Colonial army ?

The Turkish army has been paradoxically the most respected institution in Turkey while it has been at the heart of most of its problems.

At the establishment of Turkey (1923), the army was staffed with a foreign-oriented elite speaking fluently English or French. These officers were seeking to belong to European circles and were accompanying the reforms of Ataturk (sometimes called 'westernization') with enthusiasm. They often became at different level part of the administration. This is how their role of protector of state (by opposition to protector of the people) started to be entrenched in the minds and souls. This has been further relayed by foreign powers (at the beginning England and France and after 1945 the United States). With the rise of Russia, the army grew in an alignment with NATO that soon became a simple subordinate of Western Powers. Secret services were infiltrated and global aim was to keep the country as a reliable asset at any cost. Most countries were cooperating and discussing with Turkey mostly through army channels.
The objectives of the army and the objectives of the Turkish people have thus been very often divergent. This explains why military coups and instability of the youth have prevailed mostly when international tensions were high.
Since the fall of USSR and the end of Cold War, the opportunity to redesign the role of the army have constantly raised and with reforms driven by AKP, the core of the issue is about to appear. No country can afford an army that is more obedient to NATO influence than to members of its own executive. Army has also been one of the most conservative force and as any army is not preoccupied firstly by human-rights or rule-of-law issues which had became a signature of Turkey for decades. Only integration of Turkey in Europe has helped limiting this drive thanks to interests of European Powers to limit the influence of America in Turkey.
Now Turkey has a vivid economy (dynamic, with a lot of competition) and can only restore the place it should have kept by reinforcing the very foundations of the Republic : keeping Anatolia's fate under the direction of all the Turks.

Identity of Turkey

The troubles with Turkey in facing the world is lying in its own identity. In the end no one really understands what is Turkey.

While Turkish history is in part starting in the steppes close to the Ural Mountains for a part, another story starts with the first settlements in Anatolia.

On one side, if Modern Turks are descendant of Nomadic Turkish Tribes that converted to Islam en route to Europe and finally conquered and freed Asia Minor from the influence of its western religion, we can expect this historic clash of forces to continue and Turkey to be an independent country with its alliances varying with its own objectives (usually to finance their "westward conquests" [economic markets nowadays]). There should also exist a prevalence of the religious aspect in the society and the rejection of minority rights.

On the other side, if Modern Turks are descendant of all the populations that inhabited Anatolia (or Roman Asia Minor), they form a mosaic of people that conflicted between themselves before emerging as large empires. The people that founded such grounds are: Hattis, Hittites, Hurrians, Assyrians, Lydians, Lyceans,Greeks, Romans. They finally formed the Byzantine Empire and later on the Ottoman Empire totalling an historically unrivalled one and a half millenium of sovereign rule over large territories. The fall of the Ottoman Empire has triggered the creation of Modern Turkey. From these times should remain the cultural crossroads of such empires and the embracing of progress. In the end this history should help creating an open society of knowledge where should exist a prevalence of the individual that contributes to the richness of the country.

Too much highlight has been made in recent times of Turkey on the first historic approach leading to a Top-down control of the society. If Turkey wants to join the European Union and participate in the modern world, the focus must definitely go towards the latest historic defintion of Turkey.
Turkish people, as the last to settle in Anatolia, are the last ingredient that compose this land. To move back in its history tracks, people of Turkey should realize the full extent of their history to build a better future.

Turkish historical roots

So now the entangled Turkey I have described in my last post is set to fight back the economical crisis. The economic leverage Turkey is looking at is lying as much in politics as in macroeconomics.

Turkey is a country born lonely in the cold of the battlefields. Its ennemies ranged from the western colonial powers to its more immediate neighborhood enraged with the frustration of some missed opportunities (territorial or political gains) and occupied with the necessities of nation-building ("we are not like them"). Many organizations, secret services, political or religious circles thus across time achieved to undermine the return of Turkey to its past strength (cf. GDP per capita numbers in the nearby graph). The idea of an obligated friendship has also long triggered the relations with NATO.

This amounted to various strategy and tactics which nurtured instability in the country (with the best example being kurdish and armenian terrorism) but also across the region. This has been done mostly by encouraging arms race with Greece, keeping hot spots in Cyprus or in Nagorno-Karabakh, setting up Israel as the policing authority of the Near-East.

These achieved holding back the political and economical development of Turkey. Now what has been brought back in order is that where the development of economy was limited by many of these factors, the ranking has changed for first initiating the development of politics and regional power before economy. Papers and news stories may be concerned Turkey is no more a western ally but this lies much in the comfort of the past relation. Turkey is reasserting stronger than ever that its political agenda will no more be set by external motives.

The risk lies in getting off-limit and over-reaching one's capacity. After the local elections, the time of internal diversions on the values of the society will probably pass to address the serious matters lying in the backgound. First comes the restarting of the relations with the EU then the relations with Armenia.

Timing on EU subjects can profit from the friendly presidencies of Sweden and Spain starting from this summer to start closing some chapters and opening new ones. Reform is more necessary than ever to ensure the capitals needed to soften the economic crisis. Armenia is another urgent subject since it is the last track for solving the genocide claims, the US are about to recognize. Having the US setting up the historian committee in charge of studying the facts and bringing its conclusions to the UN would be the best chance for all parties to agree.

And in the end, since this is the year of the conflict/aborted conflict with Iran, the foreign shuttle services will run vividly with however little control over the results. The important here being the ability to jump in a possible vacuum left behind a retracting iranian diplomacy (for adressing the internal stability of Iran).