BY DOGU ERGIL
TODAY’S ZAMAN - It is customary to make predictions in the new year. Let me try my luck for 2011.
Let me start with Turkey. There will be elections this summer that will end up with the victory of the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AK Party). The AK Party’s electoral superiority will be around 45-46 percent over the Republican People’s Party (CHP), which will come in at around 30-31 percent; the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which will garner some 14 percent; and the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which will win around 6.5 percent. With the heat of the Kurdish problem, deliberations and preparations to concoct a more liberal and participatory constitution will be the second most important issue after the elections in 2011.
Turkey’s economic boom will continue to outpace Europe, but prospects for joining the European Union will be more frustrating due to the lack of visionary leadership in Europe. So Turks will choose to upgrade their legal, political standards as economic prosperity and political participation grows, generating a demand for further democratization. The pace and limits of democratization will be determined by the conservative AK Party government and its Kemalist and nationalist rivals who favor the state over the society.
As the countryside develops, inequality will decrease relatively between urban and rural areas. More people will move to the cities, enabling urban populations to influence the nature of Turkish politics. Modernization a la non-Western style may be an interesting cultural phenomenon to study in the Turkish case, which will have a contagious effect in the Middle East.
Turkey will pursue its diplomatic and economic outreach to regional countries and will try to build an economic and transportation (highway and railroad) grid between Syria, Iraq, Iran and possibly Pakistan.
The US and European countries are concerned with Turkey’s improving relations with countries that were stigmatized as rogue states like Syria and Iran. This was seen as Turkey’s disloyalty to the Western alliance. However, Turks see this as a way to design a foreign policy that is independent from the influence of its more powerful allies like the US that gave it the role of a “flank” country throughout the Cold War. This role cost Turkey dearly, giving way to an authoritarian regime and military tutelage over society. Now Turkey is trying to be an equal member of NATO, and it will drive the point home further in the new year. Hence both Turkey and the NATO alliance will find a middle ground, and the decision to install the missile defense plan, which was decided at the last Lisbon meeting, will move forward. Turkey will not risk its NATO membership just to please Iran, which is the unnamed source of the threat for which the new NATO defense concept has been planned.
The Middle East will pass another year without the prospect of peace. This means US President Barack Obama will hardly deserve his easily won Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts that will most probably fail in bringing peace to the Middle East this year. Israel will not give up its settlement program as it distances itself from a two-state solution and thus will not loosen its grip on the Palestinian territories. It will also refuse to put East Jerusalem on the negotiating table. Given these circumstances the Palestinians will not enter serious negotiations and assure the Israelis of the total capitulation that is wanted of them for Israelis to feel safe and secure.
Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah will mostly heighten but will stop short of another open war. Hezbollah will passionately seek to obtain rockets with the ability to reach Tel Aviv from southern Lebanon. Israel will do its utmost to abort such a development by surgical interventions. Violence will continue to be the modus vivendi in the region.
Security in Iraq will hardly improve in 2011. Political and ethnic rivalries will continue with shifting gravity from one region to another. It may even climb north if tensions between Kurds and Arabs turn into violence. The withdrawal of American troops from Iraq will continue on schedule, making things more uncertain.