representatives
maintain that Black Sea Harmony and other Russian-
Turkish maritime security cooperation, such as the an-
nual exercises of the Black Sea Naval Force involving
the riparian states since April 2001, obviate the need
to bring NATO’s ACTIVE ENDEAVOUR or any other
NATO naval presence into the Black Sea region. As
Gül put it during his joint February 2009 news confer-
ence with then Russian President Dmitrey Medvedev
in Moscow:

Russia and Turkey are the two most important coun-

tries in the region, which are called upon to make a
weighty contribution to ensuring peace, stability, se-
curity and cooperation across the region.170

Frictions do exist between Ankara and Moscow.

Turkey has criticized Russia’s decision to suspend
implementation of the CFE, whose provisions limit
the number of Russian military forces that can be de-
ployed near Turkey and also promote military trans-
parency and restraint throughout the South Caucasus,
the scene of one recent war (involving Georgia in 2008)
and potentially another (between Armenia and Azer-
baijan). Turkish policymakers have sought to main-
tain “geopolitical pluralism” in post-Soviet Eurasia
in general and in the South Caucasus in particular.171
Preserving “pluralism” involves strengthening the
political sovereignty of these countries, countering the
growth of Russian influence in the Caucasus (though
in a covert rather than overt way), and promoting
closer ties between these countries and Euro-Atlantic
organizations such as NATO.172

79
 In line with its strategy of “making friends” with
previously alienated countries, generating opportuni-
ties for greater east-west commerce through Turkey,
and attempting to avert further instability in the South
Caucuses following the Georgia War, the AKP gov-
ernment signed a set of protocols with Armenia in
October 2009 that would establish mutual diplomatic
relations and reopen their joint border. Pressure from
Azerbaijan and its Turkish supporters has generated
opposition within the Turkish legislature to ratifying
the protocols before Armenia resolves the Nagorno-
Karabakh dispute, which the Turkish government
cited in 1993 as the original reason for closing the bor-
der. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev threatened to
stop subsidizing the sale of natural gas to Turkey and
seek alternative energy export routes should Turkey
adopt the protocols while Armenian forces continued
to occupy Azerbaijani territory.173 The Turkish gov-
ernment rapidly backtracked and resumed insisting
on a resolution to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue before
the protocols could enter into effect.
The government of Armenia, which set aside pre-
vious demands for Turkey to recognize the 1915 mas-
sacres as genocide during the signing ceremony, has
been unwilling to make further concessions simply to
reestablish relations and reopen its border with Tur-
key. Turkish diplomats have hoped that Russia, an
historical ally of Armenia as well as member of the
OSCE Minsk Group, would help promote a reconcilia-
tion between Turkey and Armenia. When he met with
Putin in January 2010, Erdoğan called on Moscow
to play a more active role in resolving the Nagorno-
Karabakh issue.174 Yet, Putin declined to commit to
exerting any pressure on Armenia, whose parliament
must also ratify the protocols, to make concessions

80
regarding Nagorno-Karabakh in order to secure Turk-
ish parliamentary ratification. When asked about the
issue at their joint news conference on January 13, Pu-
tin argued that linking the Turkish-Armenian recon-
ciliation with the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute would
simply delay progress on both. He stated:

Both the Karabakh and Turkish-Armenian problems

are extremely complicated in their own right, and I
don’t think they should be joined together in a pack-
age. Each problem is hard to resolve even taken on
its own, and if we lump them together, any hope of
their resolution automatically recedes into the distant
future.175

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made

similar remarks the following day when he visited Ye-
revan.176 Skeptics might suspect that Russian officials
are not eager to see a reconciliation between Turkey
and Armenia since, while offering the possibility of
drawing Azerbaijan and Turkey closer to Russia, the
protocols’ adoption could reduce Moscow’s influence
in Armenia and promote the development of new
east-west energy and commercial routes through Tur-
key that circumvent Russian territory. Armenia sus-
pended the parliamentary ratification process for the
protocols a few months later.
Russia’s decision to use overwhelming force to
defeat Georgia in its August 2008 war shocked Turk-
ish policymakers into realizing that their margin for
maneuver in Russia’s backyard might be smaller than
anticipated due to Moscow’s new assertiveness.177 To
prevent further regional disorders, Ankara sought to
advance a multilateral regional security framework
that would both constrain Russia’s assertive impuls-
es as well as revitalize efforts to solve the regional

81
conflicts that might lead to new flareups and further
destabilization.178 Although Turkish leaders tradi-
tionally had strongly supported Georgia’s territorial
integrity and developed strong economic ties with
Georgia, Turkish officials restrained their criticism of
Moscow’s intervention and subsequent dismember-
ment of Georgia. Turkish representatives instead fo-
cused on averting future conflicts by promoting the
creation of a Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Plat-
form (CSCP) that would include Armenia, Azerbai-
jan, Georgia, and Russia, as well as Turkey. The CSCP
would have supplemented the contributions made by
other regional security institutions, such as the Or-
ganization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE), whose Minsk Group has sought to address
the “frozen conflicts” in the former Soviet republics,
and the SCO, with which Turkey is also seeking to
develop closer ties. The CSCP also sought to exploit
the interests Russia shared with Turkey in promot-
ing sufficient regional stability to allow for a mutually
profitable energy corridor between Eurasian energy
suppliers and European energy consumers.179
In addition to hoping to enlarge Turkey’s margin
to maneuver in the South Caucasus, Ankara wanted
to avoid further conflicts that placed Turkey uneasily
between Russia and the Western democracies. Tur-
key had found it difficult to manage the intense pres-
sure placed on Ankara during the war. In the early
days of the conflict, Turkey turned down American
requests to send ships through the Turkish Straits into
the Black Sea.180 After Ankara eventually agreed to al-
low three U.S. ships, as well as some other NATO ves-
sels, the Russian government complained that Turkey
was violating the 1936 Montreux Convention, which
regulates passage of ships from non-Black Sea states

82
through the Turkish Straits.181 More generally, Turk-
ish leaders traditionally have sought to dampen ten-
sions between their neighbors, including those in the
Middle East, to avoid disputes that could harm the
Turkish economy or otherwise negatively redound on
Turkish interests. Russian officials endorsed the pro-
posed platform in principle since, by excluding non-
regional actors, it would give Moscow and Ankara
a leading role in addressing local security problems.
But Western and Georgian disinterest led to the initia-
tive’s demise.
Another source of Turkey-Russian tension has been
the large and persistent trade imbalance in Russia’s fa-
vor, despite recurring pledges by both governments to
work to change the balance and composition of their
trade. The imbalance, which does not characterize
Turkey’s trade with other major economic partners,
results from Turkey’s heavy dependence on Russian
oil and gas, which accounts for almost three-fourths
of Turkey’s imports from Russia. Turkey has become
one of the largest Russian gas importers and natural
gas accounts for the largest proportion of Turkey’s
annual trade turnover with Russia. Turkey’s depen-
dence on Russian energy is a cause of concern among
officials in Ankara, leading Ankara to seek to diversify
its sources of energy to include suppliers in Central
Asia, the South Caucasus, and at times Iran (though
international sanctions and U.S. pressure have made
this difficult). Turkey is also planning to develop ci-
vilian nuclear power, though Turkey has partnered
with Russia, which offered the best deal, to develop
its first nuclear power plant, which will use a third-
generation Russian-made reactor. Russia has agreed
to pay most of the costs of this construction and accept
repayment out of the revenue from the electricity the
plant will generate.

83
 In recent years, Syria has become a major sore point
between Ankara and Moscow. While Ankara has been
demanding that Assad resign, Moscow continues to
support his regime. Turkey’s leading role in organiz-
ing the anti-Assad resistance, Syria’s cross-border at-
tacks against Turkish territory and Ankara’s decision
to force a Syrian plane wrongly suspected of carrying
weapons to land for inspection in Turkey after it had
left Russia, have strained ties. However, neither gov-
ernment has been willing to break ties over the issue
because the two countries still have strong overlap-
ping interests in other areas. Turkey and Russia have
been able to compartmentalize their differences over
Syria so that they can continue to pursue other dimen-
sions of their improving relationship.182
More recently, the March 2014 Crimea crisis has
confronted Turkey with the most serious challenge to
its Russian policy since the Cold War. Until losing the
Russo-Turkish War of 1768-74, the Ottoman Empire
held sovereignty over the Crimea, then dominated
by a population of Muslim, Turkic-speaking Crimean
Tatars who looked to Istanbul for spiritual and other
leadership. Joseph Stalin forcefully changed this eth-
nic balance by accusing the Tatars of collaborating
with the German occupation and sending them into
exile. It was not until the last days of the Soviet Union
that the authorities allowed many Tatars to return.
Today, the peninsula’s 300,000 Crimean Tatars
represent some 12 percent of the population. Turkey
has provided them with special aid programs, and
Turkish officials have affirmed that they will protect
the Tatars during the present crisis.183 The Tartars
have opposed the Crimean independence referendum
and fear that, as part of Putin’s Russia, their rights will
again be infringed. Representatives of the millions of

84
Turks of Tartar origin have demanded that Ankara
take a strong stand against the illegal territorial trans-
fer.184 Moscow’s proclaimed right to use military force
to protect ethnic Russians resembles the pretext Mos-
cow used in more than a dozen wars against the Otto-
man Empire, justified by the need to defend Orthodox
Christians against Muslim oppressors.
Despite having closer ties with the Crimea than any
NATO country, championing the cause of threatened
Muslims elsewhere, and being key neighbors and en-
ergy partners of both Russia and Ukraine, Turkish of-
ficials adopted a surprising low-key response to Mos-
cow’s moves against the Crimea. Erdoğan, Davutoğlu,
and other Turkish officials have simply called for up-
holding Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty,
and political unity without taking any concrete mea-
sures to compel observance of these principles other
than call for a coalition government in Ukraine that
maintained a foreign policy balanced between Rus-
sia and the West. Likewise, though Davutoğlu has
warned that Moscow’s actions could open a “Pando-
ra’s Box” by unfreezing other “frozen conflicts” in the
Black Sea region—an allusion to the Armenian-Azer-
baijani dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh—Ankara has
not launched a new initiative to avert that outcome, as
it did after the 2008 Georgia War.
Although the Turkish government has said that it
will not recognize the legitimacy of the Crimean refer-
endum, in which the peninsula’s residents reportedly
overwhelmingly voted to join Russia, Ankara has not
followed the United States and the EU in imposing
sanctions on Russian officials for backing this ma-
neuver. Davutoğlu has even insisted that Turkey will
not let “another power”—perhaps an allusion to the
EU or Washington—create a Russia-Turkey conflict

85
over Crimea, which he insisted was a global crisis that
should concern all countries. Searching for ways to
de-escalate the crisis, the Foreign Minister has also ar-
gued that the West should avoid trying to isolate Mos-
cow and instead should, along with Ukraine, negoti-
ate a mutually acceptable compromise that respected
Russian interests.185
Diverging domestic considerations have also been
paralyzing Ankara’s response in the current crisis. The
AKP’s declining popularity should encourage the gov-
ernment to take a firmer stance toward Moscow to gain
popularity among Turkey’s nationalists, ethnic Tatars,
and Russian-haters. But if Russia retaliated by disrupt-
ing gas deliveries and other economic intercourse with
Turkey, voters’ standard of living would decline at a
time when Turkey faces several crucial ballots. In ad-
dition, Erdoğan and other Turkish leaders may have
viewed the popular revolution in neighboring Ukraine
with some unease, given how Turkey has also faced
months of unprecedented protests. Putin thus far has
been playing Turkey well, keeping Ankara quiet in
both the Georgian and Crimean crises, but if he con-
tinues to grab former Soviet territories, he may finally
drive Turkey to return to its traditional anti-Russian
stance, especially in the Black Sea region, just as Anka-
ra has reversed many of the AKP’s initially new foreign
policies in recent years.

CENTRAL ASIA

Turkey has striven to deepen ties with Central Asia

since these formerly Soviet republics became indepen-
dent countries. Several Central Asian republics have
majority populations of ethnic Turkic origin, and all
have long engaged in trade and other relations with

86
Turkey. Since these countries gained independence
in 1991, the Turkish government has sought to train
and educate their people and provide technical, lin-
guistic, and other assistance to their institutions, from
their militaries and governments to their businesses
and other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
Turkish officials also see one of their missions as rep-
resenting Central Asian interests and views within
major international institutions such as the G-20.186
They therefore encourage Central Asians to convey
messages to these institutions’ members via Turkey.
To diversify its sources of energy imports further,
Turkish officials have been seeking to develop options
to transship, and possibly purchase for domestic use,
natural gas from Kazakhstan and other Caspian Basin
countries. Turkey is interested in serving as a “natu-
ral energy bridge” between the supplier countries to
Turkey’s east and international energy markets to
Turkey’s north, west, and south. The Central Asian
states, desiring to decrease their reliance on Russian-
controlled pipelines, have supported this effort. In-
deed, Central Asian governments welcome Turkey’s
growing ties in the region as these times help pursue
multivector foreign policies with Western directions,
even as other NATO countries reduce their presence
in their region.
Turkish analysts and government officials are of
two minds regarding future political developments in
Central Asia. One group believes that Central Asia is
ripe for deep political change through its own version
of the Arab Spring. They see the region as the last bas-
tion of one-party authoritarian rule and consider the
prospects for its near-term democratization to be high.
This group would also welcome a phenomenon like
the Arab Spring in the region since they consider the

87
absence of functioning democracies in most Central
Asian countries as a significant problem for Turkish
entities. For example, they note that, since all major
policies in a dictatorship are determined by a single
individual or group, authoritarian governments are
prone to make radical changes in policy overnight. In
addition, the constraints on most individuals’ ability
to access information in authoritarian regimes, as well
as the legal arbitrariness common in nondemocracies,
present major obstacles to domestic and foreign entre-
preneurs seeking to run profitable businesses in these
countries.
But another group of Turkish experts consider the
prospects for Central Asia’s near-term democratiza-
tion to be low because they were more optimistic about
these regimes’ ability to withstand the kind of political
chaos sweeping through the Arab world. They argued
that it would take decades for these countries, whose
leaders still consist of people who have overwhelm-
ingly developed their political views during the Sovi-
et period, to abandon their Soviet mentality and adopt
Western liberal values.
In the view of these Turkish analysts and officials,
another constraint on political change in Central Asia
was the geographic isolation of these states from other
democratic countries as well as their history of author-
itarian rule. They argued that Central Asia’s democ-
ratization would entail a lengthy process requiring
the further political and economic evolution of these
countries. For example, they believed that these na-
tions’ economic development would expand the size
of their middle class. In time, these stronger middle
classes could provide a foundation for these states’
evolution into more democratic regimes, since people
having some property want to exert some influence on

88
government policies that could affect these interests.
Conversely, this second group of Turkish officials
feared that efforts to rush Central Asia’s democratiza-
tion could easily backfire and lead their rulers to adopt
even more repressive domestic politics. Instead, they
advocated that, for the time being, Western govern-
ments focus on promoting the rule of law and human
rights in Central Asia, while hoping that economic
development and other modernization trends would
eventually lead to more democratic governments in
the region.
At present, this second group of Turkish officials
seems to have the greater influence on Turkey’s poli-
cies toward Central Asia. But the onset of revolution-
ary upheavals in this region could easily shift the bal-
ance of influence in favor of the first group more eager
and optimistic about the prospects for Central Asian
democratization. Despite these differences, both
groups of Turkish officials maintained that their coun-
try could play some role in Central Asia. Neither has
thought Turkey sufficiently powerful to compete with
Russia directly for regional influence. Turkish officials
recognize Russia’s political, military, and economic
primacy in the region. They also perceive China as a
growing economic power in the region. These officials
see Turkey’s role in Central Asia mainly in cultural
terms, encouraging these Turkic people to learn Turk-
ish and acknowledge their historical affinity with the
commonwealth of Turkish nations. They also want
Turkish businesses to trade and invest in the region.
In practice, the few Turkish companies having a major
presence in Central Asia concentrate their activities in
certain economic sectors such as construction.
Turkey has also been developing ties with the
SCO. The SCO has rapidly become one of Eurasia’s

89
most influential multinational institutions despite its
short history. It is also one of the largest (in terms of
geographic size and population) regional organiza-
tions, with a most comprehensive agenda. When they
established the SCO on June 15, 2001, the six found-
ing states (China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia,
Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) adopted a “Declaration
on Establishment of Shanghai Cooperation Organiza-
tion” that emphasized their adherence to a “Shanghai
Spirit” based on “mutual respect for multiciviliza-
tions” and other values. The issue of Turkey’s acquir-
ing some kind of formal affiliation with the SCO, the
dominant multinational institution in Eurasia, has
been under discussion for years, but it was not until
2012 that the SCO governments finally decided to of-
fer Turkey some kind of formal affiliation after An-
kara had assured them that Turkey would not be a
stalking-horse for NATO in Eurasia.
The June 2012 annual meeting of the SCO heads
of state in Beijing, China, designated Turkey a formal
“dialogue partner” of the organization. The SCO uses
the category for countries that are neither full mem-
bers nor formal observers (like India, Iran, Pakistan,
Mongolia, and now Afghanistan). The 2009 Yekaterin-
burg summit in Russia granted Belarus and Sri Lanka
“dialogue partner” status. These partners cannot sign
SCO documents or participate in SCO decisions; they
can only offer advice in those areas of cooperation
specified in a memorandum negotiated between the
SCO and the partner. Designating Turkey a dialogue
partner makes imminent sense given Turkey’s long-
standing interest in Central Asia, economic influence
in that region, and powerful regional military force.
Turkish academies and trainers have been working
with the Central Asian armed forces since these coun-

90
tries became independent. Turkey’s location astride
multiple global hotspots—the Balkans, the Caucasus,
the Middle East, etc.—gives it significant geopolitical
weight. In addition, allowing a NATO member to af-
filiate with the SCO helps reduce the concerns of some
outsiders that the SCO is seeking to construct an alli-
ance of anti-Western autocracies in the heart of Asia.
By making Turkey a dialogue partner and Af-
ghanistan a formal SCO observer, the SCO now has
the most comprehensive set of members to address
Afghanistan’s regional security and economic inte-
gration. Turkey has played a major role in enhanc-
ing Afghanistan’s security and development. Turkey
could also help the SCO realize its aspirations to have
greater economic impact. Turkey has considerable as-
sets in such sectors as finance, transportation, energy,
telecommunications, and construction. Although not
yet in the same class as China, India, and Russia, Tur-
key’s booming economy has already propelled Turkey
to the ranks of the G-20. Turkey already has some $11
billion in combined trade and investment in Central
Asia, as well as approximately $1 billion in Eximbank
loans and some $30 billion in contracts to almost 2,000
Turkish firms.
In a January 2013 TV interview, Erdoğan said
that he had told Putin that Turkey, after decades of
thwarted efforts to join the EU would join the SCO
instead if Putin could arrange it. Explaining his opin-
ion, Erdoğan called the SCO “better and more power-
ful, and we have common values with them,” which
include Muslim and Turkic ties with these nations.187
Erdoğan’s remark should not really be seen as a great
surprise. The Prime Minister has earlier cited sup-
posed Western hostility toward his country and reli-
gion. For example, when in Egypt in November 2013,

91
Erdoğan warned his listeners that “all the West wants
is to tear the Islamic world to pieces.”188
Political calculations might also be at work. Polls
show that Turks have become increasingly frustrated
with the EU, and Erdoğan presumably saw no harm
in bashing this unpopular target.189 Although most
Turkish commentators also saw the remarks as a gam-
bit to strengthen Ankara’s negotiating leverage with
Brussels, a few noted that they resonate well with
Turkey’s’ flexible foreign policy which, under the
AKP, has moved Ankara away from its previously
strongly Western orientation. The comments also re-
flect Erdoğan’s sense that Turkey belonged to a dif-
ferent “Islamic civilization” rather than an exclusively
Christian one.190
Last October, Erdoğan’s chief adviser, İbrahim
Kalın, complained of a growing gap between Islamic
and Western values and concluded that “the Euro-
pean model of secular democracy, politics, and plu-
ralism seems to have little traction in the Arab and
larger Muslim world,” in which he included Tur-
key.191 Although many Turks agree that the EU is sim-
ply unwilling to accept such a large Muslim-majority
country, Erdoğan’s critics, including heads of leading
opposition parties, complained that Erdoğan was us-
ing the religion issue to avoid uncomfortable questions
about EU attacks against his government’s authoritar-
ian tendencies at home.192 In addition to reflecting a
genuine concern about Turkey’s mistreatment by the
EU and an effort to gain easy popularity by attacking
an unpopular target, Erdoğan and other Turkish lead-
ers see cooperating more with the SCO as an enticing
option. Like everyone else, Erdoğan has noticed that,
“The economic powers of the world are shifting from
west to east.”193

92
 In addition to Afghanistan, the main security preoc-
cupation of the SCO thus far has been the “three evils”
of terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism—all
priorities of Turkey’s national security establishment.
A strengthening of Islamist radicalism in Central Asia
could easily redound negatively in Turkey, while
Turkish authorities want to delegitimize Kurdish as-
pirations for a separate state. Turkey’s border secu-
rity is constantly challenged by narcotics and human
trafficking from Central Asia since Turkish territory
provides the most direct land route to rich European
markets. The SCO’s preoccupation with fighting Is-
lamist terrorism and ethnic separatism would help the
AKP justify its repressive domestic policies, which are
claimed to help counter Kurdish terrorism and sepa-
ratism. Unlike EU governments, SCO members would
support whatever repressive means the Turkish au-
thorities deemed necessary.194
The SCO provides another means for Turkey to
deepen its still modest political engagement with
Central Asia, and in a framework acceptable to Russia
and other countries that remain wary of neo-Ottoman
aspirations regarding the Turkic nations of Central
Asia. The Turkish Council, Parliamentary Assembly
of Turkic-speaking Countries (TÜRKPA), the Inter-
national Organization of Turkic Culture (TÜRKSOY),
the Turkish Academy and Turkey’s numerous student
scholarships have never yielded Ankara much influ-
ence in these states. The impact of the Central Asian
projects sponsored by the Turkish International Co-
operation and Development Agency (TİKA) has been
weakened by the decision to expand its aid recipients
to dozens of countries rather than retain its original
focus on the newly independent Turkic republics. The
educational and cultural outreach efforts sponsored

93
by the Turkish government and various Turkish
NGOs have had limited impact building on the shared
ethnic, religious, linguistic, and other bonds between
Turkey and these nations. Furthermore, Turkey’s new
status offers Ankara the prospect of participating in
SCO-led diplomatic initiatives regarding Afghanistan
or Central Asia and the organization’s socioeconomic
initiatives, which might extend to the energy realm. If
the SCO forms an oil and gas club, then Turkey wants
to be one of its members.195
Meanwhile, Turkey’s leverage with Europe, the
United States, and elsewhere might also rise through a
deeper affiliation with the SCO. Closer ties would also
help counter criticism that the AKP’s ambitious policy
of zero problems with neighbors has failed to attain
enduring results. Although Turkey’s ties with Syria,
Iraq, and Europe have worsened in recent years, the
improvements in Ankara’s relations with the SCO
members have largely persisted. Deepening ties with
the SCO could prove useful for Ankara in promoting
its security goals in Afghanistan and Central Asia. And
Turkey is now eligible to become a formal observer or
full member of the SCO, with enhanced privileges, in
the future. Turkish officials have affirmed interest in
moving up the membership ladder and becoming a
formal observer state of the SCO, though this might
not yield any tangible gains in Turkey’s involvement
in SCO activities given the marginal differences in the
rights and privileges of the two categories.196
Turkish and SCO officials have since indicated that
Turkey could join both the SCO and the EU since they
were not exclusive organizations. Nonetheless, joining
the SCO would prove easier since there are far fewer
parties to convince to grant membership (only the six
existing full SCO members); no SCO government has

94
publicly opposed Turkey’s accession as a full member,
while France, Austria, and Cyprus openly have op-
posed Turkey’s joining the EU; joining the SCO does
not require extensive negotiations on specific chapters
like the EU admission process; and public opinion
within Europe to Turkey’s joining the EU is generally
unfavorable, while in the SCO, the governments can
make decisions without taking their public opinion
into account.
But Turkey also will find it harder to avoid the
contradictions that permeate the SCO. Turkish diplo-
macy has already fallen afoul of the confrontation be-
tween SCO observers India and Pakistan, with media
commentators in both governments accusing Turkish
leaders of not paying sufficient heed to their security
interests in Afghanistan. Although currently camou-
flaged by Turkey’s relying on NATO to bolster its se-
curity regarding Syria, some NATO officials remain
uneasy about the implications of Turkey’s eastward
drift for Alliance cohesion. Turkey might seek to use
its SCO ties as leverage in NATO debates. Turkey will
also find it hard to avoid the differences between Bei-
jing and Moscow regarding the SCO’s proper role and
development. Whereas China would like the SCO to
establish a free-trade zone, Russia has sought to sus-
tain barriers that help preserve the privileged status
many Russian businesses inherited from the Soviet
era. This is especially true in the energy sector, where
China is eager to expand its access to Central Asian
oil and gas resources traditionally under Russia’s con-
trol. The differences between China and Russia have
contributed to the SCO’s not admitting any new full
members to its ranks since its founding in 2001.

95
Afghanistan.

One reason Turkey wants to deepen its ties with

the SCO is to expand its diplomatic toolkit regarding
Afghanistan, which became a formal SCO observer in
2012. Turkey has undertaken major military, econom-
ic, and diplomatic initiatives that underscore Turkey’s
important role in Afghanistan, which may increase as
more NATO troops withdraw from that country.
Turkey’s military contributions to Afghanistan
have been channeled through the International Secu-
rity Assistance Force (ISAF), created by the December
2001 Bonn (Germany) Agreement as a means to pro-
vide security while the new post-Taliban government
rebuilt Afghanistan’s military and police forces.197
NATO took charge of ISAF in subsequent years and
expanded its area of operations in stages until it of-
ficially covered all of Afghanistan. An independent
U.S.-only command focusing on counterterrorist op-
erations has also operated in Afghanistan. Turkey has
twice led ISAF: first between June 2002 and Febru-
ary 2003, and then between February and November
2005.198 Turkey has also played a major role in vari-
ous ISAF regional commands and has led the Force’s
Regional Command Capital in the Kabul region.199
Turkey extended its command of the ISAF’s Kabul
region for another year on November 1, 2011.200 Tur-
key initially deployed 276 troops into Afghanistan in
late-2001 during the post-9/11 coalition military op-
erations in that country, but this figure rose to 1,300 in
June 2002, when Turkey assumed command of ISAF
and was charged with providing security in Kabul
and running the city’s international airport. At one
point, Turkey had almost 2,000 troops in Afghanistan
assigned to various noncombat missions.201

96
 While the Turkish government has refused to
deploy its troops on explicit counterinsurgency or
counterterrorist operations in Afghanistan, its mili-
tary forces within ISAF have helped train members of
the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National
Police in these tactics. In this regard, Turkish instruc-
tors can draw on the experience the Turkish military
has gained in its many years of conducting counterin-
surgency and counterterrorist operations against the
PKK, al-Qaeda, and other militant groups.202 Turkish
troops serve primarily in the Kabul region, but also
in several Provisional Reconstruction Teams (PRT)
across Afghanistan. In Kabul, Turkish troops trained
hundreds of Afghan soldiers and assisted in recon-
struction projects. They also patrolled the city to reas-
sure citizens about their security. Turkey also collabo-
rated with other NATO members such as France and
Italy in a joint Kabul headquarters to promote security
in the capital area. In November 2006, moreover, Tur-
key established a PRT in Wardak, located 40-km west
of Kabul. Its mixed contingent of civilian and military
personnel trained the Afghan Police, improved judi-
cial administration, developed public infrastructure,
and supported projects aimed at raising the quality of
life of the local population.203
During Erdoğan’s visit to the White House in Wash-
ington, DC, on December 7, 2009, President Obama
requested that the Turkish government deploy com-
bat troops to Afghanistan. In declining the proposal,
Erdoğan and other Turkish officials explained that
they wanted to focus Turkey’s military contributions
on training Afghan security forces, undertaking eco-
nomic reconstruction projects, and supporting other
noncombat missions. Alluding to Turkey’s value as
a potential mediator between the Afghan govern-

97
ment and its adversaries, Gül argued that, “If Turkey
sends combat forces to Afghanistan, the power that
everybody respects—including [the] Taliban—will
disappear.”204 The Obama administration eventually
accepted this logic. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates subsequently stressed to the media that the
Obama administration was “extremely pleased with
Turkey’s contributions in Afghanistan” because U.S.
officials “pay high importance to personnel that can
train [Afghan] individuals in the areas of military and
security.”205
The Turkish government and Turkish NGOs have
supported many humanitarian and economic re-
construction projects in Afghanistan. These have in-
cluded education, health, housing, and infrastructure
improvement projects. The Turkish government, with
funds from TİKA, has constructed dozens of schools,
helping fill a major socioeconomic gap in Afghanistan.
TIKA has also helped dig wells to provide citizens
with safe drinking water. Turkey’s Greater Anatolian
Project (GAP) has supported projects to improve ir-
rigation in the Afghan city of Jalalabad.206 Turkey has
donated much food to Afghanistan through the UN
Food and Agricultural Organization and other means.
Turks have constructed or rebuilt seven medical clin-
ics in Afghanistan and have supported other health
initiatives in that country.207 Economic considerations
have sustained Turkish interest in ending the Afghan
conflict. The continued fighting has prevented Af-
ghanistan from joining with Turkey and other coun-
tries in providing a Eurasian east-west land route for
Central Asian exports to European markets. Turkey
aims to become a major transit country for trade be-
tween Asia and Europe, but regional insecurity has
discouraged foreign investment in east-west railroad,
highway, and pipeline projects.

98
 Turkey has complemented its long-standing mili-
tary and economic contributions to Afghanistan with
diplomatic initiatives aimed at creating a favorable
environment for an Afghan-led peace process. This
focus has dovetailed well with the Obama administra-
tion’s Afghan-Pak war strategy, which tries to pursue
three mutually reinforcing tracks: “fight, talk, and
build,” signifying the need for a favorable regional
diplomatic framework for ending the conflict, along
with increased military and economic support for
Afghanistan. The administration’s “New Silk Road”
policy aims to increase economic ties between Af-
ghanistan and its neighbors in the expectations that
the economic gains would reduce economic incentives
to join regional terrorist and insurgent groups, reduce
Afghanistan’s dependence on foreign assistance, and
promote greater regional cooperation in other areas.
Turkey’s three contributions also coincide well with
the Obama administration’s “3-D” (defense, devel-
opment, and diplomacy) approach toward foreign
policy.208
Many of Turkey’s diplomatic initiatives have con-
centrated on improving relations between Afghani-
stan and Pakistan—or at least keeping their lines of
communication open during their frequent bilateral
disputes. Like the Obama administration, and other
NATO governments, Turkish officials argue that any
enduring solution to the conflict will require better re-
lations between the governments of Afghanistan and
Pakistan. In particular, Pakistani support is needed
for inducing the Afghan Taliban to end its insurgency
since the insurgents use Pakistani territory as a base
of operations. Turkish officials and experts argue
that their country has distinct advantages in this me-
diation role, including historically good relations with

99
both countries, a shared Islamic faith, a lack of local
proxies or other means, and no incentives to interfere
in their internal affairs.209 Turkey has long-established
ties with Pakistan dating from their common align-
ment with the Western camp during the Cold War
and their shared moderate Muslim governments.
Their military-to-military exchanges, which include
a diverse range of bilateral and multilateral exercises,
have continued to this day. In turn, Pakistan may have
helped Turkey improve its relations with China and
discouraged its Afghan Taliban allies from attacking
Turkish troops in ISAF.210
Since April 2007, Turkey has hosted six Turkey-
Afghanistan-Pakistan Trilateral Forum meetings in-
volving senior Turkish, Afghan, and Pakistani gov-
ernment officials. These sessions began as presidential
summits but have since expanded to include senior
foreign, intelligence, interior, and other civilian and
military officials. Similarly, while their initial focus
was on promoting regional security and counterter-
rorism collaboration among the three governments,
they have since broadened to include economic and
other forms of nonmilitary cooperation.211 For exam-
ple, at the January 25, 2010, trilateral summit, the three
governments endorsed initiatives to promote the rec-
onciliation and reintegration of Taliban members who
agreed to cease fighting and engage in solely nonvio-
lent activities.212 They also discussed cooperating on
health, education, and other socioeconomic projects.213
Turkey has sought to move beyond mere dec-
larations and have the parties establish concrete
confidence-building measures among the parties. As
part of this trilateral process, in early-2011 Turkey
organized the first joint military exercise (on urban
warfare) involving all three armies.214 A trilateral di-

100
rect video-telephone conference line among the three
presidents has been established. There is also a Tri-
lateral Minds Platform whose members include aca-
demics and members of the media and think tanks. In
addition, Turkey has started an Istanbul Forum that
brings together representatives of the chambers of
commerce in each of the three countries, which helps
promote cooperation among their national business
leaders and other private sector actors to complement
the government-to-government meetings.215
In November 2011, Istanbul hosted two vital mul-
tinational meetings designed to support international
peace efforts regarding Afghanistan. The first gather-
ing was a tripartite presidential summit with Hamid
Karzai of Afghanistan, Asif Zardari of Pakistan, and
Gül of Turkey. The second, the Security and Coopera-
tion in the Heart of Asia conference, involved officials
from these three countries, as well as from many other
neighboring and supporting countries seeking to es-
tablish a benign regional security environment for
ending the war. Representatives from Afghanistan,
China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Paki-
stan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turk-
menistan, Uzbekistan, and the United Arab Emirates
attended the event as full participants and wrote the
collective conference communique. These self-desig-
nated “Heart of Asia” countries were joined by senior
officials from other supporting countries and interna-
tional institutions. The latter included Australia, Can-
ada, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway,
Poland, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the
United States, as well as the UN, Economic Coopera-
tion Organization, OSCE, NATO, SCO, South Asian
Association for Regional Cooperation, Organization
for Islamic Cooperation, the EU, and the Conference

101
on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in
Asia.
In its mediation efforts, Turkey has encountered
many of the same challenges that have bedeviled
similar U.S. and other third-party facilitators. These
obstacles include the region’s porous borders, which
facilitate the flow of fighters and drugs; poor gov-
ernance; transnational organized criminal groups
that have an interest in sustaining the conflict; weak
national governments and security forces that have
faced major Islamist insurgents; and limited and de-
clining commitments by external powers to support
regionally driven peace programs. In addition, the
Afghan-Pakistan conflict has elements of a civil war
in which the Taliban enjoys some support among the
large Pashtun community that straddles the Afghani-
stan-Pakistan border. For this reason, regionally based
peace efforts invariably will prove of limited effective-
ness unless accompanied by complementary develop-
ments in Afghanistan and Pakistan such as more effec-
tive governance, better counterinsurgency operations,
and a greater desire on the part of the insurgents to lay
down their arms and reenter their civilian societies.
The Istanbul conference communique, like other in-
ternational gatherings, stressed that any peace efforts
must be led by the Afghan conflict parties. Regional
rivalries have also impeded Turkey’s peace efforts.
While Russia, China, and the West now generally sup-
port the same goals, Turkey has found it just as dif-
ficult as other countries to manage the India-Pakistan
rivalry. The Indians complained when they were not
invited to the trilateral summits between Afghanistan,
Pakistan, and Turkey, as well as other Turkey-hosted
gatherings on Afghanistan. Indians interpreted their
exclusion, as well as Turkish diplomats’ seeming pre-

102
occupation with improving bilateral economic ties
between Turkey and India, as a sign that Turkey does
not respect India’s legitimate national security interest
in Afghanistan.216 Meanwhile, the main Turkish op-
position party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP),
has attacked the Turkish government for seeking to
cooperate with the Taliban, which they denounce as a
terrorist group, by considering establishing a Taliban
representation bureau on Turkish territory.217
Whatever limitations on its role as a potential medi-
ator in Afghanistan, Turkey has been a natural partner
with NATO, the EU, and the United States in Afghani-
stan. The EU’s special representative to Afghanistan,
Vygaudas Usackas, has praised Turkey’s support for
regional peace efforts and termed EU-Turkish coop-
eration “most exemplary.”218 This bond has helped
sustain close ties between Turkey and the West even
when its government pursues policies toward Iran or
Israel unwelcome in many Western capitals. Even if
Turkey’s diplomatic efforts regarding Afghanistan
fail, Ankara could well receive credit for trying.
In addition to sharing the general Western goals
in Afghanistan and contributing troops to the NATO-
led ISAF, Turkey has unique cultural and geographic
assets regarding Afghanistan that are welcome in the
West as well as the region. Turkey is the only NATO
country with a Muslim-majority population, a valu-
able attribute for a Western-led military operation in
a Muslim-majority country (Afghanistan) and region
(Central Asia). Turkey’s location is also pivotal since
Afghanistan, unlike the former Yugoslavia, is very
much “out-of-area” for an Alliance whose military
operations have focused primarily on Europe, North
America, and the ocean between them. Incirlik Air
Base and other facilities in Turkey have served as im-
portant transit centers for helping transport NATO

103
troops and other items to Afghanistan.219 Turkey,
which has the second highest number of troops of any
NATO member after the United States, accrues certain
advantages within the Alliance from its prominent
role in Afghanistan. The other allies acknowledge
Turkey’s unique assets and contributions. From 2003
to 2006, former Turkish Foreign Minister Hikmet Ce-
tin served as NATO’s Senior Civilian Representative
in Afghanistan.
At the same time, several factors have constrained
Turkey’s engagement in Afghanistan. These include a
concern about becoming bogged down in an unwin-
nable war, alienation from U.S. policies in Afghanistan
and Iraq, and fears of antagonizing fellow Muslims by
appearing to join a Western (Christian) crusade. These
concerns, manifested in low popular support within
Turkey for Turkey’s limited involvement in the war,
have made the Turkish government cautious about
its level of involvement, especially in the military
realm. Public opposition to the AKP’s foreign policy
might grow now that the AKP’s “zero problems with
neighbor” policy is in tatters with Turkey’s relations
with Syria, Iran, Armenia, Israel, and other countries
deteriorating in recent years.

CHINA

The relationship with China is, on the whole, quite

positive. The Chinese see Turkey as a potentially valu-
able partner, now that its economy has shown itself
to be both dynamic and resilient, and now that it is
demonstrating a policy independence that it has not
shown since ties between the People’s Republic of
China (PRC) and Turkey were established in 1971.
Beijing has been cultivating Turkey on many levels,

104
and Sino-Turkish economic and more recently securi-
ty relations have become increasingly important. Chi-
nese scholars have expressed admiration for Turkey’s
strong economic performance while PRC policymak-
ers are content that Ankara is not going to champion
Uighur or other Turkic separatism in China or other
countries.
The rise of Kurdish nationalism in the 1990s has
done much to change Ankara’s perspective regarding
Beijing’s policies toward the Uighur Turks in Xinjiang
(East Turkestan) province: like Beijing, Ankara now
champions the principles of territorial integrity and
national sovereignty, and opposes separatism. Bei-
jing, in return, has adopted a neutral line regarding
the Cyprus issue. Trade between the two has grown
by leaps and bounds, though the deficit remains in the
PRC’s favor. Turkish officials have sought to entice
Chinese investment in various infrastructure projects
as a means of reducing the trade imbalance. Turkey is
even considering a Chinese air defense system despite
Washington’s objections. The AKP government’s de-
sire for new partnerships and Turkey’s eagerness to
join other states in benefitting from the strength of
the Chinese economy has contributed to this flourish-
ing relationship with Beijing. Their growing mutual
attraction has led them to overlook their diverging
policies regarding some regional issues, such as Syria
and the status of ethnic Turks in China, and instead
concentrate on cultivating mutual economic and stra-
tegic ties. Both Chinese and Turkish analysts describe
their countries as two rising great powers that, located
on opposite ends of Eurasia, could through their stra-
tegic partnership have a major impact on the nations
between. The two countries referred to increasingly
deepening relations between the two nations as “stra-

105
tegic cooperation” in 2010 and celebrated the 40th an-
niversary of establishing diplomatic ties between the
two countries.
Several factors are driving Turkey to improve ties
with China. First, Turks want to develop economic
ties, especially to sell goods to China and attract PRC
investment. Second, Ankara is exploring develop-
ing further military ties with the People’s Liberation
Army (PLA). Third, China is a leading world power.
For example, its status as a permanent member of the
UN Security Council gives Beijing considerable say
over issues of concern to Ankara, including Cyprus,
Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and the Middle East peace
process. Fourth, China’s economic and political influ-
ence is growing in Central Asia, an important region
for Turkey. Fifth, unlike Europeans and Americans,
PRC officials do not attack Ankara’s policies toward
the Kurds, talk about an Armenian genocide, criticize
Turkey’s repression of media freedoms, or otherwise
seek to interfere in Turkey’s internal affairs. Finally,
strengthening ties with China helps Ankara gain le-
verage in its relations with other important countries,
such as Russia, Europe, and the United States.
Chinese analysts consider Turkey an increasingly
important country for China due to its growing econ-
omy, increasingly independent and influential diplo-
macy, and pivotal geopolitical location between Eu-
rope, Eurasia, and the Middle East. With respect to the
latter, Chinese analysts note that Turkey is a Turkic-
speaking nation closely linked with Central Asia, a
Middle Eastern country whose regional influence has
been rising, and a member of both NATO (formally)
and the EU (in terms of some economic conditions that
interest the Chinese). Beijing has strived to improve
relations with the Turkish peoples, including in Xinji-

106
ang, considers the Middle East and especially Central
Asia as two regions important for China’s develop-
ment and security, and is aiming to improve ties with
both NATO and the EU. Turkey can serve as a conduit
for China to exert both direct and indirect influence in
these other regions.
In addition, Chinese analysts view Turkey as one
variant of the rising number of overly Islamic oriented
governments arising in Eurasia and the Middle East.
They also perceive Turkey as the best of these vari-
ants, contrasting Turkey’s moderate, stable and secu-
lar political system with the less stable regimes in their
client state of Pakistan and the aggressively extremist
form of Islamic government seen in Iran. They pre-
fer that the Arab Spring yield more governments like
Turkey rather than more regimes like Pakistan and
Iran. China’s Turkey specialists express grudging ad-
miration for the ruling AKP despite suspicions of its
overtly religious ties. They note that Turkey’s AKP-
led government has pursued a more independent for-
eign policy than its predecessors that has seen Turkey
distance itself from the United States and especially
Israel. More recently, the AKP has deftly developed
good ties with the governments of Libya and Syria
and then abandoned them when these regimes have
fallen into trouble.
Through much of the 20th century, relations be-
tween Turkey and China were either peripheral,
conflict-prone, or both. During the first half of the
century, the two nations were preoccupied with their
internal affairs, trying to modernize their antiquated
political and economic institutions. In 1950, Turkey
and the newly created PRC came into direct contact
in highly unpropitious circumstances. Seeking to gain
entry into NATO, which occurred in 1952, Turkey vol-

107
untarily sent thousands of troops to fight alongside
American and other Western soldiers in the Korean
War. A few months later, the PRC also sent soldiers
into the Korean battlefield, leading to bloody battles
between Chinese and Turkish troops. Ankara contin-
ued to recognize the Chinese government in Taipei,
while PRC propagandists labeled Turkey a “running-
dog of the U.S. imperialism” and supported Turkey’s
leftist movements.
Trade and cultural ties developed during the 1960s
and after a pause due to China’s chaotic Cultural Rev-
olution, Ankara and Beijing established formal dip-
lomatic relations in 1971, continuing only trade and
other economic connections with Taiwan. The concur-
rent improvement in ties between Beijing and Wash-
ington facilitated this reconciliation, as did a mutual
Chinese and Turkish concern about the growth of the
military power of the Soviet Union, their common
neighbor. They signed several bilateral accords, in-
cluding a China-Turkey Trade Agreement, a Mutual
Protection of Investments Agreement, an Agreement
on Avoidance of Double Taxation and Prevention
of Tax Evasion, and a Fraud and Marine Shipment
Agreement. Nonetheless, even after Turkey and the
PRC established diplomatic relations in 1971, their
political engagement with one another remained mar-
ginal. It was not until 1982 that Turkish head of state
President Kenan Evren visited China. PRC President
Li Xiannian conducted a reciprocal visit to Turkey 2
years later. Economic and political ties grew slowly
during the next 2 decades but were not major priori-
ties for either government. Their status as develop-
ing countries with little mutual cooperation meant
that, in 1985, two-way trade amounted to only some
$100 million.

108
 A major source of tension in PRC-Turkish relations
is Beijing’s treatment of its ethnic Uighur minority in
Xinjiang. The Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking Muslim
minority who have lived for centuries in western Chi-
na in what they historically have called “East Turkes-
tan.” They share ethnic, religious, cultural, linguistic,
historical, and other ties with the other Turkic people
of Central Asia, as well as Turkey itself. In the view
of Chinese analysts, the close cultural and historical
affinity between the PRC’s Uighurs and other Turks
should enable them to serve as a bridge between
China and Turkey, as well as Central Asia.
Although the PRC’s trade with the Turkic na-
tions remains low in relative terms, and dwarfed by
China’s enormous commerce with other regions like
East Asia, Western Europe, and North America, trade
with Turkey and Central Asia is important for Xin-
jiang. Its peripheral location has limited Xinjiang’s
trade ties with China’s larger markets. Chinese plans
to import more Caspian Basin oil and natural gas will
fortify Xinjiang’s westward orientation. In fact, Cen-
tral Asian countries are important to China due to
their proximity and the growing Chinese investment
in Central Asia, whose governments are more inviting
to Chinese businesses than those of the Middle East,
where Chinese companies most often engage in proj-
ects under contract. In fact, the Chinese worry that the
new Arab regimes will not respect China’s commer-
cial interests due to their collusion with Western gov-
ernments to constrain Chinese business opportunities
in these countries. Another concern is that the Middle
Eastern disorders, which Chinese experts believe will
last for months, if not years, will help keep world oil
and other commodity prices unnaturally elevated.

109
 China expresses suspicions about the AKP’s sym-
pathies for their fellow Muslims in Xinjiang and fears
that religious and other ties could serve as a transmis-
sion belt for importing Middle Eastern chaos into the
Muslim-majority nations of Central Asia and poten-
tially Xinjiang, with its large Muslim Uighur minor-
ity. Beijing has established tight control over Xinjiang
to ensure possession of its valuable natural resources
and pivotal geographic position as the PRC’s gateway
to Central Asia and beyond. Beijing fears that relaxing
control over the region would encourage separatist
sentiments in Tibet and other regions of China.
PRC policies such as restricting the use of the
Uighur language in schools, curbing their religious
freedoms, and encouraging Han Chinese migration
into Xinjiang have exacerbated ethnic tensions and
led many Uighurs to flee to Turkey. Many Turks
have sympathized with the Uighurs as victims of
Chinese communist persecution. When the Turk-
ish nations of Central Asia gained independence in
the early-1990s, many Turks hoped those in Xinji-
ang would soon follow suit. For decades, successive
Turkish governments offered asylum to these waves
of Uighur migrants, some of whom established as-
sociations advocating independence for what they
called the state of East Turkistan. These included the
Eastern Turkistan Cultural Association, the Eastern
Turkistan Women Association, the Eastern Turkistan
Youth Union, the Eastern Turkistan Refugee Commit-
tee, the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, and the
Eastern Turkistan National Center. Some Uighurs—
the numbers are constantly in dispute—have joined
militant groups and fought back against Beijing and
ethnic Hans.

110
 The rise of Kurdish militarism later in the 1990s
helped win over the Turkish political establishment
to the Chinese position that Beijing’s difficulties in
Xinjiang resembled Ankara’s problems with Kurd-
ish separatists. By the end of the decade, Turkish of-
ficials ended their practice of giving Uighurs leaving
the PRC automatic Turkish citizenship, stopped us-
ing the name “East Turkistan” rather than Xinjiang,
and recognized that province as an inalienable part
of China. This forced many independence-advocating
East Turkistan groups to close or leave Turkey, often
to Germany or the United States.
In December 1998, Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz
banned Turkish officials from participating in anti-
Beijing activities relating to East Turkistan.220 They
eventually joined the PRC in prioritizing the values
of territorial integrity, national sovereignty, and the
fight against what PRC officials denounce as the
three evil forces. Beijing rewarded Turkey’s new Ui-
ghur policies, as well as its restrained response to the
June 1989 Tiananmen Square killings, by not criticiz-
ing the Turkish government’s use of military force in
Kurdish areas.
The PRC also adopted a neutral stance toward the
Cyprus issue. The suppression of the 2009 ethnic riot-
ing between Han Chinese and Uighurs—which began
in Urumqi, the regional capital, and then spread to
other regions—by the PLA in 2009 only temporarily
disrupted this process of distancing Turkish govern-
ment policy from Uighur nationalism. At the time,
Erdoğan called the results “almost genocide,” while
other Turkish leaders used similar language.221 What-
ever their personal sentiments, Turkish officials felt
compelled to express concern over the July 2013 riots
in Xinjiang due to the strong, if short-lived, pressure
for action by important segments of Turkish society.

111
Media commentators, political agitators, and others
condemned the killings.222 The riots embarrassingly
also came just days after Gül had visited China and
had prioritized developing bilateral economic ties over
human rights or other issues. During a stop in Urumqi,
Gül commented that the region’s Uighur population
represented a bridge between Turkey and China.223
PRC analysts accept that Erdoğan’s harsh comments
following the riots were made for domestic political
reasons—to resonate with the popular sentiment in
Turkey against Beijing’s crackdown. They note that
Erdoğan quietly sent his special envoy, State Minister
Zafer Çağlayan, the following month to Beijing, where
he expressed understanding for the PRC policies and
hope that the incident would not undermine bilat-
eral ties. They further noted that Erdoğan refrained
from denouncing China’s Uighur policies when PRC
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited Turkey in October
2010. The Chinese and Turkish governments agreed
to establish a strategic partnership, again manifest-
ing Erdoğan’s policy of forgetting about the Uighurs
in order to develop bilateral state-to-state ties with
the PRC.
Since the riots, Turkish and PRC officials have
again prioritized the values of territorial integrity, na-
tional sovereignty, and fighting the three evil forces.
The end of their common Soviet threat and the inde-
pendent national economic reform processes in the
two counties, which aimed to integrate them more
into international markets, also led both governments
to focus more on developing bilateral economic con-
nections even as new political issues emerged that
led to more joint discussions: the newly independent
Central Asian countries, the Middle East peace pro-
cess, Afghanistan, the Iraq War, and the war on terror.
However, the deaths of some two dozen people in re-

112
newed Xinjiang clashes in late-February 2012 made it
harder to ignore the Uighur issue during Xi’s visit. In
his Sabah newspaper interview, President Xi stressed
how the PRC had sought to promote Xinjiang’s devel-
opment to raise the living standards of all the ethnic
groups living there, including the Uighur. He encour-
aged Turkish entrepreneurs to invest in the region and
attend the second China-Eurasia Expo in Urumqi in
September. Despite his remarks, Uighur activists pro-
tested outside Xi’s hotel in Ankara against Beijing’s
repression of its Uighur minority. Carrying a flag of
East Turkestan, the demonstrators burned a poster of
Xi and PRC flags before police dispersed them. Ac-
cording to China’s Xinhua News Agency, when meet-
ing with Erdoğan at his Istanbul home on February 22,
Xi said that:

China hopes that Turkey will continue to take effective

measures to oppose and prevent anti-China separatist
activities by ‘East Turkistan’ forces on its territory so
as to ensure the healthy and steady growth of China-
Turkey ties.224

Xinhua also reports that:

Erdogan reaffirmed that Turkey has consistently ad-

hered to the one-China policy, recognized the People’s
Republic of China as the sole legitimate representative
of the whole Chinese people, and never allowed any
activity on its territory that aims to undermine China’s
independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.225

Turkey may become more important for the rest

of China since the two countries’ national economies
are expanding much faster than the global average,
and have sustained exceptionally high gross domestic

113
product (GDP) growth rates despite the global reces-
sion, elevating their global economic importance. The
PRC has become Turkey’s third largest trading partner
(after Germany and Russia) and the leading source of
Turkey’s imports. According to the PRC Ministry of
Commerce, two-way trade has grown from approxi-
mately $1 billion in 2001 to almost $18.7 billion in
2011, an 18-fold increase during that decade.226 Turk-
ish government statistics indicate that bilateral trade
amounted to $24.1 billion in 2011.227 During the 2001-
11 period, Chinese investment in Turkey reached
$10 billion, with projects worth $4 billion already
finalized.228
PRC firms are very active in Turkey’s infrastruc-
ture, construction, mining, and telecommunications
sectors.229 Both Ankara and Beijing have an interest in
helping Turkey realize its ambition to become a mul-
tidirectional energy corridor that would help direct
some Eurasian oil and gas eastward as well as toward
Europe and the eastern Mediterranean.230 Turkey and
China, with two of the world’s largest and most dy-
namic economies, are especially eager to revive their
traditional Silk Road links though Central Asia and
other Eurasian countries. The PRC leadership appre-
ciates Turkey’s potential gateway status for sales in
Europe, Eurasia, and the Middle East. Huawei Tech-
nologies Ltd. has chosen İstanbul as its headquarters
for managing its businesses in Central Asia.231 When
Premier Wen Jiabao visited Turkey in 2010, the two
countries signed eight deals in areas including trade,
energy facilities, and railway networks that would
help connect Istanbul to Beijing through a “modern
silk road.”232 Wen’s visit to Turkey was the first con-
ducted by a PRC Prime Minister in 8 years.233 He and
Erdoğan announced they would establish a strategic

114
cooperation relationship that would include increased
economic, political, energy, security, cultural, and
other ties.234 Wen said that China would:

take active measures to promote trade with Turkey”

and would encourage investment by Chinese enter-
prises in Turkey and facilitate cooperation in various
economic fields, such as power projects, bridge con-
struction and the financial sector.235

The two leaders pledged to increase their bilateral

trade, which then amounted to less than $20 billion
each year, to $50 billion annually within the next 5
years. The agreements signed during Wen’s visit sug-
gest that Turkey and China are eager to expand their
economic ties. China is already Turkey’s largest trade
partner in the Far East.236
There are some economic difficulties in the Tur-
key-China relationship. The two countries sometimes
compete for sales as well as access to regional energy
supplies. Another source of economic tension is their
bilateral trade imbalance. Approximately 60 percent
of China’s imports from Turkey consist of mined raw
materials, with chemicals also ranking high on the
list.237 Meanwhile, more than three-fourths of Tur-
key’s imports from China are intermediate goods.238
The Turkish authorities want PRC companies to pro-
cess more of these mining products inside Turkey.239
Trade between Turkey and China has flourished
in recent years, but almost all of this has been due to
Turks’ growing appetite for Chinese goods. Turkey’s
trade with China is currently dominated by imports
from China, which totaled $21 billion in 2011, with
only $3 billion in exports. Like other countries, Turks
have found penetrating the Chinese market difficult.
The lower costs of Chinese labor and other PRC ad-

115
vantages have resulted in Sino-Turkish trade being
very imbalanced.240 The PRC Ambassador to Turkey,
Gong Xiaosheng, insists that China does not want
such an enormous trade surplus. He claimed the PRC
government was encouraging Chinese enterprises to
import more from Turkey as well as increase their di-
rect investment in Turkey.241 In addition to setting the
goal of increasing their two-way trade, the two gov-
ernments said they would rely more on national cur-
rencies in their bilateral commerce, which could help
equalize both countries mutual imports and exports.
In any case, Turkish policymakers seem less inter-
ested in rectifying the bilateral trade imbalance than in
enticing more PRC investment in Turkish infrastruc-
ture. Turkish officials are eager to take advantage of
Chinese capital and technology to help develop their
energy and transportation sectors. High-speed rail-
roads are a special area of interest given China’s lead-
ing expertise in this area and Turkish desires to build
a network of fast east-west trains to enhance Tur-
key’s role as a conduit for commerce between Europe
and Asia.
The focus on deepening and rectifying mutual eco-
nomic ties was evident in then-Vice President Xi Jin-
ping’s 3-day February 2012 visit, made at the invita-
tion of Gül.242 In Ankara, Xi met with Gül and Turkish
Parliament Speaker Cicek. He then flew to Istanbul to
talk with Erdoğan and attended a China-Turkey busi-
ness forum. When Xi met Gül, the two governments
signed seven bilateral economic agreements.243 These
included a financial cooperation agreement between
the Treasury Undersecretariat and the China Develop-
ment Bank, a memorandum of understanding between
Turkish public broadcaster-TRT and Chinese Central
Television (CCTV), and a currency swap agreement

116
between the two national banks. Furthermore, Deputy
Prime Minister Ali Babacan encouraged Turkish banks
to open branches in China and PRC financial institu-
tions to enter Turkey.244 Xi and Erdoğan said that the
two sides should enhance their economic cooperation
in finance, energy, infrastructure construction, and
high-technology sectors such as aviation, aerospace,
nuclear energy, and high-speed rail transportation.245
In his February 22 address to the China-Turkey
Economic and Trade Cooperation Forum in Istanbul,
attended by hundreds of Chinese and Turkish busi-
ness leaders, Xi praised the attendees as “participants
and promoters of the win-win and mutually-benefi-
cial economic and trade cooperation between the two
countries.”246 Xi urged the two countries to grasp the
opportunities for their emerging market economies to
“upgrade and push forward the win-win and mutu-
ally-beneficial economic and trade cooperation.” He
specifically called for increasing cooperation on global
and international hotspot issues; broadening coop-
eration into more sectors such as transportation and
infrastructure development; jointly resisting trade
protectionism including by mitigating trade imbal-
ances; and increasing cultural exchange and people-
to-people ties.247
To this end, Turkey designated 2012 as a Chinese
Cultural Year and China hosted a Turkish Cultural
Year in 2013. The number of Chinese tourists visiting
Turkey has grown significantly in recent years, soar-
ing from only a few thousand in 2008 to more than
100,000 in 2011. Even so, this figure is considerably
less than the millions of Russians and Europeans who
vacation every year in Turkey.248
For his part, Turkish Economy Minister Zafer
Çağlayan told the Forum attendees that, besides Chi-
na’s purchasing more Turkish products, additional

117
Chinese investments in Turkey were needed to help
remedy the trade imbalance.249 Murat Sungurlu, the
head of the Turkish-Chinese Industrialists and Busi-
nessmen Association (TÜÇSİAD), told Today’s Zaman
that only 43 of the 29,144 foreign-owned companies
in Turkey were from China.250 Çağlayan called for
the holding of more of these mutual business forums
and trade fairs so that Chinese companies would bet-
ter understand business opportunities in Turkey.251
Babacan said Turkish and Chinese firms could estab-
lish partnerships and undertake joint projects in third
countries.252 Xi denied China “deliberately” sought a
trade surplus with any other state. “With respect to the
trade deficit in the trade between Turkey and China,”
he explained, “China is willing to maintain commu-
nication and cooperation with Turkey and take com-
prehensive mitigation measures.”253 Xi said the PRC
would continue to give incentives for Chinese firms
to invest in Turkey, though he encouraged Turkish of-
ficials to ensure an attractive investment climate for
PRC investors.254
Sino-Turkish military cooperation began in the
1990s after Ankara turned to China following failed
negotiations with the U.S. Government to produce,
with technology transfer, the M-270 Multiple Launch
Rocket System (MLRS). In the late-1990s, Turkey man-
ufactured under license the Chinese WS-1 302mm and
TR-3000 rockets, as well as the B-611 short-range sur-
face-to-surface missile.255 In the late-1990s, the United
States rejected Turkey’s request to purchase the MLRS
on the grounds that Turkey had used U.S.-provided
arms to attack Kurdish anti-government militias.
Therefore, Turkey turned to China to acquire rockets,
missiles, and relevant technologies. Still, the value of
the Chinese arms transfers to Ankara has remained

118
small compared to what Turkey was acquiring from
its NATO partners, and Turkish military exchanges
with China were very infrequent compared with the
robust exchange program between Turkey and the
United States, Europe, and Israel. In recent years, mili-
tary cooperation between China and Turkey has taken
an upward trend.
In October 2010, China’s fighters arrived in Tur-
key (via air passageways provided by Pakistan and
Iran) at the invitation of Turkey to join in its air force
drill code-named Anatolian Eagle, in China’s first
ever bilateral military exercise with Turkey, which
also marked the PRC’s first military exercise based on
the territory of a NATO member. In past years, the
annual Anatolian Eagle air drills in the central Anato-
lian province of Konya involved warplanes from the
United States, other NATO countries, and Israel. But
in 2009 and 2010, the Turkish government decided not
to invite Israel to participate, which may have contrib-
uted to the U.S. decision to skip the drills as well.
Seeing an opportunity for mutual benefit, the Turk-
ish and Chinese air forces decided to conduct their
own maneuvers. Presumably at the government’s di-
rection, the Turkish media gave much less coverage
to the drills as compared with previous years. Still,
the Pentagon spokeswoman felt compelled to stress
that Turkey remained committed to NATO and that
Turkish representatives had pledged to protect U.S.
and NATO military secrets.256 The decision of the
Turkish air force to use its older F-4Es rather than its
more advanced F-16s during the exercises with the
Chinese may have resulted from Pentagon pressure
since the initial media reports had indicated the F-16s
would participate.257 Notwithstanding this apparent
concession to U.S. concerns that the exercises would

119
enhance Chinese understanding of NATO tactics and
technologies, which presumably make it easier for the
PLA to develop countermeasures, several American
commentators cited the exercises as a reason to be
cautious about transferring further advanced military
technology to Turkey, including the new F-35 joint
strike fighter.258 Despite these concerns, Turkish-PRC
military cooperation looks set to continue. The TSK
are eagerly trying to develop contacts with non-West-
ern militaries, while the PLA Air Force has been ex-
panding its range of operations during the past year,
including by simulating long-distance bombing runs
in Kazakhstan earlier in September 2013 during the
SCO’s annual exercise.
The more interesting matter is Beijing’s ambitions
to expand its hitherto intermittent presence in the
Turkish defense market. While the Turkish military
has strong ties to the U.S. military industry and con-
tinues to seek advanced military equipment from the
United States and participate in joint defense indus-
try projects, Erdoğan recently announced the decision
to enter into negotiations with China to purchase the
Chinese FD-2000 air defense system. Ankara’s opting
for the PRC’s system, based on the HQ-9 missile, rep-
resents a tremendous achievement for China’s arms
sales industry and a major break with tradition for
the Turkish national security community, which still
prefers to purchase major weapons systems from the
West if Turkey’s own developing defense industry
cannot produce them. Although its reported range
and effectiveness is less than that of the competing
systems, and the FD-2000 is not battle tested like the
Patriots, China’s bid was reportedly $1 billion less
than the competitors. Most importantly, China has
offered to co-produce the entire systems in Turkey,

120
transferring much defense technology in the process
and meeting Turkey’s long-standing preference to
improve the capacity of its national defense industry.
But the state-owned Chinese company, China Preci-
sion Machinery Export-Import Corporation, is under
sanctions for violating the Iran, North Korea, and
Syria Nonproliferation Act of 2006, enacted by the
United States, to prevent proliferation of WMD and
ballistic missile technology to the named countries. It
is not clear if Turkish policymakers knew or under-
stood this problem, and recent media reports suggest
Turkish defense firms are lobbying Ankara to reverse
course and buy another system.259
The China-Turkey relationship looks set to become
even more important in coming years due to the two
countries’ status as rising global powers and their cur-
rent governments’ inclination to embrace new part-
nerships and opportunities. They are also rising world
powers eager to remake at least some features of the
international system, whose foundations were laid
after World War II, when Ankara and Beijing were
too weak to have much influence. Turks are eager
to draw on Chinese capital and technologies as they
develop their own economy, while the PRC is look-
ing to deepen ties with important regional actors such
as Turkey. Nonetheless, their bilateral relationship is
unlikely to become as important as, for example, the
broad and deep ties each has developed in recent years
with Russia.
Turkey and China could easily become commer-
cial rivals in third markets, especially in the textile
and construction sectors, since they both rely on their
low labor costs as a main source of their comparative
advantage in world trade. U.S. pressure will probably
also constrain Turkey’s potential interest in develop-

121
ing close defense ties with the PRC. Turkey and China
might also compete again for influence and resourc-
es in Central Asia even if they continue to overlook
China’s Uighur minority.

TURKEY’S DEFENSE INDUSTRY

Turkey has built one of the most impressive de-

fense industrial bases among the newly industrialized
states in the Middle East. The country’s total military
expenditure for 2014 was almost $11 billion.260 The
TSK are the 14th largest in the world and the largest in
Europe (if Russia is excluded), with more than 500,000
active duty personnel across all the services, 2,500
main battle tanks, 350 fighter and fighter/ground
attack jets, 40 attack helicopters, and about 24 sub-
marines and major surface warships.261 According to
the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute,
Turkey accounted for 3 percent of worldwide imports
of conventional weapons for the 2009-13 period.262
Yet, over time, Ankara has reduced the percentage of
these weapons that it has purchased from U.S. sourc-
es, while raising the share of arms imported from
non-U.S. companies and the proportion of weapons
manufactured in Turkey. Meanwhile, Turkish defense
companies have been expanding their own exports.
The United States traditionally has been the larg-
est supplier of defense systems to Turkey due to the
two countries’ strategic ties, joint military exercises,
common NATO membership, the TSK’s long famil-
iarity with U.S. weaponry, and interoperability con-
siderations. Initially, Turkey lacked a major defense
industrial sector, and buying weapons from the Unit-
ed States was seen as a natural means of reinforcing
the bilateral alliance. Since the mid-1990s, Turkey has

122
strived to modernize its armed forces and develop
its defense industry. In the 1990s, Turkey launched a
campaign to modernize its military that will cost an
estimated $150 billion by 2026. The motives for this
indigenous defense industrialization were not only
military, but also economic and political. Turkey con-
sciously pursued a parallel strategy of security and
development, building its heavy industry and high-
technology sectors while striving for greater self-suf-
ficiency in arms production. Turkey has also pursued
an advanced arms production capability to enhance
its international status and influence.
Furthermore, U.S. policies have shaped Ankara’s
behavior. Turkey’s 1974 military intervention in Cy-
prus led the U.S. Congress to curtail defense assis-
tance to Turkey and impose an embargo on weapons
sales, which led Ankara to seek alternative arms sup-
pliers.263 Congress lifted the arms embargo in 1978. In
1980, Turkey and the United States signed a Defense
and Economic Cooperation Agreement (DECA) that
provided for additional weapons transfers and for
U.S. bases in Turkey. The DECA has been renewed
several times.264
Nonetheless, Turkey has continued to seek non-
U.S. arms suppliers. Turkey bought some weapons
from Russia in the 1990s. While Russia was more re-
laxed about how Turkey could use these weapons, the
TSK complained about the inferior quality of some
Russian weapons, the lack of Russian after-sale ser-
vices, and Russia’s inability to provide sufficient spare
parts. Russia further irked Ankara when it announced
its intention to sell S-300 air defense missile systems
to the Greek-governed portion of Cyprus.265 Israel also
became a major arms supplier to Turkey, beginning
with a 1996 defense and military pact between the two
countries.266

123
 In the ensuing years, Israeli firms upgraded ageing
Turkish weapons systems and sold its newer defense
systems to Turkey. Israeli Military Industries Ltd., for
example, upgraded 170 of Turkey’s tanks, while Israel
Aerospace Industries (IAI) sold Ankara unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAVs) and upgraded several dozen
Turkish F-4 fighter jets.267 But defense cooperation be-
tween the two countries ceased following the Israeli
raid on a Turkish-organized flotilla that was trying
to break the Israeli blockade on the Hams-controlled
Gaza Strip. Signs of a thaw emerged only in 2013,
when the IAI delivered $100 million worth of electron-
ic systems for the airborne early warning and control
aircraft that Boeing is manufacturing for Turkey’s air
force.268 However, the IAI had committed to the deal
in 2002.269
The frayed Israel-Turkey relationship has affect-
ed Turkey’s nascent defense industry in other ways.
In 2005, Turkey contracted with IAI to purchase 10
Heron UAVs, which were to be delivered in 2007. The
delivery date was continually postponed, with the
Israeli producers blaming the delays on the need to
adopt the Heron to accommodate Turkish electronic
systems. After Israel began delivery of the UAVs in
2009, Turkey complained about their sub-par perfor-
mance. Turkey tried to acquire U.S.-made Predator
UAVs, but the U.S. Government resisted, given the
rift between Tel Aviv and Ankara as well as Turkey’s
then-relatively warm ties with Syria and Iran.270
Turkey has cooperated with new defense indus-
trial partners in recent years. For example, Turkey has
become the second largest buyer of defense equip-
ment from South Korea, after the United States. In
2001, Seoul and Ankara inked a deal worth $1 billion
for modified versions of South Korea’s K9 Thunder

124
self-propelled howitzer, produced by Samsung Tech-
win. In 2007, Turkey agreed to purchase 40 single-
engine turboprop training KT-1 aircraft, with much
technology transfer. Turkish Aerospace Industries
will produce 35 of the aircraft under a license.271 From
Turkey’s perspective, this deal is ideal in that it pro-
vides Turkey with “good enough” defense systems at
a lower price than the most advanced systems, while
augmenting the capacity of its own defense industry.
While considering a wider range of foreign sup-
pliers, the Turkish government has sought to raise the
share of items and services purchased from the coun-
try’s own defense industries. Nearly 2 decades ago,
the Turkish Parliament adopted Law No. 3238, which
mandated the development of a “modern defence in-
dustry . . . to achieve the modernization of the Turkish
Armed Forces.” Turkey’s defense industry has grown
since then. In 2008, Turkey had more than 200 defense
companies and 1,000 subcontractors dealing in $3 to
$4 billion worth of business. That year, Turkey was
the world’s 28th largest arms exporter.272 Between
2004 and 2010, the ratio of domestically sourced ar-
maments rose from 15 percent to 54 percent, though
the percentages for the more critical and advanced
defense technologies is likely higher.273
As Turkey has developed its defense industry, more
U.S. companies have lost sales to firms from countries
with less restrictive export rules and more generous
technology transfer policies.274 Turkey sees producing
its own tanks, helicopters, UAVs, and fighter jets as
high-priority national projects. Even so, Turkey will
likely need foreign technical expertise and financial
resources, at least for some critical sub-systems.275 U.S.
defense sales to Turkey reached an all-time high in
the 1990s. Although the U.S. share has since declined,

125
for the 2009-13 period, Turkey was the world’s 11th
largest importer of arms.276 In 2012, Turkey was the
world’s fourth largest importer of arms, behind India,
China, and the United States, respectively.277
Turkish officials want to increase their country’s
weapons exports. The government sees foreign arms
sales as another means to give other countries a stake
in Turkey’s security, as well as an opportunity to cre-
ate more high-tech jobs and lower unit costs for the
TSK through larger production runs. The same factors
that have enabled Turkey’s industry to substitute for
previously imported defense items have made them
better able to compete for foreign sales: the growing
sophistication and size of Turkey’s civilian economy,
the companies’ improving human capital and produc-
tivity, mandatory technology transfers and offsets,
and extensive Turkish government support for the in-
dustry in the form of domestic military contracts and
state-supported research and development efforts.
In 2012, Turkey exported defense products to 60
countries.278 That year, Turkish arms exports reached
$1.3 billion, a 43 percent increase over the previous
year, making Turkey the world’s 24th largest arms ex-
porter.279 The United States was Turkey’s chief defense
export market, buying $490 million of Turkish mili-
tary products in 2012. These purchases were primar-
ily related to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, for
which Turkish firms produce components. Following
the United States, Turkey sold $101 million worth of
weapons to the United Arab Emirates and $99 million
to Saudi Arabia.280
Ankara aspires to raise its arms exports to $2 billion
by 2016 (while spending $8 billion on acquiring de-
fense systems from other countries).281 Turkey hopes,
for example, to sell its Altay main battle tank, referred

126
to as the “national tank,” to Saudi Arabia, which has
plenty of cash to invest in its defense capabilities and
has an inventory of ageing tanks. A sale would boost
political and military ties between the two Sunni
countries and help to cement security ties useful for
managing any Iranian-led Shia bloc in the region.282
It is important not to exaggerate the extent of these
changes. Despite its maturing defense industry, Mu-
rad Bayar, Turkey’s Undersecretary for Defense In-
dustries, has stated that Turkey lacks a cohesive de-
fense armaments export policy.283 The U.S. grip on the
international arms market is declining, while Turkish
defense firms are experiencing growth, but the Unit-
ed States still remains the largest international arms
dealer, with a 30 percent share of total arms exports in
2012, worth more than $200 billion.284 Furthermore, the
United States is the world’s largest supplier of combat
aircraft (62 percent of total exports), which happens
to be one of Turkey’s major military imports.285 As of
2010, the United States was involved in roughly 80
percent of the defense-related activities in Turkey.
Although unable to match the quality of some U.S.
defense exports, Turkish companies can often win
contracts based on their lower costs and greater abil-
ity to transfer military technology to potential buyers.
Obviously, there are buyers, like the Arab monarchies,
who can afford to pay the highest prices for the best
quality weapons, and also hope their purchases gen-
erate influence in Washington. But many other coun-
tries will find Turkish weapons systems of sufficient
quality for their needs, and also gain from Turkey’s
less restrictive technology transfer policies. However,
in these respects, Turkish firms are joined by Russian
and increasingly Chinese defense companies, which
can capture defense markets where the buyer is seek-

127
ing good enough weapons at substantially lower costs
than their U.S. competitors and with more generous
technology transfer provisions.
The solution for this greater foreign competition in
third-party defense markets is to make U.S. defense
exports more competitive in general rather than just
against Turkey. In addition to ensuring a level playing
field by denying foreign competitors access to unfair
subsidies, proprietary information, or proliferation
loopholes, U.S. defense corporations must lower their
costs, increase their reliability, and work with the
Obama administration and Congress to reform U.S.
defense export laws and regulations to make it easier
for U.S. firms to transfer widely available military
technologies to foreign buyers while still protecting
U.S. defense secrets.

DOMESTIC DEVELOPMENTS

The Turkish government’s 2009 policy reversal

toward the Kurds applied within Turkey as well as
in northern Iraq. Today, there are nearly 15 million
Kurds in Turkey, comprising one-fifth of the coun-
try’s population.286 They are Turkey’s largest minority
group, as well as one of the country’s poorest popu-
lations due to the discrimination against them by the
Turkish state. 287 Many Kurds reside in Turkey’s south-
east, which traditionally has been their home region,
but there are many others who also live in Turkey’s
urban areas.288 Besides the several million Kurds liv-
ing in Turkey, there are also Kurdish populations in
the neighboring states of Iraq, Syria, and Iran, making
a total of around 30 million Kurds worldwide.289
Within Turkey, the conflict between the Kurds
and the Turkish government has produced more

128
than 40,000 casualties in 30 years and cost Turkey
billions of dollars.290 In 1978, the Kurd leader, Abdul-
lah Öcalan, founded the PKK, which has sought to win
Kurdish independence from Turkey through armed
conflict.291 Turkey, the United States, and the EU have
since designated the PKK a terrorist organization. Its
first attack against Turkish forces occurred in 1984 in
the district of Semdinli,292 located in the largely Kurd-
ish southeast, and many more attacks have occurred
since then. Originally, the goal of the attacks was
the establishment of Kurdistan, which would be an
independent entity made up of the Kurdish regions
of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran.293 During the 1990s,
however, the PKK gave up this separatist idea and in-
stead called for more autonomy for the Kurds living
in Turkey.294
Finally, in 1999, Öcalan was captured in Kenya
and imprisoned for treason on the Turkish prison
island of Imrali, located in the Sea of Marmara.295 De-
spite this, he is still considered to be the de facto leader
of the PKK and serves as its spokesperson. In recent
years, the PKK’s demands have changed; it no longer
holds the aspiration to establish Kurdistan. Instead,
the PKK has shifted to demanding more autonomy
and democratic rights. It also seeks greater constitu-
tional rights for Kurds, more freedom to use the Kurd-
ish language, and the lessening of state pressure on
Kurdish activists.296
Following years of pro-reform rhetoric as well as
open and secret talks with Kurdish nationalists (in-
cluding between the director of national intelligence
and imprisoned PKK leader Öcalan), the AKP-led
Turkish government made a major policy reversal
in 2009 and adopted a more flexible and embracing
policy toward its Kurdish minority as well as the KRG

129
in northern Iraq. The Kurdish opening within Turkey
saw the government give Kurds more cultural rights,
including the right to use the Kurdish language in
public (responding to claims of linguistic genocide).
For example, it launched a 24-hour state-run Kurdish
language television channel (TRT6, widely available
through terrestrial transmission) in January 2009. Fur-
thermore, AKP leaders apologized for past Turkish
repression of Kurdish rights and pledged to address
earlier wrongs. Some Kurdish leaders hoped that, once
Turks understood that Kurds simply want to achieve
equal rights within a common country, more Turks
would appreciate and support their concern. Kurd-
ish nationalists proposed a peace plan whose com-
ponents include a ceasefire, establishing a Truth and
Reconciliation Commission with amnesty for ex-PKK
fighters, deploying a multinational force to assist with
the demobilization of PKK insurgents and their even-
tual entry into the peaceful political process, releas-
ing PKK prisoners, enhancing Kurds’ constitutional
and legal rights, and eventually the release of Öcalan
from prison.
The newly declared policy of moderation initially
received substantial popular support due to wide-
spread war weariness among Turks, Kurds, and oth-
ers. Turk-Kurdish violence had persisted for decades,
so many individuals on both sides were willing to try
to achieve a political resolution of their differences.
Moreover, the AKP worked to improve the economic
situation in the poor Kurdish southeast by supporting
local businesses, developing agriculture, and promot-
ing the construction of private hospitals. These actions
have led many Kurds to see the party in a favorable
light and to vote for it in elections.297 But Turkish na-
tionalist parties soon began to make political gains by

130
accusing the AKP of making too many concessions
with little effect.
The AKP responded by moving more cautiously,
which led to dampening enthusiasm among Kurds for
the opening and renewed PKK violence. In effect, the
hardliners on both sides were empowering each other.
In addition, impatient Kurdish activists, only some of
whom defend or even sympathize the PKK and its
violent methods, complain that they have seen few
changes on the ground in southeast Turkey despite
the progressive rhetoric they hear in Ankara. The slow
and half-hearted pace of the AKP “Democratic Open-
ing” also led some Turkish Kurds to question the gov-
ernment’s sincerity. For example, the government’s
amnesty proved very limited and conditional, with
many ex-PKK and even nonviolent Kurdish national-
ists finding themselves re-arrested and imprisoned.
Restrictions on Kurdish political activities con-
tinue to constrain opportunities for a peaceful resolu-
tion of Turkey’s Kurdish crisis. The requirement that
any political party must receive at least 10 percent in
a general parliamentary election to gain seats in the
national legislature is twice as high a hurdle as that in
most European countries that have proportional rep-
resentation voting systems. Kurdish nationalists often
must run as independent candidates, which deprives
them of access to public television and radio political
protests or votes from Turkey’s large diaspora, whose
members must vote for one of the parties on the ballot.
In September 2011, the International Crisis Group
(ICG) released a report entitled, “Turkey: Ending
the PKK Insurgency,” which offered sensible advice
regarding how to make progress resolving Turkey’s
Kurdish issue. The thrust of their recommendations
was to move the struggle for Kurdish rights from the

131
field of battle to field of parliament. The group called
for an end to the fighting, major legal reforms, an am-
nesty and Turkish Kurd acceptance to work within
the legal Turkish system. The ICG authors endorsed
the Democratic Opening toward the Kurds adopted
by the ruling AKP, which has sought to deemphasize
ethnic tensions by making some concessions to Kurds,
as well as stressing the common Muslim identity of
Turks and Kurds rather than their ethnic differences.
But the ICG wants to see the Turkish government
implement its reforms more consistently and effec-
tively. They also advocate that the authorities release
imprisoned nonviolent Kurdish politicians and allow
even those Kurds sympathetic to the PKK, which is
the leading anti-Ankara terrorist government, to take
their elected seats in parliament. Meanwhile, they
call on both sides to avoid tit-for-tat escalatory moves
and instead resume the government-PKK ceasefire
declared last year—there have been many such cease-
fires, but they soon collapse due to lack of follow-
up and other problems—as well as disarmament
negotiations.
Inside Turkey, the declining influence of the Turk-
ish military may have weakened U.S. influence in
Turkey. Before the advent of the AKP government
in 2002, the military effectively dominated Turkish
politics and enforced a secular and Western-oriented
country. The Turkish General Staff exercised power
largely informally but also through successive coups
in 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997.
Under the AKP, the Turkish parliament has estab-
lished powers of surveillance and control over major
institutions, such as the National Security Council,
that used to facilitate the military’s control of civil
society.298 Publicized criminal investigations like the

132
Ergenekon and Sledgehammer cases, looking into the
military’s role in suspected plots to overthrow the
government in the early-2000s, have also undermined
the Turkish military’s power. Some Turkish citizens
fear that the AKP’s policies have overcorrected for the
earlier military threat, and that these policies threaten
to impose an excessively powerful civilian executive
branch. Turkey has recently experienced some of its
most serious corruption scandals and mass protests
in years. Concerns regarding the AKP government
have been reflected in the demonstrations that started
in late-May 2013 in Taksim Square, which rapidly
expanded in scope. The protesters have denounced
what they saw as the country’s growing authoritari-
anism, mistreatment of minorities, and repression of
civil rights and media freedoms.
The Istanbul street protests began when a group
of environmentalists staged a peaceful demonstration
at Taksim’s Gezi Park to challenge the government’s
plans to demolish the park to establish a shopping
mall and other buildings.299 On May 30, the opposi-
tion CHP announced that they would side with the
protestors, thereby elevating the political stakes at is-
sue. As the number of protestors grew, Erdoğan, the
main proponent of the demolition plan, refused to
back down or offer a compromise, such as agreeing
to establish a commission to study the issue or to hold
a referendum. With his approval, the Turkish police
tried to disperse the protesters with tear gas and by
burning several of their tents.300 The police violence
backfired, encouraging many others to join the pro-
tests, which spread throughout Istanbul and many
other parts of Turkey.301
By June 1, Interior Minister Muammer Guler
claimed that almost 1,000 people had been arrest-

133
ed at nearly 100 demonstrations nationwide, with
over 1,000 people injured in Istanbul and Ankara.302
Erdoğan said that he would investigate the issue of
excessive police violence but insisted that he would
stand by plans to develop Gezi Park.303 Clashes be-
tween anti-government demonstrators and the Turk-
ish police became a regular occurrence. The protest
movement has adopted a broader agenda and gained
a wider following, including several strata of Turkish
society that have not engaged in such direct action be-
fore, such as some professionals and other members
of the middle class. The demonstrators have a lengthy
list of grievances against the Turkish government and
the ruling AKP.304 Their most prominent concerns in-
clude objections to Erdoğan’s leadership style, seen as
authoritarian and insensitive to the concerns of non-
AKP supporters. The protesters also worry about the
AKP’s Islam-inspired policies, such as its weakening
secularization, limiting free speech, and recent efforts
to limit the sale of alcohol.
Erdoğan has blamed the Hizmet movement, Jews,
and foreign countries for the most recent scandals,
whose reach has extended to the security services.
The corruption, protests, and crackdown have se-
verely harmed Erdoğan’s international standing, es-
pecially in the West. EU membership, always a long
shot despite the AKP’s initial reform drive, has faded
even further away. Erdoğan’s January 21, 2014, trip to
Brussels, Belgium, provided EU leaders with an op-
portunity to criticize him in person. In a joint press
conference with the Turkish prime minister, Euro-
pean Council President Herman Van Rompuy point-
edly stated that, “It is important not to backtrack on
achievements and to ensure that the judiciary is able
to function without discrimination or preference.”305

134
European Commission President José Manuel Bar-
roso added that, in the view of the EU, “Whatever the
problems are, we believe that the solution for those
problems should respect the principles of rule of law
and separation of powers.”306
Influential U.S. opinion leaders have also expressed
concerns regarding Turkey’s secular political democ-
racy and foreign-policy orientation. In a public ad-
dress in Washington, Senator John McCain called the
public demonstrations “a rebellion against Erdoğan’s
push of the Turkish people toward Islam” as well as
popular unease that “Erdoğan . . . is becoming more
like a dictator than a prime minister or a president.”307
A bipartisan network of dozens of foreign-policy
opinion makers, including former senior Democratic
and Republican officials in recent U.S. administra-
tions, have circulated a letter urging Obama to adopt
a more critical line with Erdoğan.
Some analysts worry that the United States is re-
peating its familiar approach in the greater Middle
East of downplaying human rights and democracy
concerns in favor of short-term security needs and
other priorities, despite the risk of alienating the
partner’s population and accepting policies that risk
weakening the country’s liberal democratic potential
over the long term. Furthermore, many commentar-
ies expressed concern that Erdoğan’s actions were
discrediting the model partnership image found in
U.S. official discourse on Turkey since Obama’s first
trip there a few months after he assumed office in
January 2009.
Since Turkey is one of the largest electoral de-
mocracies with a Muslim majority, the United States
is looking to Turkey as a democratic model for Mus-
lims and to present an alternative to Islamic extrem-

135
ism. Turkey’s value of a force against radical Islamist
movements has been devalued by the Turkish govern-
ment’s lax attitude toward secularism and ties with
Sunni militants in Syria and elsewhere. Citizens and
governments in Central Asia who previously saw
Erdoğan and the AKP as role models of a moderate
Islamist movement now see Azerbaijan or Kazakhstan
as having as strong economies as Turkey but also be-
ing more secular and stable, if less democratic. The
Arab Spring analogy was sometimes referenced in the
U.S. media, with the cozy ties between Washington
and Cairo when Hosni Mubarak still held autocratic
power over Egypt cited as a common example.
In recent months, a group of experts assembled by
the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC)
have launched the most comprehensive and sustained
campaign calling for changing U.S. policies toward
Erdoğan. Under its auspices, U.S. Ambassadors to
Turkey Morton Abramowitz and Eric Edelman, along
with BPC project leader Blaise Misztal, have been
releasing a number of op-eds and other publications
calling on the Obama administration to take a much
harder public stand with Erdoğan.308 In their view,
Erdoğan’s policies risk undermining Turkey’s value
as a U.S. partner through actions that weaken its
democratic political institutions, foreign investor con-
fidence, and other sources of Turkey’s international
power. While acknowledging the risk that outside
heckling can backfire given the Turkish public’s an-
tipathy toward the U.S. government, they argue that
the prime minister and other Turkish elites do care
about Obama’s views and have moderated their poli-
cies regarding Israel and other issues to address U.S.
concerns.309

136
 However, Obama’s cautious policy does have
some supporters in the U.S. media and think tank
community. For example, Doug Bandow of the CATO
Institute, while acknowledging that Erdoğan is not
an ideal democratic leader, writes that Erdoğan was
legitimately elected and a better alternative than the
previous military dictatorship, where hundreds were
jailed, tortured, and executed. In addition, Bandow
maintains that Turkey’s current government, while led
by an Islamist party, is not a dictatorship like the for-
mer governments of Tunisia, Egypt, or Syria; Bandow
also considers the AKP-run government considerably
more stable than the others.310 These recent criticisms
followed earlier criticism in the United States about
how Turkey was drifting away from its Western orien-
tation toward Iran, Russia, and other Eastern partners.
Until now, fears of damaging the U.S.-Turkey part-
nership generally has made Obama administration of-
ficials reluctant to attack Erdoğan’s domestic policies.
Even during the June protests and resulting police
crackdown, Obama never directly criticized Erdoğan
publicly.311 When asked about the domestic events in
Turkey, the standard White House response has been
to describe them as important but insist that that the
United States does not interfere in Turkey’s inter-
nal affairs. For example, in late-January 2014, White
House Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic
Communications Ben Rhodes told the foreign media
that the administration has confidence that Turkey,
as a strong democracy and important NATO ally, can
resolve its problems on its own and that Washington
would continue to cooperate with the Erdoğan gov-
ernment on foreign policy.312 At the State Department,
Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf likewise insisted
that, “The United States is not and will not become
involved in Turkey’s domestic politics.”313

137
 One reason for the divergence between the EU
and the U.S. response is that Obama does not want
to worsen further his personal ties with Erdoğan. In
place of their constant dialogue a few years ago, now
months go by without Erdoğan and Obama talking
even by phone. Another difference is that the EU has
more leverage over Turkey due to Brussels’ ability
to deny Ankara various economic rewards. U.S. eco-
nomic aid to Turkey is much less, while U.S. military
financial assistance, previously the dominant form of
financial aid, has dwindled to almost nothing.
Conversely, the United States needs Turkey more
than the EU due to Turkey’s status as an almost
unique platform for projecting U.S. hard and soft
power in Iraq, Syria, and other Middle Eastern coun-
tries.314 But Erdoğan escalated matters by blaming the
U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, Francis J. Ricciardone,
for plotting his removal. A story that simultaneously
appeared in four pro-AKP newspapers describes Ric-
ciardone as telling his EU ambassadorial colleagues
in Ankara over dinner on December 17, 2013, when
the latest arrests became public, that the scandal
would precipitate the “collapse of an empire,” an al-
leged reference to Erdoğan’s government. Erdoğan’s
partisans described Ricciardone as participating in
a Jewish-Hizmet conspiracy to bring down the AKP
government and replace it with one more pliable to
Washington and Tel Aviv. The conspiracy theorists
point to a coincidence of alleged facts to justify their
suspicions—Ricciardone had warned Turkey’s Halk-
bank earlier that it would be punished for helping Iran
evade sanctions, he met with CHP opposition leaders
on December 17, and one of the people arrested that
day was the son of Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan,
who had announced that Turkey would renew its

138
controversial gold-for-gas trade with Iran now that
Tehran had reached a sanctions-relief deal with the
international community.315
Erdoğan has voiced disapproval of the presence of
Fetullah Gulen in Pennsylvania, accusing the religious
leader of organizing a campaign to infiltrate Turkey’s
security forces, create a state within a state, and seek
Erdoğan’s overthrow from his safe haven in Pennsyl-
vania.316 U.S. and EU officials have denied that Ric-
ciardone made the alleged statement against Erdoğan.
The U.S. embassy in Ankara released a statement
stating:

Allegations targeting US Embassy employees pub-

lished in some media organs do not reflect the truth . . .
to repeat once again: No one should endanger Turkey-
US relations through such intentional slander.317

Nonetheless, Erdoğan publicly implied that he

would seek Ricciardone’s withdrawal from Turkey
over his supposed plotting against him.318 Obama re-
sponded with his first public rebuke of Erdoğan, warn-
ing that such statements and actions could endanger
the U.S.-Turkey relationship.319 Regarding the larger
protests and scandals, State Department spokeswom-
an Jen Psaki, insisted that, “We’ve expressed our con-
cerns about some of the events that are happening on
the ground directly, publicly and privately, and we’ll
continue to do that.”320 During a media briefing in
December, she added that, “We would reiterate that
we expect Turkey to meet the highest standards for
transparency, timeliness, and fairness in its judicial
system.”321
Nonetheless, at a January 14, 2014, meeting be-
tween Davutoğlu and Secretary of State John Kerry,

139
the two leaders glossed over these issues and instead
spoke about Turkey-U.S. cooperation regarding Syria,
the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and the Iranian
nuclear dispute.322 Moreover, the administration has
declined to punish Turkey for its circumvention of the
sanctions through its gas-for-gold scheme.323

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Every few years, the U.S. National Intelligence

Council (NIC) publishes studies of how the world
might evolve over the next 2 decades. The authors
of Global Trends 2025, which appeared in 2008, high-
light several factors that they believe warrant focus-
ing much attention on Turkey’s evolving role in the
international system. According to Global Trends 2025,
a future Turkey most likely will blend Islamic and
nationalist strains, which could serve as a model for
other rapidly modernizing countries in the Middle
East. Conflict and armed engagements between Is-
rael, Iran, and Turkey contribute to instability in the
region, which remains unstable as most populations
in the Middle East live in poverty.
Turkey could play a prominent role in modernizing
and reforming the region’s militaries. Previous Turk-
ish governments developed a strong, positive rela-
tionship with Israel and any future government could
reverse the friction now existing between the AKP and
Israel. Turkey’s future leaders might also pursue far
less conciliatory policies with religious regimes such
as Iran, especially if Iran developed nuclear weapons
or pursued destabilizing policies in Iraq, Central Asia,
or the South Caucasus. An already important member
of NATO’s missile defense system, Turkey could play
an even greater role in this architecture in the future.

140
 A more recent study, Global Trends 2030, predicts
that by that year, the diffusion of power among coun-
tries will see Asia surpass Europe and North America
in terms of aggregate GDP, population size, military
spending, and technological investment. In this vision,
a regional power such as Turkey will become especial-
ly important to the global economy as Europe, Japan,
and Russia continue to slowly decline. However, this
study views Turkey not as a single entity, but rather as
a collective with countries such as Columbia, Egypt,
Iran, Mexico, and South Africa. Termed the “Next
Eleven” by Goldman Sachs, they will surpass Europe,
Japan, and Russia in terms of global power by 2030.
Turkey especially has a major opportunity to se-
cure a strong footing in the future global economy.
Aging is the key structural change underlying the
negative economic outlook for Europe, Japan, and
the United States. Turkey’s youthful population will
only decline slightly by 2030, and an influx of young
migrants should help maintain a stable workforce. Af-
rica’s demographic youth bulge could reinforce Tur-
key’s economic growth–a reality that other emerging
regional and global powers, including China, India,
Brazil, and Turkey have already begun to seize.
Turkey has invested heavily in several North Af-
rica countries. As of late-2011, Turkish investments
in Africa had reached more than $5 billion. Assum-
ing continued growth, Turkey and other members of
the Next Eleven will play a very important role in the
future of Africa as well.
However, one area of concern in Global Trends 2030
is Turkey’s youthful, ethnic Kurdish population. In
general, the amount of armed conflict over the past
40 years has decreased; even when armed conflict has
occurred, the amount of violence toward citizens has

141
been limited as well. However, during this same time
period, there has been an uptick in intrastate violence
in countries where a population contains a politically
dissonant, youthful ethnic minority. More than 80
percent of all armed ethnic and civil conflicts have oc-
curred in such countries. The ethnic Kurds in Turkey
have a pattern of actively participating in intrastate
conflict. Kurdish fertility in southeastern Turkey is at
four children per woman. This high rate of fertility,
combined with the overall decline in fertility of other
Turks, will result in Turkey seeing a higher percent-
age of ethnic Kurds than ever before.
It is only natural that the U.S. intelligence com-
munity ponders the impact of Turkey’s growing sig-
nificance in global affairs. Turkey will exercise con-
siderable influence over global and regional power
dynamics during the next 20 years. The legitimacy,
stability, and alignment of Turkey will have a major
impact on the balance of power in Southeast Europe,
the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Eastern Mediterra-
nean, and the Middle East. Turkey can either be a valu-
able source of stability in these regions or a dangerous
contributor to their problems. If Turkey becomes too
bogged down in its international agenda and ignores
its own demographic situation involving the youth-
ful Kurdish population, or engages the Iran Nuclear
problem unilaterally, Turkey’s likely bright future
could become considerably dimmer.
The NIC studies many other countries, so Turkey
was by no means singled out in its reviews. Prudent
policymakers, in both Turkey and the United States,
should consider what future contingencies they might
encounter so as to perhaps anticipate and avert them.
Some of these studies and seminars may have had an
impact on U.S. policies toward Turkey, though this is

142
uncertain. Often policymakers are moved exclusively
by the spirit of the moment—and we suffer as a result.
Turkish policymakers must adopt more of a col-
lective, transatlantic perspective of a NATO stake-
holder seeking the greater good of the West rather
than that of a frustrated nationalist engaged in petty
squabbles with NATO policymakers. Above all, they
need to keep its bilateral disputes with Israel and the
EU out of NATO’s multinational security agenda. For
example, much of the Western media coverage of Tur-
key’s activities before the May 2012 NATO Summit
focused, not on Turkey’s admirable contributions to
NATO’s defense capabilities and in Afghanistan but
on how the Turkish government sought to deny Israel
access to any information from the U.S. BMD radar on
its territory and deny Israelis from having an official
presence at the Chicago summit.
Turkish diplomats also initially refused to allow
EU leaders to attend the summit on the grounds that
the EU was making no more contribution to NATO
than the 56-member Organization of Islamic Confer-
ence, then led by Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, a Turkish na-
tional, and other international organizations that were
not invited to Chicago. Turkish officials need to adopt
more of the perspective of a collective NATO stake-
holder seeking the greater good of the West. Turkey
should avoid strategic surprises such as agreeing to
host military exercises with China without consulting
NATO allies. Without Turkey’s full support, neither
the EU nor NATO can achieve its important security
goals in the Arab world. The solution for many EU-
NATO problems involving Turkey is to address their
root causes rather than merely their symptoms.
Expanding Turkey’s role in EU security and de-
fense decisionmaking would ease many of the anxi-

143
eties in Ankara about the Union’s growing security
roles. If Turkey is not to soon gain EU membership,
then it should receive at least as much influence in
ESDP decisionmaking structures as Ankara had pre-
viously enjoyed as a WEU associate member—a sta-
tus that was evidently pledged at NATO’s April 1999
Washington Summit. Alternately, undertaking a more
genuine effort to bring Turkey into the EU would
make Turkish policy makers more tolerant of exclu-
sionary ESDP practices since they would know that
this discrimination was a temporary phase pending
Ankara’s membership accession. Fortunately, Cyprus’
EU presidency did not cause a further EU-Turkey rift,
due to the parties’ preoccupation with other issues,
but the negotiations regarding the proposed Transat-
lantic Trade and Investment Partnership could further
isolate Turkey from its traditional Western economic
partners unless Brussels and Washington make a great
effort to ensure that Turkey’s interests are addressed,
including keeping open the ultimate prize of possible
EU membership. The EU’s long-term potential will
be degraded if its members cannot draw on Turkey’s
economic, military, and other assets.
With respect to the Middle East, Turkey and the
United States need plans for what might happen
should the government in Syria or other Middle East-
ern countries retaliate against Turkey or abruptly col-
lapse. If the Assad regime falls, fighting among the el-
ements of the winning Syrian coalition over the spoils
is entirely possible, with other neighboring countries
having strong incentives to support local proxies.
Until then, Turkey and the United States need to do
a better job at unifying the disparate Syrian opposi-
tion factions around a moderate platform. Their lack
of unity is a major reason why the Assad regime still
enjoys much support among Syrians who prefer the

144
devil they know. Turkish authorities need to promote
better integration among the insurgents as well as
mechanisms to exclude Islamist extremists.
Furthermore, Turkey’s strained ties with Israel
will constrain its partnership with the United States,
especially in the U.S. Congress. Although economic
relations between Turkey and Israel remain strong,
the two countries are maneuvering to punish one
another diplomatically. Turkey is seeking to exclude
Israel from international meetings, while Israel is try-
ing to show it has other diplomatic options by pursu-
ing better ties with Greece, Cyprus, Azerbaijan, and
Romania. Despite efforts at reconciliation, supported
by the United States in general and Obama in particu-
lar, and supported by their still strong economic links
and mutual concerns regarding Syria, deep sources of
tension between Turkey and Israel exist. For instance,
both sides are seeking different goals in their recon-
ciliation efforts. Israel wants to resume close strategic
ties, whereas Turkey seeks an amicable divorce. In ad-
dition, Israel does not fit into the new AKP worldview,
which deemphasizes state-to-state relations based on
realpolitik and instead adheres to a mixture of Turk-
ish and Sunni Islam bolstered by appeals to popular
democracy and other transnational values.
Popular animosity in each country toward the
other remains strong. A contributing factor to the
poor relationship is Turkey’s support for Hamas. At
one level, this connection is useful for helping moder-
ate Hamas policies and providing a channel through
which Hamas and Western interlocutors can commu-
nicate. But in addition to providing much aid to Hamas
that helps sustain its control over the Gaza Strip, there
is evidence that Turkey’s lax financial procedures are
allowing Hamas to receive illegal finds for terrorist

145
activities.324 The United States and other governments
must increase their pressure on Ankara to strengthen
its measures against terrorist financing and to crack
down on the provocative actions of Turkish extremists
against Israel and other targets.
The United States and other pro-Western govern-
ments should welcome Turkey’s keeping Iranian in-
fluence within limited bounds in Iraq, but Washing-
ton would also be wise to keep any support to Ankara
low key. Turkey can best advance Western (and Iraqi)
interests if it is not seen as a U.S. proxy or a Sunni
Muslim patron seeking to marginalize Iraq’s long re-
pressed Shiite majority. Although Ankara has sought
to cultivate ties with Iraqi Shiites, and more recently
Iraqi Kurds, the strong Turkish support for the Sunni-
secular Iraqiyya bloc in the 2010 elections against the
Shiite-centered block of incumbent al-Maliki aroused
fears in Iran and Iraq that Turkey was playing such
a role. Turkish officials appreciate that an explicitly
sectarian approach would be counterproductive since
most Iraqi Shiite and Iranian animosity is focused on
Saudi Arabia and other patrons of Sunni extremism.
At worst, Turkey could find itself leading a block of
West-leaning Sunni states against Iran and its Shiite-
dominated proxies. Such an Islamic cold war would
still promote further divisions among Middle Eastern
Muslims as their governments gravitate toward one
pole or the other.
Turkey could change its own, thus far benign nu-
clear weapons policies in coming years, if, for exam-
ple, unambiguous evidence arose that Iran is seeking
to militarize its nuclear program. Turkey’s plans to
expand its domestic nuclear energy program would,
for the first time, provide its government with the sci-
entific, technical, and industrial foundations to pursue

146
genuine nuclear weapons options, as Iran’s own de-
velopment of the capacity to make nuclear weapons
has demonstrated to Ankara and others. But Turkey’s
leaders might still decide that, even if Iran developed
a small nuclear arsenal, they would be better off con-
tinuing to rely on NATO and Washington as well as
Turkey’s powerful conventional military, bolstered
by national and multinational missile defenses, rather
than pursue an independent Turkish nuclear force as
a means of deterring even a nuclear-armed Iran. In
this context, U.S. aspirations to eliminate NATO’s tac-
tical nuclear weapons may become a source of tension
with Turkey.
From Ankara’s perspective, the U.S. tactical nu-
clear weapons that have reportedly been stationed in
Turkey for decades under NATO’s nuclear-sharing
arrangement help bind the U.S.-NATO security di-
mensions together. At times, some Turkish officials
implied that having physical access to the U.S.-NATO
nuclear weapons was a form of compensation for Tur-
key’s not developing its own national nuclear arsenal.
The weapons are a symbolic manifestation of Turkey’s
security links to Brussels and Washington that could
be replaced by something else such as integration
within EU defense structures or the emerging U.S.-
NATO missile defense architecture.
If Iran developed a small nuclear arsenal, Turkey’s
leaders might still decide that they could continue to
rely on NATO and Washington as well as Turkey’s
powerful conventional military, bolstered by national
and multinational missile defenses, rather than pur-
sue an independent Turkish nuclear force as a means
of deterring even a nuclear-armed Iran. Even so,
Washington and Brussels need to fully consider Turk-
ish security concerns as they proceed to formulate

147
and pursue arms reductions policies with Russia. This
is also true in the domain of non-nuclear weapons,
given Turkey’s interest in restoring the CFE and other
mechanisms of preventing destabilizing arms races or
conventional force imbalances around its periphery.
Human rights and economic issues complicate re-
lations with the United States and other Western coun-
tries. Foreign critics complain about the Turkish gov-
ernment’s repression of media freedoms, stalemated
efforts to solve the problem of Turkey’s Kurdish mi-
nority, and the lack of strong oppositional parties in
Turkey. U.S. leaders will continue to be torn between
seeking to sustain the advantages they receive from
maintaining close ties with Turkey as an ally—vital
security support in a critical geographic location—and
disapproving of the prickly Erdoğan’s authoritarian
behavior and human rights violations.
Future developments could tip the balance in favor
of a more critical approach to Erdoğan. The U.S. and
NATO military withdrawal from Afghanistan could
reduce the need for Turkey’s direct and logistical sup-
port for the coalition military campaign there. The
U.S.-Iran reconciliation, if it continues, will decrease
Washington’s concern with keeping Turkey in align-
ment with U.S. policies regarding nonproliferation,
missile defense, sanctions, and balancing Tehran’s in-
fluence in Iraq. A continued decline in the fortune of
the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world is reduc-
ing Ankara’s value as a partner with Washington in
Egypt and other countries. The diminishing U.S. role
in the Middle East is making Turkey’s reduced ability
to promote pro-U.S. policies in that region. Turkey’s
economic slowdown, partly due to how the disorders
in Turkey are scaring off foreign investors, will also
lower Ankara’s influence in Washington—something
U.S. diplomats should point out.

148
 One can imagine converse scenarios in which An-
kara’s value in Washington rebounds, but the main
wild card is how the scandals, protests, and eco-
nomic problems will affect Turkey’s upcoming elec-
tions. A new government in Ankara, either under a
weakened Erdoğan (less able to implement a Kurd-
ish reconciliation) or a new political leader (who may
not prove any more committed to the rule of law and
political democracy than Erdoğan), will likely gener-
ate more mutual frustrations and further reduce the
reluctance of U.S. leaders to challenge objectionable
Turkish policies.
Another constraint on the Turkish-U.S. relation-
ship is the decreasing U.S. share of Turkey’s trade and
investment, which now is oriented more toward the
EU and the Middle East. Both governments need to
make it easier for Turkish and American businesses to
trade and invest in each other’s countries. Initiatives
are needed to reduce the level of popular hostility in
Turkey toward the United States, which limits the
depth and breadth of the relationship. Turkish-U.S.
ties are still focused on government-to-government
relations. The relationship needs to encompass civil
society and private sector actors more.
More generally, the United States should adopt
a more proactive policy toward potential sources of
tensions between Ankara and Washington that, unre-
solved, could abort the recent upturn in Turkish-U.S.
relations. For example, the United States could launch
sustained initiatives to resolve differences between
Turkey and other U.S. partners such as Armenia, Isra-
el, Iraq, and the EU. It is understandable that Washing-
ton wants to limit Turkey’s imports of Iranian natural

149
gas, but then the United States must be more open to
allowing Turkey to obtain energy from the KRG even
if Baghdad opposes it.
The Obama administration should continue its
welcome efforts to reconcile Turkey and Israel. U.S.
and Turkish policymakers have proved skilled at com-
partmentalizing their differences over Israel, but an
Israeli attack on Iran, a popular uprising in Palestine,
and other not improbable events could easily escalate
Turkey-Israeli tensions, which invariably would spill
over to adversely affect the Washington-Ankara axis.
Less often cited, the Armenia-Turkey relationship has
the same explosively destructive potential. After the
failed reconciliation effort of a few years ago, neither
country has made major exertions to overcome their
current deadlock. But 2015 will mark the centenary of
what many call the “Armenian genocide.” Unless An-
kara, quietly backed by Washington, renews its rec-
onciliation efforts, the Armenia issue risks inflicting
a blow to bilateral relations. Otherwise, Washington
could find itself constantly torn between key allies.
Regime changes in other Middle Eastern coun-
tries could also have implications for U.S. military
bases and deployments in Turkey’s region, requir-
ing further adjustments in the U.S. military presence
in Turkey and other regional partners. It would be
best if Ankara and Washington developed plans for
such scenarios in advance to improve the prospects
of a harmonious response to such contingencies. In
addition to the substance of any policies, improving
communications between Ankara and Washington is
essential for avoiding further misunderstandings be-
tween these pivotal partners, regardless of who is in
power in either country.

150
 As the Western world continues to be concerned
about what is seen as evidence of a Turkey reaching out
to the East, it is vital for Turkey to reassure its Western
allies of its support. On the other side, Western schol-
ars and politicians should have more understanding
of the fact that Turkey is not an island, and that the
country must take the necessary means to create a
sustainable environment for itself. A long-term objec-
tive should be renewing cultural ties among Turks
and Americans. There is still much popular hostility
in Turkey toward the United States, which limits the
depth and breadth of the relationship. Bilateral rela-
tions still excessively focus on government-to-govern-
ment ties. The Turkey-U.S. relationship must extend
to encompass civil society and private sector actors.
Turks and Americans still hold surprisingly negative
misperceptions about one another. Encouraging more
Foreign Area Officers to learn Turkish would pay
dividends even beyond Turkey given renewed inter-
est in the Turkish language in Central Asia and the
Middle East.

ENDNOTES

1. John Greenway, “Turkey’s Foreign and Security Policy: An

Asset for Europe,” Alliance Geostrategique, March 31, 2010, avail-
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2. Sinan Ülgen, The Evolving EU, NATO, and Turkey Relation-

ship, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War Col-
lege, April 2008, pp. 97-109.

3. Gülnur Aybet, “Turkey’s Security Challenges and NATO,

2012,” Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, 2012, pp. 1-5, available from carnegieendowment.Org/Files/
Aybet_Brief.pdf.

151
 4. Mustafa Bilgin, Britain and Turkey in the Middle East: Politics
and Influence In The Early Cold War Era, London, UK: Tauris Aca-
demic Studies, 2008, pp. 138-139.

5. Ihsan Gurkin, Turkey, and the Southern Flank: A Mideastern

Perspective, New York: National Strategy Information Center, Inc.,
1980, p. 30; and Bilgin, 166.

6. Gurkin, pp. 30-31.

7. Ibid., pp. 5-6.

8. Ibid., p. 31.

9. Güneş Ünüvar, “Turkey-NATO Relations: Past, Present

And Future,” Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Vub, Brussels, Belgium:
Institute For European Studies International And European Law,
Ll.M. Programme, 2011-12, March 7, 2014, available from https://
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10. Richard Outzen, “From Crisis To Cooperation Turkey’s

Relations With Washington and NATO,” Washington, DC: The
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11. Sofia Hafdell, “Turkey–Nato Relations at the 60th Anni-

versary,” Policy Update No. 2, March 2012, Istanbul, Turkey: Is-
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12. Ahmet Davutoğlu, “Transformation of NATO and Tur-

key’s Position,” Perceptions, Vol. XVII, No. 1, Spring 2012, pp.
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13. Selcan Hacaoglu, “NATO Member Turkey Turns to Sanc-

tioned Chinese Co. for Missiles,” Bloomberg, September 27, 2013,
available from www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-27/nato-member-
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152
 14. Muharrem Eski, “Turkey’s Increasing Role in Afghani-
stan,” Journal of Global Analysis Vol. 1, No. 2, 2012, p. 145.

15. Daren Butler, “Karzai Seeks Closer Trade Ties with Mus-
lim Nations,” Reuters, November 9, 2009.

16. Eski, pp. 147-149.

17. Ibid., p. 143.

18. Aybet, pp. 1-5.

19. Tom Z. Collina, “The European Phased Adaptive Ap-

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gium: NATO, November 26, 2012, available from www.nato.int/
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23. “Turkey-EU Relations,” Istanbul, Turkey: Republic of

Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs, available from www.mfa.gov.
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to US’,” Eurasia Review, February 7, 2013, available from www.
Eurasiareview.com/07022013-Turkey-Eu-Political-Benchmarks-Were-
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25. Kemal Kirisci, “Shanghai Blues, the European Union, and

John Kerry’s Turkey,” Washington, DC: The Brookings Institu-

153
tion, February 27, 2013, available from www.brookings.edu/blogs/
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26. Egemen Bagis, “For A Visa-Free Europe,” New Europe, Jan-

uary 27, 2013, available from www.neurope.eu/blog/visa-free-europe.

27. “Public Opinion Surveys of Turkish Foreign Policy

2013/1,” Istanbul, Turkey: Edam Center for Economics and For-
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28. Grace Annan, “Turkey Marks Half Century Of Unsuccess-

ful Bids To Join EU,” Global Insight, August 3, 2009.

29. “Fule Urges Turkey To Implement Additional Protocol,”

Famagusta Gazette, available from famagusta-gazette.com/Fule-
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30. “Relance Des Négociations D’adhésion De La Tur-

quie A L’union Européenne?” Toute L’europe, February 26,
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html?Chash=806abe3562.

31. Ibid.

32. “1974: Turkey Invades Cyprus,” BBC News, available

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33. “Resolution 550,” New York: United Nations Security

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34. “Turkey Says It Won’t Recognize Cyprus as EU Presi-

dent,” Thejakartapost.Com, June 8, 2012, available from www.
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Cyprus-Eu-President.html.

35. “Turkey-EU Relations.”

154
 36. Scott Sayare and Sebnem Arsu, “Genocide Bill Angers
Turks as It Passes in France,” The New York Times, January 23,
2012, available from www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/world/europe/
french-senate-passes-genocide-bill-angering-turks.html?_r=0.

37. Quentin Peel and Daniel Dombey, “Merkel Backs New

EU Talks For Turkey,” The Financial Times, February 24, 2012,
available from www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f853063e-7e99-11e2-a792-
00144feabdc0.html.

38. Scott Sayare, “French Council Strikes Down Bill on Arme-

nian Genocide Denial,” The New York Times, February 28, 2012,
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39. “Turkey Has Lifted All Sanctions Against France,” The

Journal of Turkish Weekly, July 6, 2012, available from www.Turk-
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40. Andreas Rinke and Gulsen Solaker, “Cyprus Remains

Stumbling Block In Turkey’s EU Ambition: Merkel,” Reuters, Feb-
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41. Ibid.

42. “France To Assist Turkey in Opening EU Chapter,”

Hurryet Daily News, February 12, 2013, available from www.
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aspx?pageID=238&nID=40984&NewsCatID=351.

43. “Chapters of the Acquis,” Brussels, Belgium: Europe-

an Commission, available from ec.europa.eu/enlargement/policy/
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44. Yavuz Baydar, “Merkel’s Visit Marks a Turn,” Today’s

Zaman, February 26, 2012, available from www.todayszaman.com/
columnists/yavuz-baydar_308224-merkels-visit-marks-a-turn.html.

155
 45. “EU May Chase Turkey Soon: German FM,” Hurryietdai-
lynews.Com, December 22, 2012, available from www.hurriyetdaily-
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ID=37410&NewsCatID=338.

46. Andrew Rettman, “Germany Ready to Re-Start EU-Tur-

key Talks,” EU Observer, February 25, 2013, available from euob-
server.com/enlargement/119178.

47. Natasha Gural, “Investing in Europe’s Fastest-Growing

Economy,” CNBC, August 15, 2012, available from www.cnbc.com/
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48. Directorate General for Trade of the European Commis-

sion, “Turkey-EU Bilateral Trade and Trade with the World,”
Brussels, Belgium: European Commission, available from trade.
ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2006/september/tradoc_113456.pdf.

49. Ksneia Krauer-Pacheco, “Turkey as a Transit Coun-

try and Energy Hub: The Link to Its Foreign Policy Aims,”
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50. David Rising, “German Economy Shrank in Q4 as Exports

Slump,” Time World, February 14, 2013, available from bigstory.
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51. “Turkey-EU Bilateral Trade and Trade with the World.”

52. Ibid.

53. Roman Muzalevsky, “Turkey Looks Forward, Talks

SCO,” Eurasia Daily Monitor, February 13, 2013, available from
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jamestown-foundation/.

54. Judy Dempsey, “Merkel’s Party Eases Anti-Turkish

Stance,” The New York Times, June 6, 2009, available from query.
nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9500E5D9143AF931A35755C0A
96F9C8B63.

55. Peel and Dombey.

156
 56. Rinke and Solaker.

57. Kristen Allen, “The World from Berlin: Turkish Acces-

sion Is ‘of Minor Importance’ to EU,” Spiegel, November 1, 2012,
available from www.spiegel.de/international/world/german-press-
criticize-erdogan-eu-accession-ultimatum-a-864734.html.

58. Peel and Dombey.

59. “Turkey Deserves More from Merkel if Their Future in

the EU Is to Be Taken Seriously,” European Green Party, February
26, 2012, available from europeangreens.eu/News/Turkey-Deserves-
More-Merkel-If-Their-Future-Eu-Be-Taken-Seriously.

60. Hanne Bursch, “Stall in Turkey’s EU Accession Talks

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61. Peel and Dombey.

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63. Suhnaz Yilmaz, “Turkey and the European Union: A

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64. Miguel Medina Abellan, “Competing Visions of Euro-

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65. Jolyon Howorth, “NATO and ESDP: Institutional Com-

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69. Howorth, p. 96.

70. “The Presidency Conclusions.”

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72. “NATO’s Chief to Convince Turkey Not to Block NATO-

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73. Simon Duke, “The Future Of EU-NATO Relations: A Case

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74. “NATO-EU: A Strategic Partnership.”

75. Ames.

76. Howorth, p. 97.

77. Duke, p. 33.

78. Petros Vamvakas, “NATO and Turkey in Afghanistan and

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79. Yilmaz, pp. 59-61.

80. Piotr Zalewski, ”How Turkey Went From ‘Zero Problems’

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82. David Ignatius, “U.S. and Turkey Find A Relationship

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83. Bulent Aliriza, “The Escalating Syrian Crisis and US-Tur-

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84. Humeyra Pamuk, “Number of Syrian Refugees in Tur-

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85. Aliriza.

86. “Turkey-Syria Association Agreement,” Istanbul, Tur-

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87. Kemal Kirisci, “Turkey’s Syria Calculus Must Change

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88. Ibid.

89. Lally Weymouth, “Turkish President Abdullah Gül: Assad

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159
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91. Aliriza.

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93. “US-Led NATO Intervention Begins in Syria War: Patri-

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94. “NATO Agrees To Augment Turkey’s Air-Defence Ca-

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95. Kirisci.

96. Jonathon Burch, “Turkish Minister Plays Down Syria Link

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97. David Pollock, “Syria’s Kurds Unite Against Assad, But

Not With Opposition,” The Washington Institute, July 31, 2012,
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98. Philip H. Gordon, “International Press Roundtable,”

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99. Soner Cagaptay, “‘Testing Turkey’—Why War in Syria

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100. Weymouth.

160
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102. Jonathon Burch, “Turkey Arrests 12 in Raids on ‘Terror-

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103. Weymouth.

104. Sami Kohen, (Milliyet), “Turkey Readjusts North Syria

Strategy,” Timur Goksel, trans., Al-Monitor, October 20, 2013,
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105. Ibid.

106. Ibid.

107. Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, “Rocky U.S.-Turkey Relations

Persist Since Iraq War,” Fox News, April 7, 2005.

108. Henri J. Barkey, “Turkey’s New Engagement in Iraq: Em-

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109. Gonul Tol, “Turkey and Iran Find Common Ground in

Iraq,” Frontline’s Tehran Bureau, January 19, 2012.

110. Sahar Issa, “Attack on Turkish Embassy in Iraq High-

lights Rift,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 20, 2012.

111. “Turkish Embassy in Baghdad Attacked Amid Rising

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161
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113. Saban Kardas, “Turkey Is Drawn into Iraqi Affairs,” Eur-

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114. Davutoğlu and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ex-

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115. Serkan Demirtas, “Gul Warns Panettao on Terror in Post-

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116. Barkey, “Turkey’s New Engagement in Iraq: Embracing

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117. “Turkey’s Trade Volume with Iraq up 41 Percent,” World

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118. Jon Hemming, “Turkey Does Not Want Return To Iraq

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125. Michael D. Barbero, “Turkey, NATO, and Iraq: 2011 and

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126. Turunc.

127. Ibid.

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129. Barkey, “Turkey’s New Engagement in Iraq: Embracing

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131. Barkey, “Turkey’s New Engagement in Iraq: Embracing

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132. Turunc.

133. Salih.

134. Ibid.

135. Salih.

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140. “Iran signs nuclear fuel-swap deal with Turkey,”

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147. Ben Katcher, “Turkey Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto-

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172. Ibid.

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178. Ibid., p. 30.

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186. G-20 members are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada,

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193. Brett Daniel Shehadey, “Turkey: Reuniting the Ottoman

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194. Doga Ulas Eralp, “Turkey—Can the Shanghai Coop-

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170
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196. Ariel Cohen, “Mr. Erdogan Goes to Shanghai,” Nation-

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197. United Nations Security Council Document 1154 Annex

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198. “Turkey’s Emerging Role in Afghanistan’s Reconstruc-

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199. “Troop Numbers and Contributions,” ISAF Afghanistan,

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200. “Turkey Extends ISAF’s Command One More Year,”

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201. Desmond Butler, “Obama Praises Turkey for Help in Af-

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202. Düden Yegenoglu, “The ISAF Mission and Turkey’s Role

in Rebuilding the Afghan State,” Policy Watch 1052, Washington,
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203. “International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Opera-

tion,” Istanbul, Turkey: Turkish General Staff, February 3, 2010,
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204. “Turkey: Ankara’s Strategic Outlook on Af-

ghanistan,” STRATFOR, December 4, 2009, available from
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171
 205. “U.S. Requests No More Troops from Turkey to Afghani-
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206. John Daly, “Afghanistan: The Turkish Advantage,”

The International Relations and Security Network, April 30,
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207. “Turkey to Restore Afghanistan’s Oldest Hospital,”

Today’s Zaman, September 26, 2011, available from www.today-
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208. Karen DeYoung, “U.S. Revises Its Strategy for Ending

the Afghan War,” The Washington Post, October 31, 2011, available
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209. Ceren Kumova, “Turkey Looks to Stabilize Afghanistan,

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210. Saurav Jha, “Turkey-Pakistan Ties: India’s Loss Is Chi-

na’s Gain,” World Politics Review, January 14, 2011, available from
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211. “Global Insider: Turkey-Afghanistan-Pakistan Trilateral

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212. “Une Main Tendue Aux Talibans Afghans Et Pakista-

nais À L’étude À Istanbul” (“An outstretched hand to the Afghan
Taliban and Pakistan in the study to Istanbul”), Le Monde.Fr: Ac-
tualités À La Une, January 25, 2010, available from www.lemonde.fr/
asie-pacifique/article/2010/01/25/une-main-tendue-aux-talibans-
afghans-et-pakistanais-a-l-etude-a-istanbul_1296255_3216.html.

172
 213. “Turkish President Meets Afghan, Pakistani Lead-
ers for Co-Op in Supporting Afghanistan,” Xinhua, January 25,
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214. Joint Statement on U.S.-Turkey Consultations on Afghan-

istan Media Note, Office of the Spokesman, Washington, DC, U.S.
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215. “Global Insider: Turkey-Afghanistan-Pakistan Trilateral

Forum.”

216. Jha, and Aditya Kaul, “After an Absence, India Back at

Turkey Meet on Afghan,” October 30, 2011, available from www.
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on-afghan_1604834.

217. “An Istanbul Address for the Taliban?” SETimes May 1,

2011, available from www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/
features/setimes/features/2011/01/05/feature-02.

218. Mahir Zeynalov, “EU Applauds Turkey’s Generous Sup-

port To Afghanistan,” Today’s Zaman, November 3, 2011, avail-
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generous-support-to-afghanistan.html.

219. Soner Cagaptay, “Incirlikization,” Hurriyet Daily

News, July 30, 2009, available from www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/
opinion/11975929.asp.

220. Yitzhak Shichor, “Ethno-Diplomacy: The Uyghur Hitch

in Sino-Turkish Relations,” Washington, DC: East-West Center,
2009, p. 48.

221. Fatih Furtun, “Turkish-Chinese Relations in the Shadow

of the Uyghur Problem,” Today’s Zaman, March 29, 2010, avail-
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relations-in-the-shadow-of-the-uyghur-problem.html.

173
 222. Mustafa Edib Yilmaz, “Turkish Pressure Mounting
on China to Stop Killings in Xinjiang,” Today’s Zaman, July 9,
2009, available from www.todayszaman.com//news-180330-turkish-
pressure-mounting-on-china-to-stop-killings-in-xinjiang.html.

223. “Tension Runs High as China Cracks Down on Uighur

Riot,” Today’s Zamam, July 7, 2009, available from www.todays
zaman.com/newsDetail_openPrintPage.action?newsId=180125.

224. Recep Erdoğan, interview with China’s Xinhua News

Agency, Istanbul, Turkey, February 22, 2012.

225. Ibid.

226. Cheng Guangjin, “Xi Looks to the Future at Journey’s

End,” China Daily, February 23, 2012, p. 1, available from www.
chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2012-02/23/content_14672508.htm.

227. “Chinese VP Addresses Business Forum in Istanbul,”

Xinhua, February 22, 2012, available from news.xinhuanet.com/
english/china/2012-02/22/c_131425406_2.htm.

228. Ergin Hava and Zhuying Shi, “Turkey, China set Eyes
on $100 bln in Mutual Trade,” Sunday’s Zaman, February 22,
2012, available from www.todayszaman.com/news-272194-turkey-
china-set-eyes-on-100-bln-in-mutual-trade.html.

229. “Turkey and China have signed a series of deals,” Balkan

Business News, February 23, 2012, available from www.balkans.com/
open-news.php?uniquenumber=136741.

230. “Tension Runs High as China Cracks Down on Uighur

Riot,” Today’s Zaman, July 7, 2009, available from www.todays
zaman.com/newsDetail_openPrintPage.action?newsId=180125.

231. Hava and Shi.

232. Zhao Shengnan, “Turkey Looks to Strengthen Ties

with China’s Vibrant Economy,” China Daily, February 21,
2012, available from europe.chinadaily.com.cn/europe/2012-02/21/
content_14654757.htm.

174
 233. B. Raman, “China Engages Turkey to Neutralize Uighur
Threat,” Rediff News, October 17, 2010, available from news.rediff.
com/column/2010/oct/17/b-raman-china-engages-turkey-to-neutralise-
uighur-threat.htm.

234. “China, Turkey to Establish Strategic Cooperative Rela-

tionship,” China Daily, October 8, 2010, available from www.china-
daily.com.cn/china/2010-10/08/content_11386689.htm.

235. Raman, “China Engages Turkey to Neutralize Uighur

Threat.”

236. Ibid.

237. Hava and Shi.

238. “China’s Xi Tells Turkey’s Gul of Regional Stability

Hopes,” AFP, February 21, 2012, available from sg.news.yahoo.com/
chinese-leader-begins-turkey-talks-amid-uighur-protests-180124657.
html.

239. Hava and Shi.

240. Barcin Yinanc, “Improving Economic Relations with

China Is No Easy Endeavor,” Hurriyet Daily News, October 17,
2010, available from www.hurriyedailynews.com/n.php?n=impro
ving-economic-relations-with-china-is-no-easy-endeavor-2010-10-17.

241. “Wen’s Visit to Turkey to Boost Bilateral Relations,”

China.org, September 29, 2010, available from www.china.org.cn/
world/2010-09/29/content_21034081.htm.

242. “Chinese VP Calls for Efforts in Boosting Trade with Tur-

key,” China Daily, February 23, 2012, available from www.china-
daily.com.cn/bizchina/2012-02/23/content_14676867.htm.

243. Tulay Karadeniz, “Uighur Protests as China’s Xi Visits

Turkey,” Reuters, February 21, 2012, available from www.reuters.
com/article/2012/02/21/us-turkey-china-idUSTRE81K1X920120221.

244. “Turkish, Chinese Firms to Ink $1.38 Billion Deals: Min-

ister,” AFP, February 22, 2012, available from www.rnw.nl/english/
bulletin/turkish-chinese-firms-ink-138-billion-deals-minister.

175
 245. “Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi Talks about Vice President
Xi Jinping’s Visits to Ireland and Turkey,” Consulate General of
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246. “Vice President Xi Jinping Attends and Addresses China-

Turkey Economic & Trade Cooperation Forum,” Beijing, China:
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, February 23, 2012, available
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247. Ibid.

248. Zhao Shengnan, “Turkey Looks to Strengthen Ties

with China’s Vibrant Economy,” China Daily, February 21,
2012, available from europe.chinadaily.com.cn/europe/2012-02/21/
content_14654757.htm.

249. Hava and Shi.

250. Ibid.

251. Ibid.

252. “Babacan Urges More Chinese Banks in Turkey,” World

Bulletin, February 22, 2012, available from www.worldbulletin.net/?
aType=haber&ArticleID=86172.

253 . “Vice President Xi Jinping Attends and Addresses Chi-

na-Turkey Economic & Trade Cooperation Forum.”

254. “Xi Jinping Receives Written Interview of Turkey’s

Sabah,” Embassy of China, February 21, 2012, available from
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255. Yitzhak Shichor, “Turkey Trot: Military Cooperation

between Beijing and Ankara,” Washington, DC: The Jamestown
Foundation, April 16, 2009, available from www.jamestown.org/
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256. Jim Wolf, “China Mounts Air Exercise with Turkey, U.S.
Says,” Global Post, October 8, 2010, available from www.reuters.com/
article/2010/10/08/us-china-turkey-usa-idUSTRE6975HC20101008.

176
 257. Burak Ege Bekdil and Umit Enginsoy, “Turkey, China in
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258. B. Raman, “Chinese Air Force Planes refuel in Pakistan,

Iran on way to Turkey,” The Guardian Sri Lanka, October 16, 2010,
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planes-refuel-in.html.

259. “Turkey Distancing from Missile Deal with China,”

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260. “Turkey Increases Defense Spending,” Washington, DC:

Atlantic Council, available from www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/
natosource/turkey-increases-defense-spending.

261. “Chapter Four: Europe,” The Military Balance, London,

UK: International Institute of Strategic Studies, 2014, pp. 146–149.

262. “The Top 20 Arms Importers, 2009–2013,” Stockholm,

Sweden: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2009–
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imp_map.html.

263. Richard Weitz, “Reducing Its Dependence on Foreign

Arms Suppliers, Turkey Enhances Its Strategic Autonomy,”
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264. Ibid.

265. Michael R. Gordon, “Greek Cypriots to Get Missiles from

Russians,” The New York Times, April 29, 1998, sec. World, avail-
able from www.nytimes.com/1998/04/29/world/greek-cypriots-to-get-
missiles-from-russians.html.

266. “Israeli Defense Industry, with Relations Improving,

Eyes Turkey Again,” UPI, accessed March 18, 2014, available from
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defense-industry-eyes-Turkey-again/UPI-60071365439747/.

177
 267. “Israel Defense Systems Firms Court Turkish Military,”
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jpost.com/Defense/Israel-defense-firms-court-Turkish-military-308824.

268. Ibid.

269. “Israeli Defense Industry, with Relations Improving,

Eyes Turkey Again.”

270. Suzan Fraser, “Turkey: Drones to Be Bought From Unit-

ed States,” Huffington Post, available from www.huffingtonpost.
com/2012/05/22/turkey-drones_n_1535912.html; “U.S. Denies Tur-
key’s Request for Combat UAVs,” World Tribune, January 6, 2011,
available from www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2011/
me_turkey1329_01_06.asp.

271. Tolga Ozbek, “Turkish Air Force to Receive First KT-1

Trainer,” Flight Global, October 27, 2010, available from www.
flightglobal.com/news/articles/pictures-turkish-air-force-to-receive-
first-kt-1-trainers-348995/.

272. Andrew Mcgregor, “Arming for Asymmetric Warfare:

Turkey’s Arms Industry in the 21st Century,” Washington, DC:
The Jamestown Foundation, June 2008, p. 2.

273. “Turkish Defense Market Worth $14 Billion,” UPI, Vol.

1, accessed March 18, 2014, available from www.upi.com/Business_
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14-billion/UPI-88161344953044/.

274. Richard Weitz, “Whither Turkey-US Arms Sales,” Turkey

Analyst Vol. 4, No. 11, May 30, 2011, available from www.silkroad-
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275. Robert K. Ackerman. “Turkey’s Defense Industry Ma-

tures,” SIGNAL Magazine, September 2010, available from www.
afcea.org/content/?q=node/2387.

276. “The Top 20 Arms Importers, 2009–2013,” Stockholm,

Sweden: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute,
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googlemaps/2014_of_at_top_20_imp_map.html.

178
 277. “Turkey Joins World’s Top Five Weapons Importers,”
Hürriyet Daily News, April 18, 2013, available from www.hur-
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aspx?pageID=238&nid=43160.

278. “Turkey Seeks Increased Arms Exports,” UPI, August

28, 2012, available from www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-
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50721346186145/.

279. “Turkey Sets High Arms Export Hopes,” Hürriyet Daily

News, April 18, 2013, available from www.hurriyetdailynews.com/
turkey-sets-high-arms-export-hopes.aspx?PageID=238&NID=44445&
NewsCatID=344.

280. Ibid.

281. “Turkey Seeks Increased Arms Exports.”

282. Burak Bekil, “With Tank Deals, Turkey Focuses on Arms

Exports,” Defense News, May 25, 2013, available from www.defense
news.com/article/20130525/DEFREG01/305250010/With-Tank-Deals-
Turkey-Focuses-Arms-Exports.

283. Robert K. Ackerman. “Turkey’s Defense Industry Ma-

tures,” SIGNAL Magazine, September 2010, available from www.
afcea.org/content/?q=node/2387.

284. K. K. Sruthijith, “India Remains Top Arms Importer

While China Becomes Fifth Largest Exporter,” The Economic
Times, March 18, 2013, available from economictimes.indiatimes.
com//articleshow/19029471.cms.

285. Weitz, “Whither Turkey-US Arms Sales.”

286. Sebnem Arsu, “Kurdish Rebel Group to Withdraw From

Turkey,” The New York Times, April 25, 2013, available from www.
nytimes.com/2013/04/26/world/europe/kurdish-rebel-group-to-with-
draw-from-turkey.html?_r=2&.

287. Alon Ben-Meir, “The Kurdish Conflict: The Real Chal-

lenge to Turkey’s Democracy,” The World Post, December 5, 2011,

179
available from www.huffingtonpost.com/alon-benmeir/the-kurdish-
conflict-the_b_1129359.html.

288. Ragan Updegraff, “The Kurdish Question,” Journal of De-

mocracy, Vol. 23, No. 1, January 2012, p. 119, available from https://
muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_democracy/v023/23.1.updegraff.
html.

289. Ibid.

290. Constanze Letsch, “Kurds Dare to Hope as PKK Fighters’

Ceasefire with Turkey Takes Hold,” The Guardian, May 7, 2013,
available from www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/07/kurds-pkk-
turkey-peace-talks.

291. Aliza Marcus, “The Kurds’ Evolving Strategy: The

Struggle Goes Political in Turkey,” World Affairs, November-
December 2012, available from www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/
kurds%E2%80%99-evolving-strategy-struggle-goes-political-turkey.

292. Letsch.

293. Sebnem Arsu, “Kurdish Rebel Group to Withdraw From

Turkey,” The New York Times, April 25, 2013, available from www.
nytimes.com/2013/04/26/world/europe/kurdish-rebel-group-to-with-
draw-from-turkey.html?_r=2&.

294. James Reynolds, “Turkey Kurds: PKK Chief Ocalan Calls

for Ceasefire,” BBC, March 21, 2013, available from www.bbc.com/
news/world-europe-21874427.

295. Letsch.

296. Reynolds.

297. Updegraff, p. 124.

298. Steven A. Cook, “The Weakening of Turkey’s Military,”

Council on Foreign Relations, March 1, 2010, available from www.
cfr.org/turkey/weakening-turkeys-military/p21548.

180
 299. Duygu Dogan, “Raid on ‘Occupy Taksim Park’ Dem-
onstrators Triggers Outcry” Hurriyet Daily News, May 30, 2013,
available from www.hurriyetdailynews.com/raid-on-occupy-taksim-
park-demonstrators-triggers-outcry.aspx?PageID=238&NID=47870&
NewsCatID=341.

300. Ibid.

301. Can Sezer and Parisa Hafezi, “Turkish PM Erdogan Calls

For End To Protests As Clashes Flare,” Reuters, June 1, 2013, avail-
able from www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/01/us-turkey-protests-
idUSBRE94U0J920130601.

302. Ibid.

303. Ibid.

304. Joe Parkinson and Emre Peker, “Violence Spreads In Tur-

key As Rifts Widen Prime Minister’s Supporters Stage Rally,” The
Wall Street Journal, June 16, 2013, available from online.wsj.com/
news/articles/SB10001424127887323566804578548931174506930.

305. Deniz Arslan, “US Avoids Criticizing Turkey To Protect

Middle East Interests,” Today’s Zaman, February 2, 2014, available
from www.todayszaman.com/news-338096-us-avoids-criticizing-tur-
key-to-protect-middle-east-interests.html.

306. Ibid.

307. “Turkey Protests Mark A Democracy Request, US

Senator McCain Says,” Hurriyet Daily News, June 7, 2013,
available from www.hurriyetdailynews.com/TurkRadio.aspx?pageID
=238&nID=48395.

308. “The United States Needs to Tell Turkey to Change

Course,” The Washington Post, January, 23, 2014, available from
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turkey-to-change-course/2014/01/23/3525bf52-7eda-11e3-93c1-
0e888170b723_story.html.

309. Morton Abramowitz and Eric S. Edelman, Co-Chairs,

“From Rhetoric to Reality: Reframing US Turkey Policy,” Wash-

181
ington, DC: Bipartisan Policy Center, October 2013, available from
bipartisanpolicy.org/sites/default/files/US%20Turkey%20Policy.pdf.

310. Doug Bandow, “Turkey Is Different,” American Spectator

Online, June 10, 2013, available from www.Cato.Org/Publications/
Commentary/Turkey-Different.

311. Jim Zanotti, “Turkey: Background and U.S. Relations,”

Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, March 27, 2014,
p. 7, available from www.Fas.Org/Sgp/Crs/Mideast/R41368.pdf.

312. Ben Rhodes, “2014 Foreign Policy Priorities for the

Obama Administration,” Washington, DC: U.S. Department of
State, January 29, 2014, available from fpc.state.gov/220909.htm.

313. Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf, “Daily Press Brief-

ing,” U.S Department of State, January 23, 2014, available from
www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2014/01/220560.htm.

314. Arslan.

315. “US Ambassador Ricciardone Warned Turkey’s Halk-

bank,” World Bulletin, December 21, 2013, available from www.
Worldbulletin.Net/News/125412/Us-Ambassador-Ricciardone-
Warned-Turkeys-Halkbank.

316. “White House: No US Interference in Turkish Affairs,”

Today’s Zaman, January 30, 2014, available from www.todayszaman.
com/news-338032-white-house-no-us-interference-in-turkish-affairs.
html.

317. Jayson Browder, “Erdogan Risks U.S. Ties with Provoca-

tions,” Asia Times, January 2014, available from www.atimes.com/
atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-140114.html.

318. Semih Idiz, “Turkey Will Pay for Erdoğan’s Ambitions,”

Hurriyet Daily News, December 24, 2013, available from www.hur-
riyetdailynews.com/turkey-will-pay-for-erdogans-ambitions.aspx?Page
ID=238&NID=60032&NewsCatID=416.

182
 319. Tim Arango, “Growing Mistrust between U.S. and Tur-
key Is Played Out in Public,” The New York Times, December 23,
2013, available from www.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/world/europe/
growing-mistrust-between-us-and-turkey-is-played-out-in-public.
html?_r=1&.

320. Orhan Coskun, “Turkish Graft Scandal Triggers Feud

over Judicial Independence,” Reuters, January 10, 2014, avail-
able from www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/10/us-turkey-corruption-
idusbrea090jr20140110.

321. Jen Psaki, “Daily Press Briefing,” U.S. Department of

State, December 20, 2013, available from www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/
dpb/2013/12/219043.htm.

322. “Remarks with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davu-

toglu after Their Meeting,” Washington, DC: U.S. Department
of State, January 12, 2014, available from www.state.gov/secretary/
remarks/2014/01/219569.htm.

323. Jonathan Schanzer, Mark Dubowitz, “Iran’s Turkish

Gold Rush,” Foreign Policy, December 26, 2013, available from
www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/12/26/irans_turkish_gold_rush.

324. Jonathan Schanzer, “The Turkish-American Alliance:

Opportunities and Challenges,” Washington, DC: Foundation
for Defense of Democracies, April 12, 2013, available from www.
defenddemocracy.org/events/the-turkish-american-alliance-
opportunities-and-challenges/.

183
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