Turkish contraband
Robert Kaplan
Van, Turkey T n strategic terms, Eastern Turkey, an leerie moonscape of mud-hut villages and Kurdish nomads, is more remarkable even than it looks. Astride three continents, and with the borders of Iraq, Iran, and the Soviet Union only a morning's drive away, it is a land of shifting nationalities, con- vergent trade routes, and smugglers passing in the night. On account of the Gulf war, the region is busier than ever. Western diplomats in Ankara and Baghdad report that Russian military equipment is reaching Iraq via Eastern Turkey. This is being ac- complished in two ways: boats are crossing the Black Sea to the Turkish port of Sam- sun, where trucks are loaded for the rest of the journey. In addition, military cargo planes with civilian 'Aeroflot' markings are crossing Turkish airspace. Adnan Kahveci, chief adviser to the Turkish prime minister Turgut Ozal, told me there is no use in pro- hibiting such overflights since the Russians, in any event, can transport equipment through the Bosphorus, an international waterway. (What Mr Kahveci did not point out, of course, was that by facilitating the traffic, the amount of Soviet supplies which the Iraqis are receiving and the speed with which they are getting them are being increased many times over.) Then there is the suspected illegal trade from communist Bulgaria through Turkey to Iran and Iraq. In the old days, when the would-be assassin of the Pope, Mehmet Ali Agca, was a hit-man for the fascist Grey Wolves, drugs were smuggled by the Turkish mafia to Bulgaria en route for the West. The profits turned were then used to buy arms, which were smuggled back to Turkey for sale to private militias. The fun ground to a halt in September 1980 when the Turkish military staged a coup and smashed the militias. But Allah, or somebody up there, was being kind to the Turkish underworld. In the same month that the Generals in Turkey were filling up the prisons with left-and right-wing extre- mists, Iran and Iraq declared war on each other, creating new customers for the Bulgaria-based mafia.
When questioned on these matters, Tur- kish officials merely explain that while the Generals — no-nonsense fellows as they are — have done their best to curb smuggling, even they can't vouch for the purity of every shipment crossing the frontiers south and east of here.
Drugs and arms, it turns out, are not the only contraband passing through Eastern Turkey these days. Once a prosperous Armenian city, until the first world war massacres and deportations, Van is now a clearing house for Iranian refugees, some of whom are deserters from the army of the Ayatollah Khomeini. At this moment there are about 80 Iranians occupying several wretched hostelries where rooms are under two pounds a night and the fleas, as I unfortunately found out, are prodigious. But the Iranians are not complaining. They have just survived a 550 mile journey by foot and mule from Teheran. And having doled out the equivalent of £3,600 each to Kurdish guides — as the roads on the Ira- nian side of the border had to be avoided for fear of capture — they are not in a posi- tion to spend extravagantly on hotel rooms.
The succour given to Iranian fugitives, not to mention the helping hand extended to the Russians in arming Iraq, suggests that the Turks may not be as neutral in the Gulf conflict as they claim. Moreover, there is this to consider: ever since the closure by Iranian blockade of the port of Basra nearly four years ago, Turkey has provided the only egress for Iraq's oil. And Turkey, ac- cording to Western diplomats, is also pro- viding security for the oil pipeline by means of helicopter patrols inside Iraqi airspace, with the full consent of Baghad: the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, whose army is braced for an Iranian offensive in the southern marshlands, lacks the wherewithal 'They don't strike. Unfortunately they don't buy cars either.' to protect the pipeline from attacks by rebellious — and pro-Iranian — Kurdish tribes in the mountainous north.
None of these matters should be con- sidered surprising or even very significant. No one suspects that as the official guard- ians of Mustapha Kemal Ataturk's fiercely secularist doctrine, the Turkish Generals under President Kenan Evren are pleased with the mediaeval spectacle taking place next door in Iran. Nor is Turkey the only officially neutral country tilting towards Iraq. The United States is another, and much more important, case in point. But Turkey may be the only neutral (pro-Iraqi) country in the conflict which the Iranian mullahs wouldn't dare to harm, or even criticise. This is because £1.5 billion worth of Turkish exports are propping up Iran's war-and-revolution-battered economy (just as over £400 million of Turkish goods are doing for Iraq). Short of cash and locked in a mindless, stalemated war, both countries are quite happy to replace European- manufactured goods with lower-grade, cheaper products from Turkey. Turkish refrigerators may not suit the average Englishman, but they are fine, it seems, for the average Iranian or Iraqi.
Turkish officials have invested a lot of time and effort in the Iran-Iraq war, and it shows: Turkey now has both sides eating out of the palm of its hand. The hotels of Baghdad and Teheran are filled with Turks making all sorts of deals, selling everything from refrigerators to underwear to dry-cell batteries. What the Japanese are to the West, the Turks are becoming to Iran and Iraq.
With 600 years of Ottoman imperial experience to draw from, Turks — unlike the rival Greeks across the Aegean understand that diplomacy is a quiet art, and that calming — or, better yet, in- gratiating oneself with — one's neighbour is better than provoking him. And thus Turkey has ingratiated itself with Iran, Iraq and the Soviet Union, all the while remain- ing a member in good standing of Nato.
No other outsider has manipulated the Gulf war combatants as brilliantly as the Turks have. Despite all the intriguing with Iraq, Turkey — as its own diplomats cor- rectly state — is still the most neutral coun- try in the region, the one most trusted and needed by both sides. More significantly, Turkey's demarche in the Gulf is only one example of what it is doing throughout the Middle East. Prime minister Ozal is jetting back and forth to Tripoli, Riyadh and other such places, signing contracts and easing the way for even more business.
Ozal, the first civilian prime minister since the coup, is the lightning rod for Turkey's drift back towards the east after decades of Ataturk-inspired wester- nisation. He is from the traditional Anatolian heartland, not from the coun- try's European periphery as other Turkish leaders have been. He is a frequent visitor to mosques and makes no secret about it. Ozal, whether the Generals suffer him much longer or not, is just one of many Turks being faithful to their roots.
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