Turning to the East

Carolyn Drake for TIME
Turks in Istanbul's Taksim Square protest the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara

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Erdogan, a devout Muslim, brash former football player and fiery orator, swept to power in 2002, promising change after years of weak coalition governments. Though schooled in hard-core political Islam, he and his friends learned from numerous Islamist predecessors who had been banned from politics for antisecularism. They broke with the Islamist old guard, billed themselves as center-right and founded the AKP on a media-friendly, pro-business platform. They spoke no longer of Islamic unity but of links with Washington Erdogan met George W. Bush at the White House before even taking office and recruited former leftists to gain credibility.

They did not have things all their own way. For eight years, the AKP has been locked in an epic power struggle with the secularist establishment led by the military. The AKP refused to bow to a Chief of Staff warning against electing a President whose wife wears a headscarf, and it survived an attempt by the top court to ban it for antisecularism. Breaking with Israel would have been inconceivable even a few years ago, when the country's powerful generals still had a say in foreign policy. But "times have changed," says Armagan Kuloglu, a retired major general. "The government might ask the military for an opinion, but it doesn't necessarily act in accordance with that." Turkish media reported that the generals had opposed sending the Gaza flotilla.

Most important, nearly 50 years after Turkey first applied to join the European Union, in 2005 the AKP finally won the right to start membership talks. Armed with a mandate to prepare for E.U. accession, it passed a series of democratic reforms, got the economy clocking up an impressive 6% average growth over five years and began to chip away at the military's many powers. Elements within the top military brass started plotting to get rid of the AKP, which they suspected of harboring a secret Islamicizing agenda. A landmark trial now under way has unveiled a sinister network of military men, lawyers and businessmen obsessed with overthrowing the AKP by staging assassinations and bomb attacks to destabilize society and usher in military rule.

Rebuffed by Europe
Elsewhere in the world, Erdogan's reforms might be hailed as a victory for democracy and the rule of law. But though a majority of the population supports efforts to rein in the military, the AKP's authoritarian streak worries many Turks. Erdogan famously brooks little dissent; he has sued dozens of journalists and cartoonists who lampoon him. "For decades the military was Turkey's backbone, and it produced a corresponding ideology that permeated all other institutions like education and the courts," says Soli Ozel, a political-science professor at Istanbul's Bilgi University. "Now the military has collapsed, and that backbone is gone. But what will be built in its place?"

For many liberal Turks who supported Erdogan's reforms, the answer to that question was Europe. Eventual membership in the E.U., they believed, would guarantee Turkey's democratic progression. But the E.U. led by skeptics on Turkish membership such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has increasingly turned its back on Ankara. Sarkozy and Merkel have suggested that Turkey become merely a "privileged partner" of the E.U., an idea that deeply offends Turks. A Transatlantic Trends survey last year found 48% of Turks in favor of joining the E.U., down from 80% in 2004. And 65% believe membership is unlikely to ever happen.

This sense that Europe has let down Turkey resonates in Washington. "If there is anything to the notion that Turkey is moving eastward," said U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates in London recently, "it is in no small part because it was pushed and pushed by some in Europe refusing to give Turkey the kind of organic link to the West that Turkey sought."

Without that link, Erdogan has turned populist and in rhetoric at least, openly Islamist. His nationalist outbursts after the attack on the Mavi Marmara threaten to further polarize an already divided population and risk undermining the delicate East-West balancing act that Turkey is attempting in its foreign policy. "Ankara must take great care to moderate its rhetoric and actions to preserve key elements that make the Turkish example so attractive in the Middle East," says Hugh Pope, Turkey director for the International Crisis Group. "Namely, its ability until recently to talk on neutral terms to all players in the region."

The Obama Administration has publicly downplayed concern over Turkish policy, instead stepping up behind-the-scenes diplomacy in the aftermath of Mavi Marmara. A senior Turkish foreign-affairs delegation traveled to Washington shortly after the flotilla debacle even as Ankara rejected an Israeli-led inquiry into the deaths. Publicly, with an eye on elections next year, Erdogan continues to stoke anti-Israel sentiment to ward off a resurgent far right and the Kemalist opposition, which finally has a new, more appealing leader in Kemal Kilicdaroglu, 62, a former civil servant. In Washington, the senior Administration official recognizes that some of Erdogan's behavior is determined by the moment. "There's an electoral atmosphere in Turkey," he notes. But at the same time, Washington is mindful that things might go badly wrong. "I don't think you can take anything for granted," says the official. "Turkey's always had multiple identities. You can't just assume that it's a pillar of Western stability. It has other options, and that's why we have to invest in the relationship. We want to demonstrate that a Muslim country can be part of the West."

He's not alone in that, but wishing for it won't make it so.

Time.com

Turning to the East

Feeling betrayed by Israel and snubbed by Europe, Turkey is forging a new identity as an independent regional power. Will the country be able to court multiple alliances, or will the West lose one of its closest friends?