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Turkey’s New Role:
From NATO Lapdog to Emerging Empire?
Par Gearóid Ó Colmáin
Mondialisation.ca, 03 septembre 2016
Gearóid Ó Colmáin 31
août 2016
The
recent Turkish coup attempt marks a turning point in NATO’s war on Syria. An
emerging empire and portal to the orient, Turkey has always played a key role
in NATO’s ‘Drang Nach Osten’- the drive to encircle Russia, destroy its
client-states Syria and Ukraine, and serve as a bulwark against other emerging
powers such as Iran. But now it seems Turkey may no longer be carrying out its
designated role.
That
the United States was behind the coup attempt there is little doubt, though
some prominent analysts such as Thierry Meyssan disagree that
the coup was orchestrated by Gülenists. Fethullah Gülen is known to
be close to the CIA and the U.S. obmutescence during the coup was typical of
standard procedure during U.S. covert regime change operations. While Erdoğan
is unquestionably a war criminal who is responsible for the deaths of
hundreds of thousands of innocents in Syria and Libya and heavy repression at
home, nonetheless, as in the case of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, the
Turkish leader seems to have fallen out of favour in the West.
The media have already
begun the predictable, clichéd demonisation process – publishing pictures
of the Turkish incumbent’s opulent palaces etc. Turkey desperately needs a new,
progressive regime, which would contribute to peace in the Middle East. But if
the choice is between a monster the CIA wants out and a monster the CIA wants
in, the latter is the best option as it weakens U.S. imperialism.
Turkey’s
strategic imperatives
Stratfor
director George Friedman claims Turkey is now a world power whose military is
more powerful than the French or British. The U.S. strategy for Europe was to
force Turkish entry into the EU – most recently through weapons of mass
migration. The policy worked in Turkey’s favour. But the British decision to
exit the European Union changed the balance of power. Moscow took the
opportunity to extend the hand of friendship once more to Ankara. Just before
the July 19th coup attempt, there were reports of a possible détente between Turkey and Syria.
U.S./Turkish relations
have soured considerably since 2013 when U.S.-based billionaire Fethullah
Gülen fomented the Gezi Park protest movement against the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
regime. Though there was certainly popular discontent in the country with
Erdoğan’s Islamisation policies and his support for terrorism in Syria, the
Gezi Park protests were really about pushing Gülen’s attempt to destabilise the
regime and take over. Fethullah Gülen is the founder of a vast empire of
private prep schools throughout the world. He promotes an extremist form of
Islam.
Though
originally close to Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), Gülen’s
movement Hizmat (service) is less nationalist and therefore more amenable to U.S./Zionist
interests. The Gülenist network operates as a fifth column in Turkey, a
para-state operating at the highest levels of the military, intelligence and
judicial apparatuses. I was asked by Russian state media RT to comment on the Turkish
shooting down of a Russian jet in November 2015. I said then
that the Turkish government was acting against the national interest. It
has since transpired that the attack was carried out by Gülenist military
personnel who have been prosecuted for the crime. President Erdoğan recently
apologised to Russian President Vladimir Putin for the attack. In fact, Turkey had indicated on
July 13ththat it intended to normalise relations with Syria, thus
ending the war against Assad. Contacts between Ankara and Damascus have
been growing in recent months and it now looks like Russia and Turkey may have
begun to mend relations. Southstream, Russia’s plan to pipe oil to Europe
through Turkey, had to be abandoned last year due to U.S. pressure on Ankara.
There is now a possibility of renegotiation recommencing between Moscow and
Ankara. Recent Turkish/Iranian contacts also indicate that the Kurdish question
is forcing Ankara to re-calibrate its foreign policy.
Although secret talks
have reportedly been taking place between Ankara and Damascus, the two
countries remain at war in Syria and there is no change yet in the official
position of either state.
The geopolitical theories of Greek turkologist Dmitiry
Kitsikis have had a major influence on Turkish foreign policy. Kitsikis is
famous for promoting the notion of Turkey as a civilisation-state which
naturally encompasses the region stretching from North Africa, through the
Balkans and Eastern Europe; Kitsikis refers to this as the ‘Intermediate
Region’. Turkey’s previous ‘good neighbourly’ policy seemed to be in accordance
with Kitsikian geopolitics but was sabotaged by Ankara’s treacherous
collaboration with U.S. chaos strategy in the Middle East since the U.S.-
fomented ‘Arab Spring’ in 2011.
U.S.
policy towards Turkey has always been to support the regime as a strong regional
power to wield against Russia while at the same time supporting the Kurdish YPG
(people’s defense units) in Syria. U.S. support for the Kurds is part of the
long-term geopolitical remodeling of the region – the creation of what former
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice at the start of the ‘Arab Spring’
uprisings in 2011 referred to as the “New Middle East”. The U.S. and Israel
want to carve out a Kurdistan in the region, which would become a client-state
of Israel; thus providing the Zionist regime with an effective proxy army
against its Arab enemies – once the Da’esh-fomented genocide has created
the requisite Lebensraum.
Erdoğan’s
ambitions of reviving the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East ultimately threaten
U.S. hegemony. The United States Navy rules the waves. The U.S. will not allow
another major maritime power to threaten its global control. Rapid economic
growth and the paying off of its IMF
debt in 2013 have seen Turkey emerge more and more as a
strategic regional power with increasing independence and political
assertiveness. Turkish investment in Africa has increased more than ten-fold
since 2000. The Turks have opened embassies all over Africa. Ankara
is selling the notion of ‘virtuous power’ in Africa with infrastructural
development projects and investments designed to compete with China and the
United States. Turkish involvement in Somalia has turned the East African
nation into a veritable client-state of the emerging Turkish Empire. In
2015 Turkey opened a military
base in Somalia. Turkey will henceforth have a strategic reach in
the Gulf of Aden, one of the most important oil choke-points in the world.
Ankara also has plans to establish military bases in Azerbaijan, Qatar and
Georgia.
The
Turkish regime has been attempting to oust the presence of the Gülenist
movement in many African countries by offering to supply state funds for
education programmes. A recent statement by a Turkish government spokesman
alluded to Ankara’s desire to counter Western ‘neo-colonial’ interests in
Africa. The statement clearly shows that Turkey intends to join
the new ‘scramble for Africa’ as part of neo-ottoman
imperialism.
Turkey
in Central Asia and China
Turkey has
considerable power and influence in Central Asia where many Turkic-speaking
people reside. In 2009, Turkey helped found the Cooperation Council of Turkic
Speaking States. Turkish investment has been increasing in Central Asia.
Ankara has also been training military personnel in Central Asian states.
The oil-rich Turkmenistan is one nation which has received visits in
recent years from the ‘Sublime Porte’. During its spat with Moscow, Ankara
sought to deepen ties with Turkmenistan in hopes of enticing that state to
participate in the Trans-Caspian Pipeline – a project to pipe gas from the
Caspian Sea through Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Turkey to Europe, thereby
bypassing Russia. Turkey also has considerable influence in Turkic speaking
regions of the Russian Federation such as Tartarstan. Though relations with
Moscow have now improved, Ankara’s links in Central Asia remain key strategic
levers in the renaissance of Turkish imperialism.
Turkey’s links with
Uighur terrorists in China’s troubled Xinjiang (East Turkestan) province has
led to diplomatic rows with Beijing. Many of the Uighur terrorists operating
against China have been trained and facilitated by Turkey in Syria. Although
Turkey’s support for Uighur terrorists in Xinjiang complies with NATO policy
towards China, it shows once again the potential reach of Turkish power.
Turkey’s
drive for world power status, together with the decline of Europe as a
political entity, means that Ankara will continue to flex its muscles in the
international arena. The French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has said
that Turkey is no longer a reliable partner in NATO’s fight against the Islamic
State. Of course, Ankara was never a partner in the war against the Islamic
State as the Turkish regime has been arming and training the Islamic State
terrorists along with its NATO partners and has been caught in flagrante delicto on several occasions. But
what the French Foreign Minister’s remarks mean is that Turkey may no longer be
as sanguine in its support for terrorism in Syria, due to the West’s support
for the Kurds; rapprochement with Moscow and Damascus, and
now more than ever after the failed U.S.-backed coup attempt.
Israel’s
double game
The situation is
further complicated by Israel’s stance towards the Turkish coup attempt and its
aftermath. The Turkish regime thanked Israel for its help quashing the coup.
Relations between Tel Aviv and Ankara have improved, in spite of the current
dispute with Washington. One should not overlook the fact that, although the
Israeli Lobby exerts considerable control over U.S. foreign policy, Israel
often adopts a friendlier attitude to many of America’s so-called enemies.
Israel’s relationship with Belarus has always been generally good, in spite of
repeated U.S. aggression. Israel’s relationship with Azerbaijan has been
good, in spite of major diplomatic rows with the U.S..
Israeli/Russian
relations are far better than Moscow’s relationship with Washington. Israel has
always had a more nuanced oriental policy than the U.S. The Israelis are
masters at playing both sides off each other in international conflicts. During
the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein’s regime
while Israel eventually provided Israel covert supplies of weapons to
Iran with on U.S. approval. The Israelis had established ties with
Iranian fifth columnists Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Hachemi Rafsanjani. The
aforementioned Stratfor director George Friedman has said that the Iran/Iraq
war would be a template for dealing with the rise of Turkey as a world power.
A
rising maritime power in trouble?
Turkey will pay dearly
for the folly of abandoning its ‘good neighbourly’ regional policy, which
showed some promise until 2011. It had a glorious opportunity then to exercise
‘virtuous power’. Now the country could be facing civil war. The purge of
Gülenists in the Turkish regime has already led to hundreds of arrests of top
military and government personnel. If Turkey is to emerge as a regional empire,
it will have to leave the Zionist axis and find a solution to the Kurdish
question in conjunction with Syria and Russia. It is currently beginning to
appear that previous secret plans agreed upon by Ankara and Paris to
carve out a Kurdish state in Northern Syria may have to be abandoned. As the French
escalate bombing of Raqqa in Syria in the wake of the Nice terrorist psyops,
Turkey could be facing an acute state of emergency.
The United States
cannot tolerate the emergence of a major maritime power like Turkey which,
since the Cold War, has been used as a tool against Russia. Turkey’s Incirlik
Airbase holds up to 80 percent of Washington’s nuclear arsenal in Europe. A
significant oriental shift in Ankara’s foreign policy would signal the
end of America’s prospects of ‘full spectrum dominance’, creating the
conditions for a new imperial division of the world- a geopolitical
reconfiguration some might imagine as falling in with conjectures of a
Moscow/Constantinople axis or, in mytho-historical terms, a ‘Third Rome’.
It
is possible that the U.S. already sees that a reconfiguration of imperialist
alliances is necessary with the influential former U.S. National Security
Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski advocating a détente in U.S.
relations with Russia and China. What is clear from recent events in Turkey is
that the world imperialist system is going through seismic changes, with old
military alliances breaking down and new configurations of imperial power
emerging. What prospect exist for global,working-class liberation in a
period of deepening capitalist crisis and war remain to be seen.
Copyright © Gearóid Ó
Colmáin, Gearóid Ó Colmáin, 2016
