In this issue . . .

Guest Editorials:
The threat of bipolarity; China and the WTO; beware the Albanian mafia
Features:
Money laundering, the future of democratic Indonesia, and Europe after Kosovo
Human Rights, Ethnicity and National Identify:
Reflections on the meaning and implication of identity at the turn of the millennium
Elections Outlook:
India, South Africa, Turkey, Israel, Argentina, and Chile
Charles Cook on Washington:
The highly charged polls in the 2000 races

Turkey’s Nationalist Moment

Excerpt:

In supporting two strongly nationalist parties as the top votegetters in the April elections, Turks showed the assertiveness of a nation that feels itself emerging as a regional power and the defensiveness of one still embittered by Western Europe's rejection. The elections showed a fractured electorate, divided along geographical and, to some extent, ethnic lines. Oddly, the strange-bedfellows coalition government that resulted from this splintering of the electorate may turn out to be one of the strongest in recent Turkish history. It will almost certainly reinforce Turkey's growing tendency toward a tough-line foreign policy -- largely impervious to European concerns -- on issues it deems crucial to national security interests, mainly Cyprus and the Kurdish separatist insurgents.

The Winners...

Incumbent Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's Democratic Left Party (DLP) won a clear plurality of the popular vote with more than 22 percent and 136 seats in the 550-seat parliament. The Nationalist Movement Party (NMP), a traditionally small, ultranationalist party that never previously won more than 8 percent in a national election, shocked many Turks, and itself, by finishing second with 18 percent and 129 seats.

Both parties rode a rising tide of nationalism in Turkey, fueled not only by the struggle with the Kurdish separatist Workers Party of Kurdistan (PKK) and the February arrest of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, but also by a profound sense of rejection by Europe. Turkey has never quite gotten over its shock at being excluded from the European Union's (EU) list of candidates for membership, ratified at a December 1997 EU summit. The failure of each subsequent EU summit, held twice a year, to rectify that slight has only deepened Turkish resentment. At the same time, Turks feel they have more foreign affairs options than at any time in years. With generally growing economic and military prowess, as well as close links with the United States and Israel, Turkey felt strong enough to initiate, and win, a confrontation with neighbor Syria last year. This led Damascus to expel long-time Syrian resident Ocalan. Pressured by Turkish threats (as well as U.S. and EU importuning), the Greek Cypriot-controlled Republic of Cyprus chose not to take delivery of Russian-made S-300 antiaircraft missiles for which it had already paid. Ankara is now more dismissive than ever of Western, particularly European, efforts to convince it to compromise on Cyprus and Greek-Turkish relations. Moreover, growing ties with Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkic Central Asia, and some East European states increase the sense of the possible. It is this mood -- more assertive, more self-confident, more regionally connected, and yet unsettled by its isolation from Europe -- upon which both Ecevit and NMP leader Devlet Bahceli capitalized and which, in office, they are likely to nurture.

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