Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

In a few weeks time, the European Union will issue its annual report on Turkey’s progress towards meeting the goals required for membership of the EU.  It has been Turkey’s single-minded ambition to be accepted as a member of the European Union since at least 1959 when it applied for associate membership status.  Normally, the publication of the EU’s scorecard on Turkey’s full membership application is awaited with keen anticipation.  What is so significant this year is that no one in Ankara seems concerned, a point which highlights almost more than anything one could think of the new priorities of Turkish foreign policy.  Turkey’s priority is to re-establish itself as a Middle Eastern power, not a European power.

In theory, there is nothing particularly alarming about this, and of course it lets a reluctant EU off the hook.  However it is the way in which Turkey is conducting its reorientation that is alarming.  As we pointed out last week, in the process of reorienting Turkish foreign policy Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erodgan is stirring up dangerous nationalist passions over Cyprus, and there have even been allegations that joint Israeli military exercises with Greece, Italy, Romania, and others are part of a new ‘Mediterranean axis’ aimed at Turkey.  And, as part of the Turkish drive to secure influence in the post-revolutionary Mideast, Erdogan has become a passionate advocate of the Palestinian cause.  This plays well on the Arab street, but it does not encourage the Israeli compromises on which any peace settlement depends.

More hawkish members of Israel’s security establishment have been arguing that Israel should respond by playing the Kurdish card to destabilize Turkey and to encourage it to moderate its hostility towards Israel.  Unfortunately for Israel, the US appears to be taking completely the opposite line.

The US has two overriding concerns.  This first has been to secure Turkish participation in Nato’s anti-missile shield, and this it did in September.  The second is to station Predator drones in Turkey after US troops have withdrawn from Iraq.  The price for Turkish acquiescence, however, seems to have been increased US support for Turkey’s battle against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebels.  On 30 September, the US Ambassador in Ankara Francis Ricciardone said that the US is giving three Super Cobra helicopters to Turkey to replace helicopters lost during its campaign against the PKK, and sources in Ankara say that this is indicative of “gradually increasing” cooperation between the US and Turkey against the PKK.

Meanwhile, US efforts to moderate post-Mubarak Egypt’s hostility to Israel are having only limited success.  In Cairo last week for talks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressed for the interim government to strengthen its ties with Israel.  Amr gave little away, but on 29 September, the day after Clinton’s talks with Amr, Egypt’s permanent representative at the United Nations, Majid Abd-al-Aziz, gave an interview in which he said: “Political change in the Middle East urges further strengthening of cooperation between Iran and Egypt.”

So concerned is Israel about the rise in anti-Israeli opinion in Egypt that it is to staff its embassy in Cairo only with officials who are unmarried.