The winds of political change in Turkey often tend to change direction quite abruptly. This seems to be the case with the government’s recently announced “democratization initiative,” popularly referred to as the “Kurdish opening.” The initiative, which is being rolled out in small bits, consists of various reforms designed to give Turkey’s Kurds increased political and cultural rights and put at end to the decades of bloody conflict that the Kurdish issue has resulted in. (For some more background on the initiative, take a look at this previous post. To get a sense of how Turkey’s foreign policy ambitions are helping push Ankara’s new approach to the Kurdish issue, take a look at this post.)

The government’s reform plan certainly represents an important break from previous approaches to the Kurdish issue and has led to the discussion of topics that only a few years ago would have been off limits. But now there is some concern that the initiative could be in serious trouble. From a Eurasianet article of mine looking at recent developments regarding the Kurdish reforms:

Official rhetoric in recent months has fostered hope that Turkey can implement a civilian - rather than a military - solution to its decades-long Kurdish problem. Those hopes, however, remain fragile — a fact underscored by the opening of a court case that could result in the banning of the country’s major pro-Kurdish political party.

Over the summer, Turkish Interior Minister, Besir Atalay, speaking during a nationally televised news conference, said that the government is actively working on a comprehensive plan, one based on democratization and expanded rights. “We have the intention to take determined, patient and courageous steps,” he said. “This can be seen as a new stage.”

On November 13, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government unveiled in a historic debate in parliament parts of this “democratization initiative,” which include the easing of restrictions on private Kurdish-language television stations and Kurdish language faculties in universities, as well allowing towns and villages to use their original Kurdish names once again.

“Today is the beginning of a new timeline and a fresh start,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told parliament. “We took a courageous step to resolve chronic issues that constitute an obstacle along Turkey’s development, progression and empowerment, and we are very sincere.”

But now there are growing concerns that the government’s efforts could be undermined by renewed tensions in Turkey’s predominately Kurdish southeast.

Protests were held in several cities in the region this past weekend, including one where a 23-year-old university student was killed by a bullet to the back. The trigger for the protests were reports that conditions have worsened for jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan since he was moved into a new facility on the island prison that has been his home since 1999.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s highest court on December 8 started hearing a case which could lead to the closure of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), the only pro-Kurdish party in parliament. Prosecutors contend that the party has violated Turkey’s constitution and has acted as a front for the outlawed PKK. An indictment seeks not only the party’s closure, but also the banning of some 220 of its members from participating in political activity.

The DTP is the latest incarnation of a string of pro-Kurdish parties that have been previously closed by court order, and observers worry that its closing could further stoke tensions among Turkey’s Kurds.

But there is also concern that the party itself is standing in the way of the government’s Kurdish reform program. Although party leaders initially supported the government’s initiative, members are now distancing themselves from it, with DTP chairman Ahmet Turk recently calling it “insufficient.”

“For us, the ‘democratic initiative’ is over,” Emine Ayna, a top DTP official recently told the Radikal newspaper….

….Despite the recent hardening of the DTP’s rhetoric, observers say that shutting the party down would be a mistake. “I totally disapprove of their behavior but I oppose the party’s closure,” said Sahin Alpay, a professor of political science at Istanbul’s Bahcesehir University.

“It was such a mistake to close down these Kurdish parties in the past,” Alpay continued. “Had they not been closed down, they would have become much stronger than the armed wing of the Kurdish movement. But what we have here now is the opposite.”

(You can read the full article here. Click here for an informative Human Rights Watch Q&A on the DTP closure case.)

The government’s reform plan right now seems to endangered by both Turkish and Kurdish nationalists. Turkish leaders, to their credit, have publicly stated their intention to continue with the reform process. But there are clear challenges ahead. The closing of the DTP (though flawed, the party is an important political force in the southeast) will leave the government once again searching for a Kurdish interlocutor and will be a major setback for the development of a mature Kurdish political movement in Turkey. Meanwhile, if the tension and violence surrounding the Kurdish continue to rise, Ankara may find that moving ahead on the Kurdish reform program might simply be too costly a move for the time being.

Turkey is so indebted it cannot finance the dam from its own resources. Reliable sources have told us that the Turkish government is currently discussing support for the Ilisu Dam with China. For years, the Turkish and Chinese governments have strongly disagreed over the treatment of the Uighur population, which is ethnically Turkic, in China’s Xinjiang Province. Yet in June 2009, Turkey’s President visited China and signed several cooperation agreements, including in the energy sector.

Under a plan which is currently being discussed, Andritz Hydro, the main contractor for the Ilisu hydropower project, would manufacture the turbines for the project in China rather than in Austria. Sinosure, an insurance company set up and owned by the Chinese government, would insure the bank loans for the contract. In a new twist in its emerging role, China would thus not enable its own dam builders to go abroad, but would underwrite the exports of Western dam builders which have shifted part of their manufacturing base to China.

When Chinese companies and financiers started to go overseas around the turn of the century, they held that following social and environmental standards was up to their host governments. They consequently picked up several rogue projects that had been shunned by other financiers during this period. China Exim Bank provided more than $500 million in funding for the Merowe Dam in Sudan in 2003 after export credit agencies from Europe and Canada declined to get involved because of environmental and human rights concerns. Chinese companies are also building several dams in Burma which many other actors would not touch.

Projects like the Merowe Dam have created serious conflicts with the local populations, and have damaged the reputation of the involved Chinese companies. Starting in 2006, the Chinese government asked its companies to take environmental and community concerns more into account when investing abroad. In October 2007, China’s State Council for example stressed the importance of “paying attention to environmental resource protection, caring for and supporting the local community and people’s livelihood” in such projects. An integrated policy package with specific recommendations for Chinese foreign investors is currently under preparation. Such measures indicate that China is interested in being a responsible partner in international finance.

The Ilisu Project has become an international symbol of a substandard project. China is not bound by agreements of the OECD governments, but it helped establish the World Bank standards which the dam on the Tigris is violating. The independent panel of experts which documented the violation of these standards included a well-known Chinese resettlement specialist. So far, China has not yet received an official funding request from Turkey and has not yet had to take a decision on Ilisu. If Sinosure does approve support for the project, it will be a slap in the face of the European governments who have put the interests of the environment and local people before their own export interests. Chinese support for the Ilisu Dam would endanger the efforts of a coordinated approach among international funders on the environment, and could start a new environmental race to the bottom.

(For more on Turkey, visit Istanbul Calling.)

Hard to know where this might go. Both countries, in the past, have turned to negotiating with each other for a mix of reasons (some more sincere than others). For Israel, the Syrian track has always been a good one to fall back on — even if it goes nowhere — when things start falling apart on the Palestinian front. On the other hand, there are also Israeli decision makers who believe that making peace with Syria is essential for helping neutralize the Iranian threat. For the Syrians, getting back the Golan Heights has long been a priority. But negotiating with Israel (or even just talking about it) is also looked at as a way of repairing Damascus’s strained ties with the west. In the mean time, both countries seem to be setting things up so that it appears like it’s the other one that’s not interested in getting the talks back on track.

The two countries, of course, held a round of secret indirect talks under the auspices of Turkey during 2007 and 2008. Although Ankara claims these talks were scuttled by Israel’s invasion of Gaza earlier this year, there are observers who believe that the negotiations were already stalled before that (for some background on this, take a look at this previous post, which has links to related articles). Since Gaza, Turkish-Israeli relations have grown increasingly strained and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s criticism of Israel increasingly harsh, and it is very difficult for me to envision the current Israeli administration turning to Ankara as a mediator in talks with Damascus.

Meanwhile, in the absence of Turkish mediation, other countries have suggested their services as matchmakers for Syria and Israel. France has indicated it could bring the two together (Judah Grunstein offers the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that perhaps “France might mediate between Israel and Turkey, so that Turkey can mediate between Israel and Syria.”). Even tiny Croatia and distant Brazil — perhaps feeling flush after winning their Rio Olympics bid — have recently volunteered their services as possible mediators. Who’s next?

Where does all of this leave Turkey? Is there any future role for Ankara on the Syria-Israel front following the nose dive that relations between Ankara and Jerusalem have taken? Hard to see it, at least from the Israeli perspective. Turkish officials have said they will support any efforts to bring peace to the Middle East, but I also get the sense that there are some in Turkey who aren’t quite ready to accept that it might not be Ankara that will be bringing Syria and Israel together. Following up on Nicolas Sarkozy’s efforts to set France up as a possible mediator, the English-language Today’s Zaman (part of the pro-government Zaman group) reported on Nov. 17, in an article headlined “Sarkozy tried in vain to replace Turkey as peacemaker,” that:

The Syrian president was in Paris on Friday, two days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the city and said he was ready to meet the Syrian president anywhere, at any time, without pre-established conditions, to re-launch talks over the Israeli-Syrian dimension of the broader Mideast peace process.

Sarkozy, who apparently wanted to steal the show in the Middle East process, tried to arrange the two leaders’ visits to Paris at the same time. This way, even if he could not succeed in gathering Assad and Netanyahu together, he would be able to introduce their simultaneous presence in Paris as “France’s great role in peace efforts.” However, Assad said he would not land in Paris until Netanyahu’s plane departed the city, spoiling Sarkozy’s plans.

Take that, Sarko! An article in the Turkish-language Zaman was even more explicit, (misleadingly) reporting that Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had “warned” the French not to get involved. Considering the value that reviving Syrian-Israeli talks would have for the region, portraying any other country’s efforts to mediate between the two enemies as “stealing” Turkey’s show strikes me as profoundly unconstructive.

[UPDATE -- Erdogan has now spoken on the mediation issue, admitting that Israel no longer trusts Turkey to play the mediator role. From Reuters:

"Former Israeli Prime Minister Olmert trusted Turkey, but Netanyahu doesn't trust us. That's his choice," he said in remarks which were televised in Turkey.

Relations between Turkey and Israel have soured since the latter launched an incursion into the Gaza Strip in December.

Erdogan, whose ruling party traces its roots to a banned Islamist movement, has repeatedly criticised the incursion, even having a public shouting match with Israeli President Shimon Peres in January.

Netanyahu and Assad met French President Nicolas Sarkozy separately last week, and Israel said it is ready for talks.

"Now France is trying to take up the role we had," Erdogan said. "I'm not sure what kind of stance Bashar Assad will take, but from what I've heard from him, they're not going to accept something like this."]

(For more on Turkey, visit Istanbul Calling.)

Armenia’s stormy debate over reconciliation with Turkey has died down in the last two weeks as Armenian politicians circle their wagons, size up their opponents and wait for the Turkish parliament’s own decision on ratification of the October 10 protocols to reestablish diplomatic ties between the two states.

Armenia has not yet taken the first step for ratifying the documents - a review by the country’s Constitutional Court to ensure compliance with constitutional law. A Constitutional Court spokesperson told the PanArmenian.net news service on November 9 that President Serzh Sargsyan has not yet submitted the protocols to the court for review. No reason was given for the delay.

One political scientist cautions that observers should not expect rapid, daily progress on reconciliation with Turkey. “This [current] temporary silence anticipates an intensive [development of] events,” Alexander Iskandarian, director of Yerevan’s Caucasus Institute, commented to reporters on November 11.

One opposition member who supports reconciliation with Turkey believes that the prevailing political calm on the issue is linked to parties attempting to consolidate their positions on the documents.

“I don’t think we have silence now,” commented Suren Surenyants, a senior member of the Republic Party. “At this stage, each party is trying to reinforce its position before the next stormy cycle, each country is trying to demonstrate its superiority. This is a process that will intensify soon.”

Part of that process includes watching Turkey’s own decision on ratification. As in Armenia, Turkish opposition parties have expressed strong misgivings about the reconciliation deal.

“Now everybody in Armenia is waiting for the decision of the Turkish parliament,” said Tatul Hakobian, an analyst at the Civilitas Foundation. “This already shows that Armenia has almost no [unilateral] influence on the [future development of] Armenian-Turkish relations. It is waiting for Turkey’s steps.”

For a number of reasons, the villagers have had particular success in luring Moroccan women to Gokce. From a recent Eurasianet piece of mine about the village and its online bride hunters:

To get a sense of how modern technology can be put to use in the service of ancient tradition, one might want to consider a visit to the Yildirim internet cafe in Gokce, a small, poor and dusty village near Turkey’s southern border with Syria.

When Hasip Yildirim, a 34-year-old former truck driver, opened the cafe two years ago, he imagined it would be a place for local children to play video games and surf the web. Little did he know it would become Gokce’s lonely hearts’ club, although with a somewhat unsavory twist.

Many of the men in Gokce (pronounced “Gohk-che”) practice polygamy, which, although officially outlawed in 1926, endures throughout Turkey’s impoverished and predominantly-rural southeast.

In the past, the village’s Arabic-speaking men used to hop across the border to find a second wife in Syria. But the arrival of the internet in the village has changed that. Since Yildirim opened his cafe two years ago, Gokce’s men have started looking for wives online, where — thanks to Turkey’s growing clout and visibility in the Middle East — Turkish bride surfers are suddenly seen as quite a catch by women in the region.

“Everyone’s coming to the internet cafe now to find a wife,” said cafe-owner Yildirim, speaking inside his fluorescent-lit, one-room business, which has some 20 computer terminals. “Sometimes, there’s no space to sit down.”

Locals have zeroed in on Morocco since its citizens can come to Turkey without a visa. In the last year, some 10 Moroccan brides — all second wives, including a 45-year-old who married a man 30 years her senior — have come to Gokce, population 3,200. More than a dozen more are expected to arrive in the coming year.

“Everybody wants a Moroccan bride now,” said Yildirim. He now acts as a kind of virtual matchmaker, scouting out potential Moroccan wives on an Arabic chat website called Habibti.com (”habibti” is the feminine version of “my dear” in Arabic).

“The Moroccans think Turkey has prestige, that it’s a strong country. They also trust Turkey — they know it’s a Muslim country and that we pray and read the Koran,” Yildirim said. “They don’t ask if we are rich or poor, or what we eat. The first question they ask is if we are Muslim or not.”

Issam Moussaoui, executive director of the Democratic Association of Moroccan Women, a women’s rights organization based in Casablanca, says a poor economy and little access to jobs have forced many Moroccan women to look to marriage abroad — particularly in Europe — as a way out of enduring poverty.

For some Moroccan women, being a second wife might not sound so strange. Polygamy in Morocco was banned only in 2004.

Meanwhile, after decades of not being involved in the Middle East, Turkey’s stock in the region is rising. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s harsh criticism of Israel’s attack on Gaza earlier this year endeared Turkey to many in the Arab world, while, in recent years, several Turkish soap operas — dubbed into Arabic — have become hits across the Middle East, further reintroducing the country to the region.

“Moroccans know a lot more about Turkey now,” said Moussaoui, speaking by telephone from Casablanca. “Especially now with the television shows, people know Turkey a lot more. A lot of women watch these shows daily. They know a lot about Turkish culture and that Turkish men [seem] more romantic than other ones.”

You can read the whole article here.

(photo — Hasip Yildirim, owner of an internet cafe in Gokce, a village in Turkey where local men are going online to find Arabic-speaking second wives. By Yigal Schleifer.)

Yesterday’s signing of protocols by Turkey and Armenia that pave the way for restoring relations between the two countries was, without a doubt, a historic moment. But it’s still too early to break out the champagne.

The protocols — signed in Zurich in the presence of the American, French and Russian foreign ministers — spell out in the clearest terms to date what needs to happen in order for diplomatic ties to be restored and for the two countries’ borders to be reopened. But significant hurdles, some of which involve actors outside of Turkey and Armenia themselves, still stand in the way of that actually happening.

Ankara and Yerevan broke off relations in 1993, when Turkey closed its border with Armenia. The move followed Armenia’s invasion of the Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, but the animosity between the two countries goes backs decades further, to what Armenia alleges was the genocide of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians under the Ottoman Turks during World War I.

Turkey admits that Armenians were killed, but claims in significantly lower numbers, and fiercely rejects suggestions that the killings were genocide. Ankara argues instead that the deaths were a result of a civil uprising, when Armenians joined forces with invading Russians.

The protocols — signed with the help of Swiss mediation and American and European arm twisting — call for the renewal of diplomatic ties, opening of the common border and the establishment of a host of intergovernmental sub-commissions. The most significant of the latter will include experts who will take a look at the “historical dimension” of the Turkish-Armenian relationship.

The only catch — and a potentially deal-breaking one — is that the protocols will only go into effect once the parliaments in both countries ratify them. And in both Turkey and Armenia, domestic opposition could stand in the way of that happening….

….Still, restoring ties promises to pay significant dividends for both Turkey and Armenia.

For Turkey, restoring relations with Armenia is critical, both for its European Union candidacy and for its regional ambitions. Ankara hopes to play a larger political and diplomatic role in the surrounding region, and to establish itself as an important energy transit route. The closed border with Armenia remains one of the glaring exceptions to Turkey’s new foreign policy, which it describes as “zero problems with neighbors.” It also leaves Turkey — and the West — dependent on volatile Georgia as the main transit route for Caspian oil and gas.

For Armenia, restoring relations with Turkey would end its isolation in the region and could provide the cash-strapped country with new economic opportunities.

The question for both countries, as well as for some of their neighbors in the region, is whether they can find a way to create a new reality in the Caucasus, or if instead they will remain hostages to history and enmity.

(You can read the full briefing here.)

(For more on Turkey, visit istanbulcalling.blogspot.com)

First up, from the town of Cizre, in Turkey’s predominantly-Kurdish southeast, where a local principal and shopkeeper were detained after they were accused of distributing school ties with the likeness of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan on them, rather than that of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. From a Hurriyet Daily News report:

According to reports, a police officer saw the tie given to his daughter and lodged a complaint. The local prosecutor’s office was told the figure on the tie “looked like PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan.”

An investigation was launched and an expert appointed by the prosecutor’s office supported the claims.

Both the school principal and the shopkeeper who sold the ties were detained by police Tuesday and questioned while the school collected the ties.

The shopkeeper said he had asked a company in Istanbul to produce 115 ties and had placed Atatürk’s silhouette on them as per the school’s order.

He said he and the principal were questioned a day before being released pending trial. “The Atatürk silhouette on the tie doesn’t look anything like Öcalan anyway.I can’t imagine how they came to that conclusion,” he said.

(You can see a shot of the offending tie here. To my eye (and Kamil Pasha’s), it looks a lot like Ataturk, but go figure. As the article reminds readers, this is only the latest phantom Ocalan sighting that has led to legal action. In July, an Ankara lawyer found himself in trouble after authorities charged him with having a photo of Ocalan up on his office wall. Turns out the man with the bushy mustache in the photo was the lawyer’s deceased father.

Next, from Istanbul, a very interesting story about the blurring of the boundaries between mosque and state. As several papers have reported, the minarets of five historic mosques were recently strung up with lights that spelled out nationalist slogans. The lights, known as “mahyas,” are usually hung during Ramadan and deliver blessings and religious sayings. This time, the messages included the famous slogan “How happy is he who says he is a Turk,” as well as “The country comes first,” and “We owe our gratitude to the army.”

From a report in Today’s Zaman’s:

The messages drew the indignation of civil groups, which held demonstrations in the streets of İstanbul yesterday. Rıdvan Kaya, the chairman of the Freedom Association (Özgür-Der), termed the nationalist messages in mahyas a source of “ugliness” and “provocation.”

“We want authorities to reveal who led to such ugliness. Are they still not aware that such moves aim to drag Turkey into an atmosphere of war? While the government is exerting efforts to settle the Kurdish issue, some are attempting to provoke the people,” Kaya said….

….No body or institution has yet claimed responsibility for the controversial mahyas. Today’s Zaman asked the Directorate of Religious Affairs about the move, but directorate officials denied responsibility. “We are in control of the mosques, but they are owned by the General Directorate of Foundations. The Directorate of Religious Affairs is fully outside of this mahya issue,” they said.

The General Directorate of Foundations, however, pointed to the Regional Directorate of Foundations in İstanbul and the İstanbul Governor’s Office as responsible bodies in the determination of messages spelled out on mahyas.

The director of press and public relations of İstanbul Governor’s Office, Nazır Şentürk, said İstanbul Governor Muammer Güler would call a press conference on the mahya controversy. No press conference was called by the time Today’s Zaman went to print. The mahyas were spelled out on the occasion of the anniversary of the liberation of İstanbul from occupation by foreign powers following the War of Independence.

(As a side note, Turkey watchers may recall that prior to taking office, prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan spent time in jail, accused of inciting religious hatred by reciting a poem that said: “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers…” In light of that, it’s interesting to see messages in support of the military being strung from minarets.)

Both these stories strike me as having a lot to do with Turkey’s struggle to define it’s post-Ataturkist identity. School ties and minarets now seem to be yet another battleground in this continuing fight.

(For more on Turkey, visit istanbulcalling.blogspot.com)

First, from a new Eurasianet analysis piece of mine:

Speculation is building in Turkey over whether Ankara will play a part in a revamped US missile-defense network, one designed mainly to contain Iran. Conjecture is being fueled by two recent developments: the Obama administration’s decision to scrap the construction of an anti-missile shield in Central Europe, and Turkey’s own announcement that it intends to purchase its first missile-defense system.

Although it’s not clear if Ankara’s plan to buy a missile defense system is being coordinated with the United States, experts say the purchase is an indication that — despite its warming relations between Turkey and Iran, and Turkish officials’ promotion of a diplomatic solution to the question of Iran’s nuclear program — Turkey is not taking any chances regarding its neighbor’s intentions.

“There is an unstated rivalry [between Turkey and Iran]. They are two powerful states in the region and each one has its own strategy and Turkey now has one of playing an active role in the region,” says Sami Kohen, a columnist with the daily Milliyet and a veteran observer of Turkish foreign policy.

“Turkey thinks that there are a lot of common interests with Iran. There are improving trade, economic, and energy ties. There has been a period of normalization, which has now been followed by a period of closer ties,” Kohen continued. “Nevertheless, people in responsible positions who want to see Turkey grow as a key regional player believe there is a rivalry with Iran.”

If it wants to play the part of regional power-broker, added Kohen, “Turkey can’t lag [militarily] behind other countries in the neighborhood - Iran on the one hand and Greece on the other….”

….Although Turkish officials to date have kept their distance from American plans to introduce a more fluid European-based missile defense plan, experts say Ankara could benefit by being involved.

Even though the Obama administration has abandoned plans to place an anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic, US officials have made it clear that they intend to deploy such a system elsewhere, in a location better able to cope with the rapidly escalating Iranian threat.

“The whole plan is going on, but in a different version, and it gets more interesting now with countries like Turkey possibly [getting] involved. It seems like the scope of the system is being increased,” said Lt Col Marcel de Haas, a senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations.

“The question is if [placing Patriot missiles in Turkey is] going to be part of a theater missile defense?” he adds.

“If that is the case for Turkey — in this whole expanded scheme of missile defense — it is quite interesting. I say it strengthens the Turkish position in NATO, and you can also consider it part of European defense, which could possibly bring Turkey closer to the European Union.”

Other observers have suggested that placing Patriots in Turkey could also bolster Turkish-US relations, which have gone through several strained periods in recent years.

“Poland’s loss may be Turkey’s and America’s gain: Turkey is the only NATO country that borders Iran, and US-Turkish cooperation on Tehran is key to Washington’s success in tackling Iran’s nuclearization,” Washington-based analyst Soner Cagaptay recently wrote in an online forum hosted by the New York Times.

The German Marshall Fund, meanwhile, has just published a piece on the subject, by Ian Lesser, one of the sharpest Turkey analysts out there. From Lesser’s analysis:

The Turkish public remains relatively relaxed about Iran’s nuclear program. But Turkey’s defense planners cannot be so sanguine about the implications of proliferation around the region. Turkey has much to lose from the prospect of a nuclear or near-nuclear Iran, not to mention the potential for multiple new nuclear arsenals. Turkey is vulnerable to the cascading effects of nuclear and missile proliferation over the wider neighborhood, from the Aegean to South Asia, including effects on conventional military balances and doctrine. More dramatically, Turkey, with its Western security ties, is exposed to the retaliatory consequences of American, European, or Israeli action against Iran or other proliferators on Turkey’s borders. The physical vulnerability of Turkish cities, as well as Incirlik airbase and oil terminals on the Mediterranean, coupled with growing Turkish unease about the credibility of NATO guarantees, give Ankara a strong interest in strategic reassurance alongside enhanced defenses….

…. In theory, the new U.S. approach to missile defense in Europe offers Turkey the prospect of improved relations with Russia, greater consensus on containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a more effective response to immediate threats to Turkish territory, and renewed reassurance from NATO allies. But capturing these theoretical gains and avoiding perceived threats to Turkish sovereignty will require much closer coordination between Ankara and its allies.

Lesser’s entire piece (pdf) is worth reading.

(For more on Turkey, visit istanbulcalling.blogspot.com)

Not so in Turkey, where the Costner magic still seems to be at work. It all started two years ago when Costner and his “rock” band, Modern West (don’t tell me you’ve never heard of them!), came to play a benefit concert in Istanbul for a children’s aid group. During the visit, it was even suggested that perhaps Costner could play the role of Ataturk in a proposed biopic about the secularizing founder of the modern Turkish state. High praise, indeed!

Earlier this year, meanwhile, Turkish Airlines deemed Costner’s star bright enough to recruit him for a massive (and strangely ineffective) ad campaign promoting the airline’s new and improved first class service. Soon his face was plastered on billboards all over Turkey, telling Turks that now they, too, can “feel like a star.” (You can watch the English-language television commercial, where Costner works his charm on a lithe flight attendant, here.)

But now things are getting even more serious. According to reports in the local press, Costner is now getting involved in Turkish politics. In a Friday report in the English language Today’s Zaman, we are told “American actor and director Kevin Costner [has] joined the ranks of celebrities supporting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s democratic initiative aimed at addressing various problems, including the Kurdish issue.” According to the article, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) had actually invited Costner to attend the party’s upcoming congress, but wasn’t able to make it. Still, according to a statement released by party deputy chairwoman Edibe Sozen (a former professor of “communications,” it should be noted), Costner “conveyed his support for the democratic initiative because it shows the value Turkey attaches to human rights.” (A brief about this in the semi-official Anatolian Agency news service makes it sound like the invite was only issued after Costner himself contacted the AKP to give his unprompted support for the government’s new initiative.)

The Turkish government has been busy laying the groundwork for the unveiling of its highly-anticipated “democratic initiative,” which is mostly aimed at dealing with the long-standing Kurdish problem. A big part of laying that groundwork has involved meeting with civil society groups and other political parties. But now it looks like the government is pulling out the big guns by unveiling “celebrity” endorsements for the initiative. Of course, the ultimate endorsement of the initiative would be the one given by the Turkish people (Kurds, in particular), but having Kevin Costner on board certainly doesn’t hurt.

(UPDATE — Speaking of celebrity endorsements, the Turkish papers have been running front page headlines about U2’s decision to add an Istanbul leg to their current world tour. According to Hurriyet, Egemen Bagis, the government minister who is handling Turkey’s European Union membership process, even promised the band that if they come to the country, he will arrange for them to play a gig on one of the bridges crossing the Bosphorus, which would allow them to play at the spot where Europe and Asia “meet.” The last ones to try this bi-continental stunt were a pair of top-ranked Chinese and Austrian ping pong players, who played a 30-minute match earlier this summer in the middle of one of the Bosphorus bridges. Motorists in the city of 18 million were not amused.)

(UPDATE II — The Costner story keeps heating up. Now Turkey’s opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) is crying foul over Costner’s purported support for the government’s democratization initiative. According to news reports, CHP leader Deniz Baykal, speaking at a “grape festival” in Antalya, had this to say: “Who on earth are you? What is it that you know and speak? If they put a map in front of you, you wouldn’t be able to locate Şırnak [a city in Turkey's predominantly-Kurdish southeast]. You mind your own business.”

Baykal even suggested that the government is using Costner’s “endorsement” in a deceptive manner. “The prime minister is hiding the truths from the public regarding the opening. He has a project on his mind and plans to make it accepted slowly in the face of possible reactions from the nation. Is it the prime minister’s job to deceive people?” he said.)

(For more on Turkey, visit istanbulcalling.blogspot.com)

Photo by John Griffiths