Turkey says no to U.S. deployment — Is this the start of real democracy in Turkey?

In the span of a few min­utes this morn­ing, the Turk­ish par­lia­ment approved the deploy­ment of 62,000 U.S. troops, 255 war­planes and 65 heli­copters in a squeaker vote (264 to 250 with 19 absten­tions) only to have the vote nul­li­fied a few moments later by speaker of par­lia­ment Speaker Bulent Arinc because a major­ity of leg­is­la­tors present had not voted in favor. He then shut down the par­lia­ment until Tues­day. This will throw some sand in the gears of the U.S. war machine, to say the least, as Turkey appar­ently refuses to stay bought. The $15 bil­lion in loans and grants — and the right to run roughshod over Iraq’s Kurds — isn’t enough.
Believe it or not, this is cause for hope, and not for any rea­sons hav­ing to do with stop­ping the war, which is a train that left the sta­tion some time ago. No, this is cause for hope the world is wit­ness­ing the grow­ing pains of a mature Turk­ish democ­racy.
About 94 per­cent of the Turk­ish pub­lic is opposed to a war on Iraq, since the coun­try suf­fered so in the first one. Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Party (AKP) leader, Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan, urged party leg­is­la­tors to side with the United States and approve the deploy­ment, since Turkey needs assis­tance from the IMF and the World Bank, two insti­tu­tions dom­i­nated by the United States. The gen­er­als in Ankara also backed the vote, see­ing that Turkey is a major pur­chaser of Amer­i­can mil­i­tary hard­ware and the U.S. was the country’s most reli­able ally in the war with PKK sep­a­ratists from 1984 – 1998. Plus, the Amer­i­cans were going to let the Turks have Iraqi Kur­dis­tan.
But the unruly Turk­ish par­lia­ment — and espe­cially AKP deputies — defied their party leader and lis­tened to the Turk­ish pub­lic, diss­ing the United States on its No. 1 for­eign pol­icy issue. The dan­gers of this to Turk­ish par­lia­men­tar­i­ans are great and those who voted against the res­o­lu­tion are brave men and women.

And now, we are faced with another cri­sis. If the gen­er­als don’t step in and push the AKP out of power as they did with the Wel­fare Party, another Islamist polit­i­cal group, in 1997, the world could be see­ing the peo­ple of Turkey enjoy­ing true democ­racy for the the first time in the his­tory of their young repub­lic. Turkey would enjoy a gov­ern­ment with­out the threat of a parental mil­i­tary step­ping in and “fix­ing” things. The coun­try would finally be able to let its own very capa­ble cit­i­zenry make deci­sions through the bal­lot box — and it would be forced to live with their deci­sions. That’s the def­i­n­i­tion of true democ­racy, and the cit­i­zens of Turkey have wanted it — and deserved it — for far too long.
Make no mis­take. If this vote sticks and the mil­i­tary stays out of it, it will not be easy for Turkey. They are heav­ily depen­dent on the IMF and World Bank for eco­nomic assis­tance and the United States will no doubt retal­i­ate for Turkey’s “treach­er­ous” actions, a.k.a., lis­ten­ing to the will of the peo­ple. (The United States has already threat­ened to retal­i­ate against Ger­many and France.) The eco­nomic dam­age from a war in Iraq will be high, pos­si­bly higher than the $100 bil­lion Turkey says it has suf­fered since 1991. But I sus­pect that if Turkey defied the United States on this issue, it might find itself more wel­come in Europe’s bosom when France and Ger­many look a lit­tle more kindly on the Turks…

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