La voie turque et l'aveuglement de l'Ouest

La voie turque et l'aveuglement de l'Ouest

On signale ici deux articles particulièrement intéressant qui apprécient le nouveau rôle et les nouvelles perspectives de la Turquie, après les récents événements. Ils mettent en évidence les bouleversements que l’évolution de la Turquie peut apporter autant dans la région où elle se trouve que dans les relations internationales. Ils sont de deux analystes US, qui mettent également en évidence combien l’axe Washington-Tel-Aviv est complètement pris de court par cette évolution.

• Dans Defense News du 14 juin 2010, le colonel à la retraite de l’U.S. Army Douglas MacGregor examine les implications radicales, dans la région, des derniers incidents où la Turquie a été engagée. Notons ce passage…

«The crisis could not come at a worse time. Washington is betting heavily on the Turks to help stabilize Iraq as U.S. forces withdraw. Erdogan has worked hard to end the Kurdish-Turkish conflict, which has claimed 40,000 lives, even sanctioning the use of the Kurdish language in all Turkish broadcast media and political campaigns.

»For Turkey, which tends to view Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government as indistinguishable from the violently anti-Turkish Kurdistan Workers' Party, better known as the PKK, this development has been nothing short of a miracle.

»Once again, events in Gaza may put these arrangements at risk. Turks, secular or Islamist, never had much incentive to allow anti-Turkish Kurds to exploit 3 percent of the world's oil reserves in northern Iraq to bankroll regional aims and terrorism against Turkey.

»Ankara and Tehran have reportedly discussed spheres of influence in Iraq when the United States leaves, giving Turkey control of Iraq's northern (Kurdish) territory, as well as its enormous oil wealth, leaving Iran to control the central and southern Iraq through its Shiite Arab surrogates in Baghdad. Now, Turkey and Iran may form substantive agreements that are antithetical to Washington's interests.

»Meanwhile, if a confrontation with the Turks over Gaza ensued, Turkish conventional military strength might lead Israel to threaten use of nuclear weapons against Turkey. If NATO, under pressure from Washington, refused to acknowledge Turkey's protection under Article V of the NATO Charter (NATO's nuclear umbrella), then NATO would certainly dissolve and the Turks would likely turn to Russia, Iran or even China for support.

»Ankara also could go nuclear much faster than Tehran, given the assistance of the Pakistani military establishment, the Turkish military's longtime strategic partner.

»For the moment, things are unlikely to go this far, but no one in the United States or Israel should miss the long-term strategic impact of the American and Israeli military occupations of Iraq and Palestine. Both created radicalized groups and embittered Muslim populations scarred by the unwanted presence of foreign troops.»

• Dans TomDispatch.com, le 13 juin 2010, Tom Engelahardt présente un texte de John Feffer, «Pax Ottomanica?», où Feffer présente la Turquie comme un grande puissance de demain, capable de devenir une véritable superpuissance, capable même de concurrencer la Chine dans le rôle de superpuissance émergente. Engelhardt présente cette longue analyse très détaillée, dans des termes qui marquent combien les USA et Israël, enfermés dans leurs stéréotypes de propagande, sont absolument incapables de distinguer la nature des événements qui se déroulent sous leurs yeux et à l’émergence desquels ils ont largement contribué.

«…The Washington Post editorial page denounced its government for “grotesque demagoguery toward Israel that ought to be unacceptable for a member of NATO,” while the Christian Science Monitor typically declared it “over the top,” raised the specter of “anti-Semitism,” and swore that its leaders now ran “the risk of further undermining Turkey’s credibility and goal of being a regional problem solver.” In a news story, the New York Times offered a classic statement of the problem from Washington’s perspective: “Turkey is seen increasingly in Washington as ‘running around the region doing things that are at cross-purposes to what the big powers in the region want,'’ said Steven A. Cook, a scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations. The question being asked, he said, is ‘How do we keep the Turks in their lane?’”

»And which lane might that be, one wonders? It looks ever more like the passing lane on the main highway through the Middle East. Talk about a country whose importance has crept up on us. It's a country that, as John Feffer, co-director of the invaluable Foreign Policy in Focus website and TomDispatch regular, indicates, has been in that passing lane for some time now (whatever Washington may think), whether in its relations with Iran, Russia, or Iraq, among other countries. And what surprising relations they turn out to be. If one thing is clear, it’s that, as American power wanes, the global stage is indeed being cleared for new kinds of politics and new combinations of every sort. The future holds surprises and, as Feffer makes clear, it will be surprising indeed if Turkey isn’t one of them.»

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