Read Online The Revenge of Geography by Robert D. Kaplan - Free Book Online
Authors: Robert D. Kaplan
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country toward the Middle East and away from the West for the first time in literally centuries.
In a sense, as I’ve said, the United States was hoist on its own petard. For decades American leaders had proclaimed democratic Turkey as a NATO, pro-Israel bastion in the Middle East, even as they knew that Turkish foreign and security policy was in the hands of its military. Finally, in the early twenty-first century, Turkey had emerged as truly politically, economically, and culturally democratic, reflecting the Islamic nature of the mass of Turks, and the result was a relatively anti-American, anti-Israeli Turkey.
In the autumn of 1998, in Kayseri in central Anatolia, I interviewed leading Turkish Islamists, including Abdullah Gul, Turkey’s current president. The occasion was a meeting and rally of the Virtue Party, which later disbanded and reorganized itself as the Justice Party. The Virtue Party was itself a reincarnation of the Islamic Welfare Party, which had been untainted by corruption and sought to bring about the social justice that had existed under Ottoman Islam. In my report on those meetings, published in 2000, I got a big thing right and a big thing wrong. The big thing I got right was that these people, though a minority party, were about to be become a majority in a few years. And their fundamental theme was democracy: the more democratic Turkey became, the more their Islamist power would increase; for they linked the West with Turkey’s autocratic military power structure, which was ironic, but true.
“When will the United States support democracy in Turkey?” the man next to me at the Virtue Party dinner had asked. “Because until now it has been supporting the military.” Before waiting for my answer, he added: “I have been to Israel, and there, democracy is more developed than in Turkey.” 6
And that was the big thing I got wrong. Because moderate Turkish Islamists were then relatively open-minded about Israel, I assumed they would always be so. In fact, circumstances would change dramatically:the result of the Turks’ own historical evolution as electronic communications brought them into closer contact with pan-Islamist thought (the defeat of geography in other words), and the specific actions and mistakes of both the American and Israeli governments in the coming years.
At the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, Turkish geography mirrored Turkish politics. Bordering Greece in the west and Iran in the east, Bulgaria in the northwest and Iraq in the southeast, Azerbaijan in the northeast and Syria in the south, even as more than half of Anatolia is Black Sea or Mediterranean coastline, Turkey is truly equidistant between Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. The same with its foreign and national security policy. Turkey was still a member of NATO, cooperated with U.S. intelligence services, maintained an embassy in Israel, and had facilitated indirect peace talks between Israel and Syria. But it was conducting military incursions against the Kurds in northern Iraq, was helping Iran avoid sanctions for developing a nuclear weapon, and was politically and emotionally behind the most radical Palestinian groups.
The Israeli commando raid in May 2010 against a flotilla of six ships bringing humanitarian supplies from Turkey to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, and the ferocious Turkish reaction to that, was the catalyst for announcing to the world Turkey’s historic pivot from West to East. Turks saw the struggle for Palestine not as an Arab-Israeli fight, in which as Turks they could play no part, but as a conflict pitting Muslims against Jews, in which Turks could champion the Muslim cause. Among the key insights that often get overlooked in the late Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington’s
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
, of which Turkey represents a prime illustration, is that globalization, while a force for unity on one level, is a
In a sense, as I’ve said, the United States was hoist on its own petard. For decades American leaders had proclaimed democratic Turkey as a NATO, pro-Israel bastion in the Middle East, even as they knew that Turkish foreign and security policy was in the hands of its military. Finally, in the early twenty-first century, Turkey had emerged as truly politically, economically, and culturally democratic, reflecting the Islamic nature of the mass of Turks, and the result was a relatively anti-American, anti-Israeli Turkey.
In the autumn of 1998, in Kayseri in central Anatolia, I interviewed leading Turkish Islamists, including Abdullah Gul, Turkey’s current president. The occasion was a meeting and rally of the Virtue Party, which later disbanded and reorganized itself as the Justice Party. The Virtue Party was itself a reincarnation of the Islamic Welfare Party, which had been untainted by corruption and sought to bring about the social justice that had existed under Ottoman Islam. In my report on those meetings, published in 2000, I got a big thing right and a big thing wrong. The big thing I got right was that these people, though a minority party, were about to be become a majority in a few years. And their fundamental theme was democracy: the more democratic Turkey became, the more their Islamist power would increase; for they linked the West with Turkey’s autocratic military power structure, which was ironic, but true.
“When will the United States support democracy in Turkey?” the man next to me at the Virtue Party dinner had asked. “Because until now it has been supporting the military.” Before waiting for my answer, he added: “I have been to Israel, and there, democracy is more developed than in Turkey.” 6
And that was the big thing I got wrong. Because moderate Turkish Islamists were then relatively open-minded about Israel, I assumed they would always be so. In fact, circumstances would change dramatically:the result of the Turks’ own historical evolution as electronic communications brought them into closer contact with pan-Islamist thought (the defeat of geography in other words), and the specific actions and mistakes of both the American and Israeli governments in the coming years.
At the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, Turkish geography mirrored Turkish politics. Bordering Greece in the west and Iran in the east, Bulgaria in the northwest and Iraq in the southeast, Azerbaijan in the northeast and Syria in the south, even as more than half of Anatolia is Black Sea or Mediterranean coastline, Turkey is truly equidistant between Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. The same with its foreign and national security policy. Turkey was still a member of NATO, cooperated with U.S. intelligence services, maintained an embassy in Israel, and had facilitated indirect peace talks between Israel and Syria. But it was conducting military incursions against the Kurds in northern Iraq, was helping Iran avoid sanctions for developing a nuclear weapon, and was politically and emotionally behind the most radical Palestinian groups.
The Israeli commando raid in May 2010 against a flotilla of six ships bringing humanitarian supplies from Turkey to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, and the ferocious Turkish reaction to that, was the catalyst for announcing to the world Turkey’s historic pivot from West to East. Turks saw the struggle for Palestine not as an Arab-Israeli fight, in which as Turks they could play no part, but as a conflict pitting Muslims against Jews, in which Turks could champion the Muslim cause. Among the key insights that often get overlooked in the late Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington’s
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
, of which Turkey represents a prime illustration, is that globalization, while a force for unity on one level, is a
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