The Western Condition - St Antony's College - University of Oxford

The Western Condition: Turkey, the US and the EU in the New Middle East
along the East/West divide. This narrative depicted a Manichean struggle between good (the
democratic West) and evil (the totalitarian East).
Beyond the security rhetoric, belonging in the West during the Cold War simply meant
participating in the US-led security framework and the capitalist free market system. Issues of
democratic governance, civil liberties and human rights tended to become a concern for the US
foreign policy establishment only when these had a bearing on the perceived security and
politico-economic interests of the alliance’s key actors. In the frontier regions of the East/West
divide, where existing socio-political tensions were exacerbated by superpower rivalry,
authoritarian governments reframed the Manichean narrative to justify their suppression of
popular demands for political accountability and socio-economic justice. Thus, as long as the
military-controlled state apparatus in Turkey defended the western alliance’s security interests, it
could be excused for routinely intervening in the electoral process, limiting civil liberties and
abusing the human rights of its citizens.
Cold War dynamics also built on the existing foundations of the Turkish ‘deep state’. As part of a
US-led initiative to set up covert ‘stay behind’ paramilitary organisations aimed at resisting a
potential communist take-over of NATO member states, a secret counter-guerrilla force was
established within the Turkish military in coordination with the American and British intelligence
services. 136 Nurtured by an ultra-nationalist ideology, and immune from legal constraints and
civilian oversight, these units quickly turned into assassination squads, targeting suspected leftists,
communists and, especially during the 1990s, Kurdish politicians, intellectuals and human rights
activists. It was also during the Cold War era that the Turkish military, the self-appointed guardian
of the Turkish republic, staged three of its four coups d’état with a claim to ‘restore democracy’ with
the tacit approval (or, as in the case of the 1980 coup, direct backing) of the United States. 137
While the end of the Cold War brought this arrangement into flux, it did not alter its
fundamental characteristics or dissolve its key institutions. During the 1990s, US – Turkish ties
continued to be driven by strategic concerns. Turkey’s active cooperation in various US-led
military operations, starting with the Gulf War and followed by Somalia, former Yugoslavia, and
after the 11 September 2001 attacks, Afghanistan, underscored the persistent security emphasis
of this ‘special partnership.’ And Turkey’s strategic cooperation with the US was compounded by
136 See report by Turkey’s Parliamentary Inquiry Commission on Military Coups and Memorandums (in Turkish),
TBMM Darbeleri ve Muhtıraları Araştırma Komisyonu Raporu, November 2012,
http://www.scribd.com/doc/115000348/TBMM-Darbeleri-ve-Muhtıraları-Araştırma-Komisyonu-Raporu;
Daniel Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and terrorism in Western Europe (London: Frank Cass, 2005);
Serdar Kaya, ‘The Rise and Decline of the Turkish “Deep State”: The Ergenekon Case’, Insight Turkey, Vol. 11, No.
4, 2009, pp. 99 – 113.
137 CIA’s complicity in the heavy-handed right wing military coup in September 1980 has been acknowledged,
among others, by the agency’s then-Ankara chief Paul Henze. See Mehmet Ali Birand, The Generals’ Coup in Turkey:
An Inside Story of 12 September 1980 (New York: Elsevier, 1987). Also: Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America's century of
regime change from Hawaii to Iraq (New York, NY: Times Books, 2006).
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