AKP, won a stunning 2/3 of the seats in the parliament with 35 percent of votes only (10 percent is the cut-off point ) in the November 2002 elections , becoming the first Islamic party to form a government, much to the dismay of secular establishment led by Turkish Armed Forces, who consider themselves the custodians of Ataturk’s secular legacy. It is some irony that an Islamic government has succeeded in taking Turkey right up to the gates of Europe Union. Except some recent cases AKP has, a clean governance record compared to the earlier corrupt regimes and should be easily re-elected.

The Pashas as the Turkish Generals are known intervened in 1960 and 1980 directly and forced a regime change in 1971 .In 1997, they forced a coalition led by Islamic Welfare party Prime Minister Najemettin Erbakan, to resign. Erdogan and Abdullah Gul were the leading lights of Erbakan’s party, who then left it to establish a new but less Islamic party, AKP. They say it is a conservative party like Christian democratic parties in Europe. They have done a commendable job in alleviating Western fears, when they were voted into power.

In 1994, when Gul was spokesman for foreign affairs for the Welfare Party, he said, "Turkey should not join the European Union; we have said this from the beginning. Look at a European city, and then look at Istanbul. It's not a Christian city." A few years ago, Erdogan recited a poem that included the verses, "Minarets are our bayonets, domes are our helmets, mosques are our barracks, and believers are our soldiers." For this, he was jailed and subsequently debarred from contesting the November elections. They have come a long way since then.

AKP utilized EUs’ Copenhagen criteria,  to limit the political role of the Armed Forces,  exercised by its domination of the powerful policy making National Security Council , which has now been reduced to an advisory body only. Thus, Erdogan and AKP have cemented their position. Gen Pervez Musharraf , who spent his impressionable school years in Ankara and like most Pakistan military leaders admires the Turkish military’s role in politics , established the National Security Council in Pakistan on taking over in 1999 .Except that the professional Turkish military goes back to the barracks after cleaning up the mess created by the politicians .

New EU conditions or break down of talks could have led to political turmoil in Turkey and re-emergence of fascists and fundamentalist forces and possible resurgence of its military sooner than later. After Ankara was denied an EU candidate status in 1998, angry Turks voted in leftist, nationalist, fascist and Islamic parties. Next year EU granted Ankara the candidate status.

The talks would hasten further westernization and modernization of Turkish polity, leading to greater cultural and religious freedom to Kurds, Alevis and other minorities, who have been ruled with a heavy hand. During the last decade, Turkey’s political system has been revolutionized with an array of Constitutional reforms, on human rights, rights of women and against torture, with death penalty abolished. AKP represents Conservative, pious up-and-coming Muslim leadership from central Anatolia, so it will have to soft-pedal its agenda of bringing back the Muslim headscarf and other conservative symbols and measures.

Others to breathe a sigh of relief were the secular layers of the Turkish population, mostly in Istanbul and other major towns.  The claim in the author’s article on influence of Turkic languages on Hindustani, published in Turkey media that only 15% of Turkish population originated from central Asia, who helped establish the Seljuk and the Ottoman Empires, was challenged only in the fundamentalist media but they could not produce any facts to counter it.  Majority of Turkish population are descendants of Hittites, Galatians , Clinicians, Cappadoccians and others , who inhabited Asia Minor, as Turkey was then known.

Blocked by Persia in the East ,the Ottomans ,as per practice ,could not recruit slave Turkish nomads from central Asia, so they selected Christian boys from East Europe and Asia Minor itself, who formed the shock troops called Janissaries , a terror for Europe and later for the Ottoman Sultans. The more intelligent among them were trained at the Palace who later became prime ministers , ministers, governors and senior military commanders. The question of identity will always remain a problem for the Turks as well as for the Europeans. 

Of course, for UK, the current EU Chair with its recent disastrous record in foreign affairs, it was imperative to succeed, but the main pressure on Austria came from USA.  Although relations between Washington and Ankara remain plunged and remain frosty because of US invasion of Iraq but in the region, Turkey with nearly one million armed personnel remains a key player and an ally.  During the Cold War Turkey was known as NATO’s  unsinkable aircraft carrier.

Recently there has been a flurry of high-level visits and increased economic co-operation between Turkey and Russia , hitherto historic enemies. Ankara and its arch enemy Damascus have also made up ,much against US wish .Erdogan increasingly looks to the East with relations improving even with Tehran .Turkey’s almost ally level relations with Israel nose dived following the latter’s fishing in Iraqi Kurdistan , creating problems for Ankara from its own Kurds .But they are returning to normal , with Erdogan even facilitating a meeting last month between foreign ministers of Israel and Pakistan in Istanbul.

For regional stability in EU’s east , beyond which is the “cauldron of chaos and terrorism” and as an insurance against Turkey tilting eastwards , success of the entry talks were a must. No wonder Javier Solana, the EU's putative foreign minister, declared that Europe and the world would benefit by binding a country of 70 million Muslims into the union.“ Everyone is a winner. Turkey is in a strategic region and in our neighborhood," said Solana.

Near Antalya in western Turkey on a hill overlooking its Mediterranean coast , methane fires have issued from crevices since ancient times, which the Greek pirates as they glided past at night wondered about . This formed the basis of the myth of Chimera in Greek mythology, a fire-breathing female monster that resembled a lion in the forepart, a goat in the middle, and a dragon behind.

Chimera is now used generally to symbolize a fantastic idea or figment of the imagination. Much diminished now, Turkey’s dream of becoming a full EU member might just remain a Chimera.

(Gajendra Singh., served as Indian Ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan in1992 -96. Prior to that, he served as ambassador to Jordan (during the1990 - 91Gulf war), Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies, in Bucharest. The views expressed here are his own

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