Turkey and Russia: Axis of the excluded?

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. The background interviews for this article were conducted by the authors in Ankara, Istanbul, Moscow, Tbilisi and Washington DC with a range of Turkish, Russian, Georgian and American senior government officials, policy analysts, businessmen, journalists and embassy representatives, between July and October 2005. 2. In March 2005, appearing on US television talk shows, Rumsfeld stated that he wished US troops had not been ‘blocked’ from entering Iraq through Turkey, and asserted that this had enabled the post-war insurgency in Iraq to flourish. ‘Given the level of the insurgency today, two years later, clearly if we had been able to get the 4th Infantry Division in from the north, in through Turkey, more of the Iraqi, Saddam Hussein, Baathist regime would have been captured or killed. The insurgency today would be less’, he said, adding that the resulting thrust of the US invasion through southern Iraq had enabled many insurgents to evade capture in the north. See Agence France-Presse, 21 March 2005, at http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=39081; see also CNN's coverage of Rumsfeld's statements at http:// www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/03/20/iraq.anniversary/. 3. The January 2005 BBC World Service Poll, which was conducted in 21 countries, indicated that a record 82% of Turks perceived President Bush's policies as negative for global peace and regional security in the Middle East. See Karl Vick, ‘In Many Turks’ Eyes, U.S. Remains the Enemy’, Washington Post, 10 April 2005, p. A21. According to the German Marshall Fund's (GMF) ‘Transatlantic Trends Survey’ of September 2005, a slightly lower 77% of Turks found the US administration's global leadership to be ‘undesirable’. See the GMF report at http://www.transatlantictrends.org/doc/TTKeyFindings2005.pdf. 4. Orkun Uçar and Burak Turna, Metal Firtina [Metal Storm] (Istanbul: TimasYayinevi, 2004). 5. In 2005, the Turkish Minister of State for Foreign Trade, Kursat Tuzmen, projected that the trade volume between Russia and Turkey would continue to grow during 2006 and 2007, reaching a projected goal of $25bn in line with the Turkish government's ‘Eurasia Action Plan’. See http://cnnturk.com/HABER/haber_detay.asp?PID=318&HID=5&haberID=56090. 6. See ‘An Historic Turkish–Russian Exchange’, Turkey Now (website of the Turkish–US Business Council), January 2005, at http://www.turkey-now.org/default.aspx?pgID=111. 7. Author interviews with Turkish embassy and Foreign Ministry officials in Washington DC and Ankara, October 2005. 8. Author interviews in Turkey in August, September and October 2005, with a broad range of politicians, government officials, analysts and journalists. For an outspoken and articulate presentation of this view by a leading Turkish commentator, see Hasan Unal, ‘Turkey Would Be Better Off Outside the EU’, Financial Times, 17 December 2004. In 2002, one of Turkey's most prominent generals, Major-General Tuncer Kilinç, the secretary of the National Security Council, was one of the first to suggest in a public presentation that Turkey should perhaps abandon its efforts to secure EU membership and seek out alternative alliances with other neighbours such as Russia or Iran. See Owen Matthews, ‘Europe's Orphan: A Showdown is Brewing Between Turkey and the EU’, Newsweek International, 22 April 2002. 9. It is worth noting, however, that in the GMF's ‘Transatlantic Trends Survey’ of 2005, Russia and the United States now enjoy the same level of popularity in Turkey, and that China's image in Turkey is as positive as the European Union's. 10. ‘Turetskii gambit’, directed by Dzhanik Faiziyev, based on a novel and screenplay by the Russian author, Boris Akunin, released in 2005. 11. Burak Turna, Üçüncü Dünya Savasi [The Third World War] (Istanbul: TimasYayinevi, 2005). 12. Presentation by the Georgian foreign minister at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, Thursday, 3 June 2004; also author interviews with Turkish embassy and Foreign Ministry officials in Washington, DC and Ankara in October 2005. 13. Presentation at TEPAV-EPRI roundtable discussion on ‘Latest Developments in the Caucasus and Russia: A Strategic Perspective for Turkey’, at TOBB-ETU University, Ankara, 12 October 2005. 14. Author interview with senior BSEC representative in Washington DC, 8 July 2005. 15. Author interview with Turkish Foreign Ministry official, Ankara, Turkey, 11 October 2005. 16. Author interviews with senior US Embassy staff in Ankara, February 2005, and senior State Department officials in Washington DC. Additional informationNotes on contributorsFiona HillFiona Hill is a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, former Director of Strategic Planning at the Eurasia Foundation, and author of Energy Empire: Oil, Gas, and Russia's Revival.Omer TaspinarOmer Taspinar is the Director of Brookings' Turkey Program, Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, a columnist for the Turkish Daily Radikal and author of Political Islam and Kurdish Nationalism in Turkey.