Lately, some on the right in Washington have fretted that Turkey's religiously oriented Justice and Development Party, the AKP, will distance the country from its Western allies, eroding secularism as it seeks tighter bonds within the Middle East. After all, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pushed some very sensitive Western buttons: He has dismissed concerns over Iran's nuclear program, for instance, and canceled a military exercise with Israel, holding one with Syria instead.
These moves leave plenty to worry about -- including the possibility that the United States will make things worse by worrying about all the wrong things. But Erdogan's decisions do not augur the rise of an Islamist foreign policy in Turkey. The more troubling reality is that they are the inevitable outcome of long-brewing domestic trends. In limiting cooperation with Israel and improving relations with neighbors like Iran and Syria, Erdogan is playing to Turkish leftists and rightists, secularists and Islamists. He's pandering to voters who already dislike the United States and Israel while cleverly, if cynically, pursuing Turkey's national interests. A good politician from any other party would do the same.
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Understanding Erdogan's political calculus starts with understanding that in Turkey anger at the West is near universal. Where Islamists see a global crusade against their faith, secular leftists see global capitalism and U.S. imperialism. Many Islamists think Israel and the United States are secretly working with the Turkish military to overthrow the democratically elected Islamist government. Conversely, many secularists think Israel and the United States are using the AKP to weaken Turkey by undermining its secular identity. According to a recent poll, 72 percent of people in Turkey believe foreign powers are working to break apart their country. It's little comfort that they disagree on how.
Turks themselves were never enthusiastic about their country's relationship with Israel. The military was, though, and for much of Turkey's recent history it controlled the country's foreign policy. Now, in an increasingly democratic Turkey with more power centers when it comes to foreign affairs, the temptation for politicians to pander to anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and anti-Washington sentiment is hard to resist -- as seen in Erdogan's recent statements.
The more impatient Washington gets with this dynamic, the worse it will be. Suggesting, for instance, that it wouldn't be so bad if the Turkish army were still running the show just plays into the hands of millions of anti-American conspiracy theorists -- who are surprisingly attentive to statements from think tanks and Capitol Hill. It also feeds the illusion that the Turkish military will remain reliably pro-American. Older, higher-ranking officers continue to work closely with their U.S. counterparts. But younger officers who grew up viewing the United States as their enemy are rising through the ranks.
Fortunately, Erdogan's friendship with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad enjoys less popular support. And though moderates decry the friendship, fringe rightists and leftists applaud it. Last June, both moderate Islamists and moderate secularists embraced the Iranian protesters as kindred spirits. To secularists, many of whom view Erdogan as little more than a Turkish Ahmadinejad, the protesters were fighting against theocracy. To Islamists, the protesters were fighting for democracy, with the ayatollahs cast in the authoritarian role of the Turkish military. After President Abdullah Gul and Erdogan rushed to congratulate Ahmadinejad on his victory, several columnists in the reliably pro-government Zaman newspaper broke with the party line to condemn the brutality on the streets of Tehran.
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