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[Lit]

The New Rules: Turkey's Long Game in the Cyprus Gas Dispute
By Thomas P.M. Barnett | 10 Oct 2011

"Resource wars" enthusiasts worldwide have a new -- and unexpected -- poster child: "zero problems with neighbors" Turkey. The Turkish government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is beside itself over Israel's recent moves to cooperate with Cyprus on surveying its Eastern Mediterranean seabed for possible natural gas deposits thought to be lying adjacent to the reserves discovered last year off the coast of Haifa.

I told Reuters last week that the mounting war of words between Turkey and Israel, which includes some clear military preparations, amounts to a "storm in a teacup." But other respected experts quoted in the article sounded some legitimate alarms.

Fellow WPR columnist Nikolas Gvosdev, for example, called it a "big deal," pointing out that Turkey is talking about sending naval escorts for its own surveying efforts on behalf of the breakaway Turkish region in north Cyprus. The Russians, already siding with Turkey's rival Greece, are likewise slated to show up in the region soon with an aircraft carrier. As for the U.S.; its activity in the Mediterranean has been slim since the end of the Cold War. That underscores a point raised by Ian Bremmer, head of the Eurasia Group, who notes that in a "G-zero" world, we may well find regional security cooperation insufficient to mitigate such territorial dust-ups.

So why do I remain so sanguine on the subject? To begin with, the tension between Israel and Turkey has less to do with the actual resources at stake here than with a number of Turkey's long-term policy goals. First of these is that of establishing itself as the trusted regional hub between energy providers in Central Asia and energy buyers, predominantly in Europe. At the end of the day, Turkey cannot abandon this strategy without serious costs to its economic strength, without which Erdogan is nothing as a national political figure. And absent some sort of accommodation of Turkey's claims for north Cyprus, the Cyprus reserves, once developed, would leave Turkey on the wrong side of the newly established hub.

This very calculated fit of pique by Ankara is also part and parcel of its ongoing reorientation away from its historical comity with Israel and the West, itself driven by a number of reasons. Turkey is interested in becoming the regional leader throughout the Middle East, in rivalry with both Saudi Arabia and Iran. To make this regional leadership bid, Turkey must make Israel its whipping boy, a tried-and-true ploy that Iran plays to perfection.

At the same time, Turkey must also prepare for Iran's eventual weaponization of its nuclear capabilities, most recently estimated for the 2015 timeframe. Once that happens, Riyadh will immediately cash in a longtime promise from Pakistan for a nuclear counter, and Turkey will likely do the same, effectively estranging Ankara from both the European Union and NATO. The Erdogan government must prepare this pathway both domestically and abroad so that it does not come out of the blue.

As a bogeyman for both of these objectives, the Greece-Cyprus-Israel coalition on display in the current offshore gas row is made to order.

How can we know that Turkey won't go all the way to real war? While no one can be certain of this, it's clear that Turkey stands alone on this issue. The U.S. will side with Israel for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that a U.S.-Israeli energy consortium made both the big discovery, dubbed Leviathan, off of Israel's coast and is now surveying off the coast of Cyprus. Europe will naturally side with Greece and Cyprus, especially as the EU is eager for access to new energy supplies to reduce its dependence on Russian gas.

Turkey's militant play here is unlikely to generate broader international buy-in for a negotiated settlement, because that would involve deal-making with a breakaway region -- the Turkish north of Cyprus -- that only Ankara recognizes. Israel won't do it under any circumstances, given its Palestinian issues, nor will Russia with its own "near abroad" conflicts. As for rising powers in the East, you can count out both India and China for similar reasons.

Turkey's demand that no gas exploitation occur prior to a settlement of the Cypriot issue is unlikely to fly either, as ongoing talks between the two sides have been stalemated since the last final status agreement was rejected by Greek Cypriot voters in 2004. Since then, Cyprus' accession to the EU has exacerbated the already stubborn standoff.

As a result of all these limitations, no diplomatic solution can work without tarnishing Turkey's now sought-after reputation as Muslim defender against the "greedy" West. So the only thing that Turkey's play here is going to tell us is how fast and how far it wants to engineer its showy break with both Israel and the EU.

Finally, we shouldn't read too much into whatever theatrical shows of military force ensue, even when "shots across the bow" are fired. Ankara would probably love to shoot down an Israeli jet or two and declare "victory," but the notion that the Turkish navy is somehow going to enforce sea control over the Eastern Mediterranean against the very same regional naval forces it has spent the past several decades jointly operating with is madness. The Erdogan government is already on too shaky a footing with the Turkish military for that pathway to unfold without some sort of revolt from the generals.

What's more, a hard-won sea control victory would not translate into long-term "seabed control." At best, the Turks might succeed in making the naval situation so unsettled that nobody will be able to exploit the energy resources in the Eastern Mediterranean. But with the finds being so large, and with so many regional players -- Israel, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus and Greece -- standing to benefit, there's simply no way Turkey will be able to coerce them into staving off this long-term extractive play. There's just too much money to be made.

So where is all this heading? Turkey might stage a very angry walkout from its EU accession talks next summer when Cyprus assumes the EU's rotating presidency. That may already be a fait accompli. Turkey might even encourage civil strife on Cyprus or even directly target Cypriot or Israeli offshore drilling ships and rigs downstream. Again, the clock is ticking on Iran's successful reach for the bomb, so the more evidence Turkey generates concerning its independence from the West, the easier its nuclear moves will become once that event arrives.

In the end, these natural gas fields will be drilled and exploited, because everybody who wants it to happen has more than enough military muscle to defend their interests. Turkey will have to live with that outcome, even as it does its best to exploit the dynamics in its bid for regional leadership of the ever-tumultuous Middle East. All we will learn from Turkey's next steps is how much Erdogan is prepared to seek that desired victory in the face of its mounting "Pyrrhic" costs.

Thomas P.M. Barnett is chief analyst at Wikistrat and a contributing editor for Esquire magazine. His forthcoming eBook serial is "The Emily Updates: One Year in the Life of the Girl Who Lived" (September-December 2011). His weekly WPR column, The New Rules, appears every Monday. Reach him and his blog at thomaspmbarnett.com.

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/arti ... as-dispute

[repulsewarrior]

...watch for middle countries like Pakistan, Brazil, and China, who are the 'friends', and Turkey's good neighbours.

[Nikitas]

The final outcome is that Erdo will be remembered in history as Mr Bombastic, and very little more.

The resources will be extracted because everyone wants them. End of story. Zero problems with neighbors but for a totally different reason than the one promoted by Davut.

The end game I see in this, and which is the most interesting part, is the desanctifying of Attaturk. Islam is not going to fill the void, so what will come next is anyone's guess.

[Hermes]

The end game I see in this, and which is the most interesting part, is the desanctifying of Attaturk. Islam is not going to fill the void, so what will come next is anyone's guess.

Let's not forget that Ataturk replaced Mohammed as Turkey's cult leader. See here for a concise account of Kemalism's cult origins:

Atatürk intentionally created various cults: “a Turkish cult of reason,” “an institutional cult of the Republic,” “a personality cult surrounding Mustafa Kemal,” “and a further cult around his own Republican People’s Party.” Even racism entered the scene. An official history textbook prepared under Atatürk’s supervision promoted “abandoning superstitions” based on “Jewish myths,” and focusing rather on “the deep racial roots” of the Turks. Hence Atatürk promoted extravagant theories that defined the Turks as the seed of all ancient civilizations and the best of the “brachycephalic Alpine race” (the term referred to a particular skull type). No wonder, with Atatürk’s orders, many “racial” studies were carried out, in which Turkish skulls, of the living or the dead, were measured. The Kemalist researchers were particularly delighted, when, in 1935, they opened up the tomb of Sinan, the great Ottoman architect of Armenian or Greek origin, to measure his skull and to discover that he “was not only culturally, but racially Turkish.”
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php? ... 2011-08-05

We have here the roots of all modern Turkey's myths. Instead of looking forward, Erdogan and his cronies have tried to reverse history. Back to the Ottoman Future! As you say, where do they go from here? Europe was supposed to tame the beast but this seems unlikely in the foreseeable future given the doomed path that the AKP have embarked on...

[kurupetos]

...watch for middle countries like Pakistan, Brazil, and China, who are the 'friends', and Turkey's good neighbours.

Have you ever heard of Pan-Turanism? I can assure you that is not about making new friends.

[Nikitas]

Inevitable that eugenics would feature in a manufactured nationalist system of the 1930s. But elements of that attitude of racial superiority were also discernible in the 1950s campaign of Turk to Turk. It is also plain in Erdo's speeches and his disdain for GCs, to the point that he refers to us as "them", refusing to use even the derogatory term Rum, treating us as objects rather than people. The careful and calculated use of the words Rum and Yunan is indicative of their racist preoccupation.

I always meant to ask those TCs on the forum who repeated the mantra that a large percentage of GCs were imported from Greece after 1878 how those hypothetical people lost the title Yunan and became Rum, while TCs refer to themselves as Turk and not Ottoman.

Maybe the racism is an unavoidable outcome of national insecurity, along with the flag flaunting. It is doubtful if any other culture flaunts its national symbols to such excess, they feel there must be a reminder of Turkishness on every corner of every street. Yet there is no external challenge to Turkishness, there never was one.

It is odd that a nation with so much insecurity sees itself as a potential leader of older and secure cultures, like the Arabs, and especially the Egyptians who are regarded as the leading Arab nation. I wonder how that plan will pan out for Davut and Erdo in months to come.