News on Turkey

U.S. Says Turkey Can Be Cultural Example, Energy Hub in Europe

EU membership would end "fallacy" of "war of civilizations," State's Fried says

By Vince Crawley
Washington File Staff Writer

07 July 2006

Daniel Fried, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs (State Dept. photo)Washington -- A senior U.S. diplomat says it would be “bigotry” to claim Muslim nations are incapable of democracy and added that Turkey joining the European Union (EU) would prove that Osama bin Laden is not a Muslim leader but “simply a fascist fanatic.”

Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, also said the United States welcomes Turkey’s goal of becoming a major East-West energy hub, bringing oil and natural gas into Europe from the Caspian Sea and Russia.

Fried was interviewed by Turkish journalists July 3 in advance of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s July 5 meeting in Washington with Turkey’s foreign minister, Abdullah Gul. (See related article.)

In October 2005, Turkey and the European Union formally began negotiations for Turkey’s possible entry into the EU if it meets democratic and economic conditions. The United State supports Turkey’s EU candidacy provided the Turkish government successfully meets membership criteria.

Turkey’s EU membership would demonstrate “the fallacy of the so-called war of civilizations,” Fried said. “It would show that [terrorist leader Osama] bin Laden is not a Muslim leader, he is simply a fascist fanatic, like other fascist fanatics.”

President Bush often says he believes all peoples are capable of democratic self-government, Fried said.

“And it would be bigotry – those aren’t his words, those are mine – to claim that democracy is simply the province of northwest European Protestant civilizations and their heirs,” Fried said. “One of the things that Turkey can bring to the 21st century is a demonstration that, in fact, modernity, democracy, economic progress can be built on a mostly Muslim foundation just as easily as anyplace else.” (See related article.)

Turkey is a predominantly Muslim country with a strong tradition of secular government. Fried said it would be “ridiculous and very foolish” to think the United States is encouraging anti-democratic efforts to unseat the Justice and Development Party (AK). The conservative party was elected to office in 2002 by voters who wanted government leaders to have a closer connection to their Islamic faith. The modern Turkish state was founded on the principle of strongly enforced secularism, to the point that even devoutly religious girls and young women are banned from wearing Muslim headscarves in public schools.

The fact that secularism and Islam are being debated strongly in Turkey is a sign of a healthy democracy, Fried said. He said that in France – a well-established European democracy – a similar debate is taking place on its headscarf ban for schoolchildren.

“This is a debate democratic societies go through,” Fried said.

“I should say that from an American perspective we are more tolerant of overt religious displays than many European countries,” Fried added. The United States is “a very religious country” that also has a deep tradition of the separation of church and state, he said.

Secretary of State Rice shakes hands with Turkish Foreign Minister Gul at the State Department July 5. (© AP/WWP)“Ironically … the fact that the state is very secular … has led to a strengthening of religion in the United States because it's seen as independent of the state,” Fried added.

“In the United States, Muslim schoolgirls wear headscarves all the time and nobody pays any attention,” he added. “Jewish kids can wear yarmulkes or not wear yarmulkes; Christian kids wear crosses or not wear crosses. And it is totally in the realm of personal freedom. … In the United States, we would never consider a headscarf ban for Muslim women. It would not occur to us.”

He acknowledged that “Americans have to be very modest in offering solutions because we have had our own history of learning to define America as more than just a country of white Protestants.” The U.S. civil rights movement “was very bloody” and “very painful,” Fried said. “We emerged as a country much more comfortable with a multiethnic, multireligious identity.”

ENERGY CONSIDERATIONS

Fried also spoke favorably of Turkey’s ambitions to become a major energy hub, connecting Europe to the petroleum and gas reserves of the Caspian region, Central Asia and parts of Russia. The United States backed the newly completed Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline that is bringing Caspian oil to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. A parallel gas pipeline is under construction. Turkey and Russia also are developing jointly a Samsun-Ceyhan pipeline that could pump Russian oil from Turkey’s Black Sea coast to the growing petroleum terminal around Ceyhan on the Mediterranean.

“Turkey and Russia are neighbors,” Fried said. “How could we possibly object to improved relations between Turkey and its Russian neighbor? This is not a zero-sum game where Turkey has to choose between the United States and Russia. That's ridiculous.”

The United States believes in multiple pipelines, multiple sources of energy and competition, he said.  “What we don't believe in is monopolies.”

Fried added that the BTC pipeline “is certainly a great success for Turkish-American cooperation, and it's opening this month. … We believe that the Samsun-Ceyhan pipeline, the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, the trans-Caspian pipelines are all good things if they're commercially based and part of an open, not a closed, but an open and transparent system of moving energy resources from Central Asia and the Caspian to markets in Turkey and Europe.”

Russia, Fried said, “is going to be a supplier of oil and gas to Europe. That's a natural thing.  All we want is for there not to be a monopoly, but for there to be an open system so that countries like Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, have a choice and so they are part of an open, commercially-based world, not a closed world of energy.”

Matthew Bryza, deputy assistant secretary of state, discussed Caspian pipelines and Europe’s energy markets in a June 29 USINFO Webchat. (See related article.)

Transcripts of Fried’s July 3 interviews with Turkish newspaper Zaman and NTV are available on the State Department Web site.

In conjunction with Minister Gul’s visit, the State Department released a U.S.-Turkey U.S.-Turkey Declaration entitled “Shared Vision and Structured Dialogue to Advance the Turkish-American Strategic Partnership.”