Nuclear Diplomacy à la Turca.
The article I wrote about this is now available in full on the World Affairs Journal website.
When I hear American officials discussing this region, I shudder. My government is obviously out of its depth. For all the talk of President Obama’s secret, traitorous sympathy with the Islamic world, or his childhood experience of the mysteries of the exotic Other, the man is—obviously—as American as a stalk of corn waving lonely on a Kansas plain. I am certain he, and everyone around him, thinks in terms of “reasons,” “logic,” “arguments,” “truth,” and “facts.” I am sure that deep down, he believes everyone does. All Americans do, just as all Turks believe the rest of the world is basically like them.
The utter irrationality of Turks—and the utter uselessness, for them, of our Western notions of truth and logic—are points Americans won’t grasp unless they’ve lived here quite some time—and even then they won’t grasp them, because they make no sense. But they’d best begin to try, because the prime minister is quite busy sending flotillas of unusually fractious Turkish humanitarians into war zones, transforming himself into the improbable hero of Hamas, and practicing nuclear diplomacy à la Turca. American negotiators were no doubt scratching their heads upon learning that Turkey had not merely abstained from voting on the Iranian sanctions package, but voted against it. An abstention, after all, would have registered Turkish misgivings more than adequately; the “no” vote manifestly obviates everything Turkey has long been saying about the role it seeks to play as a bridge between the East and the West, particularly in the wake of the Gaza flotilla fiasco. The bridge is now burnt. Turkey has taken sides, and the winner is the East.
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Jun '10
Re: Nuclear Diplomacy à la Turca.
Claire, If you're telling it the way it is--gotta be careful, you've been in Turkey a long time :) --and I'm sure you are, how on earth to so many Turks manage to live and work in Germany and not start civil wars, just by the culture clash? I would think the Turks you describe would drive the Germans insane.
Jul '10
Re: Nuclear Diplomacy à la Turca.
"What Turkey is getting out of it, hard though this is for Americans to grasp, is the feeling that a happy deal has been concluded, and even more importantly, the feeling that Turkey matters. As one commenter on the English Web site of the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet put it, “For the first time Turquey [sic] is showing to all the world that it can propose serious solutions to problems that neither US nor the West could solve it. Turquey is becoming a big and powerful nation who deserves respect and proud.”
I have a friend of a friend who taught english in Istanbul for several years. She acquainted me with "Turknology".
She also said that the Turkish press depicted a bi-polar world. In this fantasy world there were two super-powers: the U.S. and Turkey. Is this true? I always discounted it as an exaggeration, but I'm not so sure now.
Re: Nuclear Diplomacy à la Turca.
Well, yeah, they do. That's notoriously not a happy relationship.
Re: Nuclear Diplomacy à la Turca.
It's sort of schizophrenic. Turkey is certainly always seen as the center of the world--either the power with which the rest of the world is obsessed and scheming improbably to subvert, conquer and divide (and thereafter steal its natural resources), or seen as outsized in its importance and poised to become the new regional superpower. Turks are aware in some ways that most of the world would be hard-pressed to locate it on a map, which drives them nuts, but they nonetheless believe that every major intelligence service is focused full-time on fomenting a Turkish civil war, manipulating the Turkish economy, and underwriting Turkish coups. In this article, I explain some of the historic reasons for this attitude.
Aug '10
Re: Nuclear Diplomacy à la Turca.
I loved your article. I don't know if any of it is accurate but it feels accurate.
Aug '10
Re: Nuclear Diplomacy à la Turca.
Claire Berlinski:
I loved both articles.
But I wonder, must everyone around our president think in terms of classical Western reasoning? I was under the impression his crowd also included postmodernists, critical and post-critical theorists, and the like.
And this sort professes to believe ideas like all logical reasoning is merely rhetoric dissembling a struggle for power. Or something like that... (It confuses me.)
Now maybe they say these things just to be clever, but don't mean them, and reason in their everyday lives like ordinary Westerners.
But if they really mean what they say, perhaps their thinking does has something in common with Turkish thinking that ordinary American thought lacks.
Maybe?
Re: Nuclear Diplomacy à la Turca.
No, Midget, even the most dedicated American postmodernist just thinks differently. They can't help it. A certain way of thinking saturates every ambient element of American culture; it's all around them; it has been since their infancy. I promise you, you plunk the Derrida Professor of Doofus University's Department of Arts and Letters down in Beylikdüzü, it will be but fifteen minutes before you hear her say, "But that doesn't make sense. It's not logical." I've seen this many a time. Multicultural theory just imploding on contact. Like matter and antimatter, really.
May '10
Re: Nuclear Diplomacy à la Turca.
If there really is some cultural preference for emotion over logic and Turks generally don't respond well to arguments, then do they respond well to emotional leadership (such as calm, confident generosity)?
The only other ways I know to deal with obstinately illogical and hysterical people, absolutely impervious to persuasion, are to ignore them or (if "live and let live" isn't possible) use force. The latter is rarely necessary in personal interactions. I'm wondering what form our diplomacy with Turkey should take.
I'm reluctant to believe any people have made logic totally taboo, but it would certainly be a mistake to believe the same methods of diplomacy work with every culture.
Claire Berlinski: .
If Turkish politics is as irrational as you claim, then the Turks could switch back to our side tomorrow. They're an unreliable ally. The bigger question is what danger they could pose as enemies.