Financial Times: October 30, 2002
Turkey's nightmares
By David Gardner and Leyla Boulton
As Turkey moved towards electing an untried party with roots in the Islamist movement a Turkish newspaper ran this headline: "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are galloping towards Turkey".
The paper did not identify the Justice and Development party (AKP), which has led the polls ahead of this Sunday's elections, as one of the horsemen. But the experimental nature of a government of former Islamists in arch-secular Turkey has the potential to complicate the already formidable challenges that the country and the wider region now faces: war looming on Turkey's borders with Iraq; a showdown over Cyprus; a fierce test of wills with the European Union over Ankara's demand for a date to start entry negotiations; and steering the country out of its worst recession since 1945.
"We have three nightmares, maybe four, coming and Turkey will have to face them without an effective government," says one senior official in Ankara. These are not just domestic issues. Turkey is a NATO member, a regional power, and was a key US ally the last time the US went to war against Saddam Hussein.
<snip economic and military problems, which are pretty damned grave>
But more than Iraq or the economy, arguably the worst nightmare for Turkey would be a double rebuff from the EU on Cyprus and entry. Elements of the establishment are not helping their case: last week public prosecutors started proceedings to ban the AKP outright, and - just as Germany signalled it might favour a date for Turkey's entry talks to begin - filed espionage charges against six German foundations in Turkey.
Closing the gates of Brussels would leave Turkey in bitter isolation, growling on the borders of Europe with the volatility of Central Asia and the Middle East to its north- east and south-east, undermining its pro-western consensus and unleashing the darkest forces of the Turkish right, of which the quasi-fascist movement of Cem Uzan is just a preview. As one western ambassador puts it: "We know what happens when you set countries adrift."
[Rest of the article, which is a pretty good summary of the economic and military problems facing Turkey, is at http://tinyurl.com/2eq In short, its odds of solving them without default and without bad social developments are about twice as impossible as Brazil's.]