Turkey must show allegiance to west as doubts rise over ties

October 20, 2013 12:48 pm

Turkey must show allegiance to west as doubts rise over ties

By Daniel Dombey in Istanbul

Has Turkey, a member of Nato for 61 years, parted company with the west? It is a question Turkey’s allies have begun to face. Three issues have converged to create the doubt: Ankara’s decision to buy a Chinese missile defence system; its alleged ambivalence towards al-Qaeda affiliated fighters in Syria; and, most recently, allegations that Turkey betrayed Iranians spying for Israel to Tehran.US officials have been most vocal about Ankara’s decision to buy missile defence from a Chinese group subject to Treasury sanctions for $3.4bn, in preference to US-made Patriot missiles or a system sold by an Italo-French consortium.

The State Department says the US has conveyed “serious concern” about the move, adding that the purchase “will not be interoperable with Nato systems”.

Then there is the question of al-Qaeda affiliates. Turkey at the start of the year complained about a US decision to designate the jihadist organisation Jabhat al-Nusra, one of President Bashar al-Assad’s fiercest foes, as a terrorist group. Some foreign diplomats remember conversations with Turkish officials who praised al-Nusra’s effectiveness compared with the western-backed Free Syrian Army.

Turkish officials acknowledge that arms and men for such jihadist groups have flowed across their country’s 900km-long border with Syria but deny that al-Nusra had a base on Turkish soil with Ankara’s connivance.

International concern continues to flare – ranging from human rights groups angry at the seemingunencumbered passage of human rights violators to President Barack Obama, who put “the danger of foreign extremists in Syria” at the top of the agenda of his last telephone conversation with Mr Erdogan (once a trusted partner), in early August.

Finally comes Iran. There is consternation in Turkey over a Washington Post column by David Ignatius, who cites “knowledgable sources” to allege that last year Ankara “disclosed to Iranian intelligence the identities of up to 10 Iranians who had been meeting inside Turkey with their Mossad case officers”. He also mentions Israeli concerns about alleged ties between Tehran and Hakan Fidan, prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s chief of intelligence and right hand man.

Dismissing the story as “without foundation”, Ahmet Davutoglu, foreign minister, has blamed its appearance on an international campaign against Turkey.

To some analysts, the charge sheet against Ankara is indisputable. “Considering Turkey’s record, how can the Obama administration continue to tout Turkey as a ‘model partner’ or even treat it as an ally?” asks Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations.

But it is too early to reach a firm conclusion. The contract for the missile deal has yet to be drawn up and talk of Turkey aligning with China is overblown. Ankara’s motivation seems to be to develop its domestic defence industry. The main strategic lesson to be drawn in this instance is that Turkey did not feel bound by strategic considerations.

On the jihadist front, Mr Erdogan has begun to denounce al-Qaeda affiliated groups in stronger terms. As if to drive the message home, Turkey last week shelled an al-Qaeda group in Syrian territory, the first such clash. Earlier this month, the government said it had imposed sanctions on individuals and groups blacklisted by the UN for links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Meanwhile, the allegations about the betrayal of Israeli agents to Iran remain unproven. But Turkey has never been a stooge of its Iranian neighbour. The two countries share a history of showy embraces and mutual suspicion. They are now effectively on opposites sides of a proxy war in Syria.

The way Turkey has responded to these three controversies: its insistence that the missile purchase is not a done deal, its condemnation of jihadists and its fulminations at the allegations of collusion with Iran all indicate a country that values its western alliances. But with these ties now in question, it will be actions, not words, that count.