Turks calm despite unpopular war with high economic price
By Leyla Boulton, Financial Times (UK), March 26, 2003 - The streets of Ankara offer little evidence that the city is capital of one the states bordering on the war in Iraq. There is no panic buying in the shops and markets, no apparent fear of attack - despite the fact that two wayward US cruise missiles have hit eastern Turkey - and little in the way of protests against America and the war.

Turkey is the only frontline state where Washington has not ordered the withdrawal of non-essential diplomatic staff - though this did not stop the US embassy from reminding American citizens earlier this week that "healthy paranoia is our first line of defence in the war on terrorism".

The calm among Turks appears all the more remarkable given the punishing economic consequences of the country's refusal earlier this month to allow the deployment of US troops for the opening of a second front against Baghdad.

The Turkish lira, as well as stocks and bonds, have plunged to record lows following last week's withdrawal of a $24bn (n) US aid package intended to insulate the debt-ridden economy from the effects of war.

Parliament's failure by just three votes to endorse the US troop deployment reflected contradictions running through Turkey - the country is torn between its traditional friendship with America and its abhorrence, born of harsh experience, of war on its doorstep. The crisis has also highlighted the nation's deep-seated desire for an end to the economic weakness that has repeatedly made Turkey vulnerable to foreign meddling.

Unlike the Arab neighbours it used to rule over, Turkey has pursued aggressive westernization policies to become a secular democracy.

Already a key member of NATO, the country is also a candidate for membership of the European Union.

The very fact that the Justice and Development party, or AKP, a grass-roots party with Islamist roots, was able to come to power last November, despite efforts by arch-secularist judges to stop it, marked a step forward for further democratization. But the recent fiasco with the US also prompted the very same secularist generals and opposition politicians who contributed to the failed vote to claim that their suspicions about the AKP were right all along.

Although the government is under attack from business leaders and media commentators, most of the small traders around the Kale, Ankara's historic citadel and one of the sleepy capital's few tourist attractions, were reluctant to blame the inexperienced AKP.

As suggested by parliament's failed vote on March 1 over the US troop deployment, the US campaign against Iraq is unpopular among Turks who suffered at least $30bn in economic losses in the last Gulf war. "The US will choke in Iraq," says Muammer Sari, a wholesaler of nuts and dried fruit, echoing a superiority complex prevalent among more nationalist Turks. "If we were there, we would have taken Baghdad by now."

That most Turks have mixed feelings about the war is clear. As Tarhan Erdem, a respected independent pollster puts it, views of the war are more complex than suggested by opinion polls indicating that 94 per cent of Turks are opposed to it.

"If you ask people whether they are for or against war, they would have to be sadists to say they support war," he says. "The government's main failing was its failure to say yes or no to the Americans before they were overtaken by events."

Such mixed feelings are accentuated in the middle-class neighbourhoods at the other end of town. "I am happy we are not in the war," says Timur Ertekin, a well-to-do dentist, who took part in a massive anti-war rally staged on the day parliament voted against the US troop deployment. "But being against war is different from the requirements of realpolitik. If Turkey had joined the war in a clever fashion, it would be affected less than it is now."

Sentiment in the capital is similarly split over whether Turkish troops should intervene in the Kurdish-dominated enclave of northern Iraq.

"Northern Iraq is a swamp and I do not want our Mehmetchiks [soldiers] to die there," Ali Guven, a pensioner, said.

The generals in Ankara see a Turkish troop presence as essential to discourage Kurds from creating an independent state that could destabilise Turkey's Kurdish-dominated south-east. But the conciliatory stance adopted by AKP ministers appears more in touch with popular sentiment.

After enduring two conflicts - the first Gulf war and the terrorist war at home - in as many decades, the main concern of many Turks is a desire to avoid a recurrence of the terror attacks launched by the separatist Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) from northern Iraq until the late 1990s.

"Basically people are scared that there will be another PKK," says Kazim Yalcinoglu, chairman of Opal, a family-owned textile exporting business on the industrial outskirts of Ankara.

His main reproach to the Ankara leadership is over its failure to explain Turkish concerns to the rest of the world.

Belligerent statements by the country's generals and politicians are no substitute, he says, for economic measures promised by the AKP to win the peace in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated south-east. "We are being pushed into the corner of being seen as the bad guy and that is not fair." (Additional reporting by Funja Guler.)