Transition is a Turkish delight

Which city should I settle down in, briefly, to gauge global currents, have a ringside seat on the most urgent developments the world is riveted on, and yet have intellectually stimulating evenings over some of the world’s finest cuisine? In brief, mix work with pleasure.

In easier times London and New York would be the obvious choices. But the objective reality has changed since 9/11. I have, I must admit, never experienced anything less than polite at Heathrow and JFK since the Americans and, by association, the British got into convulsions resulting in the Patriot Act and worse. But there is a change in the air. A great deal, I fear, may have nothing to do with objective reality. It may be happening inside my own head which makes me touchy when a friend falls silent on something mildly provocative that I might have said.

In London and New York you do get various sides of the story but these centres are sometimes victims of their own propaganda on how the script is actually playing itself out on the ground — in Iraq, for instance.

The city which fulfills all the conditions I am looking for is Istanbul. Ten years ago, it looked like a city with a past — run-down housing apartments, a thick pall of soot-filled air settled over the city, obscuring the Marmara, Bosphorous. Even the grand Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia had upon them a curtain of pollution.

It is a transformed city today. As you sit on the terrace of Mavin Balik, possibly one of best appointed fish restaurants in the world, you can actually watch hundreds of dolphins glide past, towards the other end of the Bosphorous where you can even see the window panes of the later Ottoman sultans’ hunting lodges, elegantly illuminated. The air is crystal clear.

The transformation is attributed to the good work done by a string of Islamic mayors, preparing the city for Europe. Embedded in this observation is one of Turkey’s engaging paradoxes — Islamist leaders working overtime to take the country into the EU.

Turkey’s future is in Europe; that was the dictum of Mustafa Kemal Pasha, the republic’s founder. The army has guarded the Kemalist vision of absolute secularism. In the mid-’90s when the openly Islamist Refah party came to power, the army outlawed it. Political descendants of the Refah tactically slid into a more secular garb. Premier Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul of the AK party, now in power, are more Islamist than any of their predecessors. How is the secular army, therefore, positioned vis-a-vis the AK?

The post 9/11, muscular, anti-terror campaign of the US had an impact on the social fabric of its reliable NATO ally quite different from what Washington might have expected. The anti-terror campaign came across to Turkey’s 95 per cent Muslim population as being anti-Muslim. A psychologically besieged people, tired of the corruption of previous regimes, voted for AK.

In December AK was invited to hold talks for EU membership, beginning on October 3. Entry into Europe entails internal reforms towards greater democratisation and this, in turn, involves the armed forces becoming subservient to civilian authority. The army sees itself fulfilling the Kemalist dream of taking Turkey into Europe. The army’s dilemma is acute. Culturally it sees itself as a “modernising”, not democratising force.

Even though it can be argued that the army is still the ultimate arbiter of Turkey’s destiny, its wings are clipped by another phenomenon. The shrill chant of democracy in the neighbourhood makes it almost impossible for the army to intervene on the mere suspicion that AK is at heart Islamist. Meanwhile, AK’s governance is a vast improvement on previous governments in Ankara. Also, the sincerity with which it is reforming in preparation for Europe has won approval from some European leaders including the Greeks.

Excellent if the army and AK pirouette along towards Europe for the next decade or so. But might Europe prove to be a mirage thereafter? Should that happen, Europe will have at its door an angry Islamist state, with the army’s capacity for intervention compromised in pursuance of the mirage.

In any case when the army refused to allow US troops into Iraq through Turkish territory and tossed the issue to be resolved by a parliament vote, the balance of power may have shifted in favour of the political leadership.