| Review of: | Suits and uniforms: Turkish foreign policy since the Cold War by Philip Robins |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Christopher Brewin |
| Reviewed in: | International Affairs |
| Date accepted online: | 27/07/2004 |
| Published in print: | Volume 80, Issue 2, Pages 367-414 |
Europe
Since 1989, Turkish domestic and foreign politics have been profoundly affected by the crises in its region. The break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, civil wars in Iraq, Bosnia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Abkhazia and Azerbaijan, the conflict between Israel and its neighbours, the Cyprus question, the dismantling of trade protections and disputes over oil and water; all provide ample justification for a study of Turkish foreign policy over the last decade. Although William Hale has written a recent study of Turkish foreign policy since 1774, European, Soviet and Middle East experts have tended to neglect Turkey's current importance as a regional actor. Philip Robins has largely filled the gap with this ambitious and well-informed study.
One virtue of Robins's book is that the Turks' many regional predicaments in the new international context are related to the domestic tensions of a unitary state which itself might be torn apart. From the Turkish perspective, increased military spending after 1989 was justified not only by the civil war with the Kurdish Workers' Party, but by security concerns over Iraq, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Greece and Syria. Turkey's establishment only slowly came to terms with the new international agenda concerned with human rights, peacekeeping and the environment. 'In Turkey the guidelines of grand strategy, of high politics, belong not to the government of the day as an expression of the popular will, but to the high priests of Kemalism, as an expression of the ideals of Ataturk' (p. 69), ideals of secularism and of an imagined Turkish citizen. Robins contrasts the effective collegiate approach of 1991-4 with President Özal's personal approach before 1991 and the fragmentation of policy after 1994. A useful description of the security and diplomatic establishment is supplemented by fascinating detail on the groups-for example the 41 Caucasian associations-categorized as secondary players.
The heart of the book is an analysis of what motivates Turkish foreign policy. Turkey's historical experiences of dealings with Arabs, West Europeans and Americans are deployed to demonstrate the contemporary resonance of past disappointments. The minorities question and relations with Greece are treated as part of nation-building. The Kemalist ideology of westernization is contrasted with a sympathetic treatment of Islamist revisionism. The security concerns of the state are brilliantly treated as a combination of external threats with fears of internal disorder. Turkey's economy in this period is less driven by the search for subsidies, and more by coming to terms with open markets while seeking to obtain supplies of arms, oil and gas.
In his chapter on Israel, Robins, a Middle East expert, sensitively analyses the military drive and political predicaments that brought out into the open in 1996 the strong relations developed by America's embattled allies. Speculation on the future of this relationship is regrettably eschewed by Robins. There is little on Turkey's potential as a mediator between Israel on the one hand and Syria and the Palestinians on the other, and nothing on a possible American-led bloc if Turkey breaks with Europe. Similarly, the excellent material on Turkey's relations with Iraq is not followed up by speculation on the implications of its de facto break-up as a unitary state. The chapter on the Turkic republics stresses the economic and political factors that inhibited the Pan-Turkic enthusiasm of President Demirel for the 'newly repackaged patriarchs of the former Soviet southern republics' (p. 71). The Caucasus is interestingly thrust into the foreground as Turkey's 'front garden'. Turkey's restrained diplomatic and military involvement in the Balkans is set out in informative detail.
Robins quotes Ataturk's dictum that 'Writing history is as important as making history'. This book is far from the stirring patriotic history intended to unite the Turkish nation behind their soldiers and diplomats which Ataturk had in mind, and indeed underplays the ideas of a Turkish race and of injured pride which inform Kemalists and Islamists alike. To my mind, its balanced treatment of what he calls the 'obsession' with Europe downplays the European bid, both in itself as a matter of economics and reform, and in the absence of serious discussion of what might happen if Turkey again fails to win acceptance. It does not deal with the Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice and Development Party) government's success in making compromises with hostile states of all descriptions. But this book is essential to western understanding of Turkish politics in a rough neighbourhood.