Abdullah Gul’s (the No. 2 man in Turkey's ruling Justice and Development-AK Party) election brings to an end the latest chapter of their struggle with the current secularist military establishment - with this round going to the Islamists. By no means does this mean that the men in uniform have thrown in the towel. Far from it: the generals will be closely watching the AK, and especially the behavior of the 56-year-old Gul. This much was spelled out by military chief Gen. Yasar Buyukanit on Monday in an Internet statement that said "our nation has been watching the behavior of centers of evil who systematically try to corrode the secular nature of the Turkish Republic," and warned that "the military will, just as it has so far, keep its determination to guard social, democratic and secular Turkey."

Modern Turkey was founded by Mustafa Kemal "Ataturk" in 1923 following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, plus the reorganization of the Islamist Young Turks also called the Special Organization and the Central Committee (CUP). Kemal, who himself was a military commander and former member of CUP*, implemented radical changes whereby the Turkish republic was established as a secular entity along the lines of European states. Since then the military has served as the praetorian guards responsible for preserving the Kemalist character of the constitution and the secular fabric of the republic.

To this end, the military has intervened on four separate occasions (three of them being coups) - in 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997 - and has banned four of the AK's predecessor groups because their Islamist ideology was seen as a threat to the secular order. Therefore, the military establishment is all too aware of what happened Tuesday. The Turkish political system has entered an unprecedented phase in its evolution, where a single party not only has been able to form two consecutive governments on its own, but also now controls the presidency - which by extension means it controls the judiciary, because the president appoints key judges.

As far as civil-military relations are concerned, the military clearly has lost the current (and what appears to be a decisive) battle - but the ideological struggle and the contention over secularism is far from over. More importantly, for the first time since the founding of the Turkish republic more than 80 years ago, a political force rooted in Islamism essentially controls all of the key civilian institutions of the state.

There is a lot of trepidation both within and outside Turkey that this will lead to a major Islamist-secular struggle in the country - which could lead to a period of domestic instability, despite the fact that the AK took 47 percent of the vote and controls a lion's share of seats in Parliament. This is certainly a possibility. It will not be long before Gul will be caught between his national duties as the head of an ultra-secularist state and his commitment to his party's conservative ideology. One cannot expect him simply to behave as a neutral president.

But the AK did not fight hard to win the presidency just for the sake of winning. The party will gradually want to use the position to further consolidate its hold over the state, trying to redefine the secular character of the state - moving away from the French style, which expressly renounces religious activity, toward the American model, which provides for more tolerance. Undoubtedly, this will lead to a new wave of struggle between the ruling party and the military.

Two factors are tying the military's hands at the moment. First, of course, is the AK's parliamentary majority. Second is the fear that any direct intervention by the military into politics could have serious repercussions, not just for stability and security in Turkey, but also for the economy. A coup would adversely affect foreign investment in the country, taking it back to the financial crisis that hit prior to the AK's rise to power in 2001. This would explain the uneasy accommodation reached in the past five years between the AK government and the generals.

For its part, the AK might have won the presidency, but it will still continue to tread carefully as far as the domestic policies are concerned, and will avoid tampering with the secular order of things. Over time, however, the party will become emboldened, because of the lack of any serious moves by the military to undercut its power. This is when there will be a behavioral change in Turkey, as the AK government begins to feel confident in engaging in policies that it currently might not want to risk.

Such a change will be most apparent and immediate in the foreign-policy arena, given the changes under way in the region. Iran has for the most part moved away from negotiating with the United States over Iraq and is now trying to take advantage of the expected U.S. drawdon of forces from the country.
Here is where an AK regime will be forced to balance pan-Islamic issues with Turkish nationalist objectives. On one hand, Turkey will focus on making sure that the ethno-sectarian conflict does not enable Iraqi Kurds (and by extension Turkish Kurds) to further their separatist agenda. On the other hand, Ankara will have to decide whether to side with the Arab states - who are fellow Sunnis - against Iran, or align with Iran, or chart a more neutral course.

This would not have been a complicated matter under a purely secular Turkish government, which would have viewed the issue solely from the point of view of Turkish national interest. But because the AK has pan-Islamic ties to various actors in the Arab/Muslim world, the matter becomes complex. The Saudis and the Iranians subscribe to competing notions of Islam - not just in the sectarian sense but in ideological terms. That will put an AK-ruled Turkey in a difficult spot.

Turkey historically has invaded northern Iraq in the spring, when the weather is optimal for military operations and the foliage in the region is not fully grown. After the Turkish presidential election, it will be fall, and snow sometimes falls in northern Iraq as early as November. That leaves a very short time frame for Turkey to act, or it would likely have to wait until the following spring. The weather does not completely rule out a Turkish military operation in the fall or early winter, but it will play a major role in the Turkish military chief's decision based on past incursions. If U.S. and Iraqi diplomacy could buy the KRG some time during Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's upcoming visits to Iraq in August and to Washington in the fall, Iraq's Kurdish leadership might be able to get by with taking limited action against the PKK. After all, the PKK traditionally calls for a cease-fire once the cold weather starts to kick in and heads for its hideout in the Qandil mountain range along the Iranian border to hibernate until the snow melts and the insurgency can start anew.

Iran, meanwhile, is watching Washington's diplomatic games closely and has been looking for opportunities to get closer to Ankara while anti-U.S. sentiment over the PKK is flaring in Turkey. The Iranians have strategically carried out cross-border military strikes against PKK hideouts in northern Iraq in recent months to win the hearts and minds of the Turkish public and highlight the common threat Turkey and Iran face from PKK activity in northern Iraq and the growing autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan. As U.S.-Turkish tensions intensify in the coming weeks and months over military action against the PKK, Iran could see this as an opportunity to take action on its own against PKK guerrilla fighters and outshine the United States, thus bringing Tehran a step closer to its vision of a more robust, albeit flawed, anti-U.S. alliance in the region.

With so many variables in play in northern Iraq, Washington will have to move carefully to avoid getting caught in a bigger mess than it can handle while the bulk of its attention remains on finding a political resolution in Baghdad. The PKK might be a nuisance for the United States at this stage of the negotiations, but Turkey is set to convince Washington that this so-called nuisance is the crux of the U.S.-Turkish partnership in the region.

The broader issue is not the PKK, but Kurdish independence. As we pointed out at the end of our conclusion which given the new developments sine then seemed indeed timely, The Kurds are a distinct ethnic group divided among Turkey, Iran, Iraq and, to a small extent, Syria. The one thing all of these countries have agreed on historically is they have no desire to see an independent Kurdistan. Even though each has, on occasion, used Kurdish dissidents in other countries as levers against those countries, there always has been a regional consensus against a Kurdish state.

Therefore, the news that Turkey is considering targeting the PKK is part of the broader issue. The evolution of events in Iraq has created an area that is now under the effective governance of the Iraqi Kurds. Under most scenarios, the Iraqi Kurds will retain a high degree of autonomy. Under some scenarios, the Kurds in Iraq could become formally independent, creating a Kurdish state. Besides facing serious opposition from Iraq's Sunni and Shiite factions, that state would be a direct threat to Turkey and Iran, since it would become, by definition, the nucleus of a Kurdish state that would lay claim to other lands the Kurds regard as theirs.

This is one of the reasons Turkey was unwilling to participate in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Americans grew close to the Kurds in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, helping augment the power of an independent militia, the peshmerga, that allowed the Iraqi Kurds to carve out a surprising degree of independence within Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The Turks were never comfortable with this policy and sent troops into Iraq in the 1990s to strike against the PKK and pre-empt any moves toward more extensive autonomy. Before the war started in 2003, however, the Turks turned down a U.S. offer to send troops into northern Iraq in exchange for allowing the United States to use Turkish territory to launch into Iraq. This refusal caused Turkey to lose a great deal of its mobility in the region.

The Turks, therefore, are tremendously concerned by the evolution of events in Iraq. Whether northern Iraq simply evolves into an autonomous region in a federal Iraq or becomes an independent state as Iraq disintegrates is almost immaterial. It will become a Kurdish homeland and it will exist on the Turkish border. And that, from the Turkish point of view, represents a strategic threat to Turkey.

Turkey, then, is flexing its muscles along the Iraqi border. Given that Turkey did not participate in the 2003 invasion, the American attitude toward Ankara has been complex, to say the least. On one hand, there was a sense of being let down by an old ally. On the other hand, given events in Iraq and U.S. relations with Iran and Syria, the United States was not in a position to completely alienate a Muslim neighbor of Iraq.

As time passed and the situation in Iraq worsened, the Americans became even less able to isolate Turkey. That is partly because its neutrality was important and partly because the United States was extremely concerned about Turkish reactions to growing Kurdish autonomy. For the Turks, this was a fundamental national security issue. If they felt the situation were getting out of hand in the Kurdish regions, they might well intervene militarily. At a time when the Kurds comprised the only group in Iraq that was generally pro-American, the United States could hardly let the Turks mangle them.

On the other hand, the United States was hardly in a position to stop the Turks. The last thing the United States wanted was a confrontation with the Turks in the North, for military as well as political reasons. Yet, the other last thing it wanted was for other Iraqis to see that the United States would not protect them.
Stated differently, the United States had no solution to the Turkish-Kurdish equation. So what the United States did was a tap dance -- by negotiating a series of very temporary solutions that kept the Turks from crossing the line and kept the Kurds intact. The current crisis is over the status of the PKK in northern Iraq and, to a great degree, over Turkish concerns that Iraqi Kurds will gain too much autonomy, not to mention over concerns about the future status of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. The United States may well be ready to support the Turks in rooting out PKK separatists, but it is not prepared to force the Iraqi Kurds to give them up. So it will try to persuade them to give them up voluntarily. This negotiating process will buy time, though at this point the American strategy in Iraq generally has been reduced to buying time.

All of this goes beyond the question of Iraq or an independent Kurdistan. The real question concerns the position of Turkey as a regional power in the wake of the Iraq war. This is a vital question because of Iran. The assumption we have consistently made is that, absent the United States, Iran would become the dominant regional power and would be in a position, in the long term, to dominate the Arabian Peninsula, shifting not only the regional balance of power but also potentially the global balance as well.

That analysis assumes that Turkey will play the role it has played since World War I -- an insular, defensive power that is cautious about making alliances and then cautious within alliances. In that role, Turkey is capable of limited assertiveness, as against the Greeks in Cyprus, but is not inclined to become too deeply entangled in the chaos of the Middle Eastern equation -- and when it does become involved, it is in the context of its alliance with the United States.

That is not Turkey's traditional role. Until the fall of the Ottomans at the end of World War I, and for centuries before then, Turkey was both the dominant Muslim power and a major power in North Africa, Southeastern Europe and the Middle East. Turkey was the hub of a multinational empire that as far back as the 15th century dominated the Mediterranean and Black seas. It was the economic pivot of three continents, facilitating and controlling the trading system of much of the Eastern Hemisphere.

Turkey's contraction over the past 90 years or so is not the normal pattern in the region, and had to do with the internal crisis in Turkey since the fall of the Ottomans, the emergence of French and British power in the Middle East, followed by American power and the Cold War, which locked Turkey into place. During the Cold War, Turkey was trapped between the Americans and Soviets, and expansion of its power was unthinkable. Since then, Turkey has been slowly emerging as a key power.

One of the main drivers in this has been the significant growth of the Turkish economy. In 2006, Turkey had the 18th highest gross domestic product (GDP) in the world, and it has been growing at between 5 percent and 8 percent a year for more than five years. It ranks just behind Belgium and ahead of Sweden in GDP. It has the largest economy of any Muslim country -- including Saudi Arabia. And it has done this in spite of, or perhaps because of, not having been admitted to the European Union. While per capita GDP lags, it is total GDP that measures weight in the international system. China, for example, is 109th in per capita GDP. Its international power rests on it being fourth in total GDP.

Turkey is not China, but in becoming the largest Muslim economy, as well as the largest economy in the eastern Mediterranean, Southeastern Europe, the Middle East, the Caucasus and east to the Hindu Kush, Turkey is moving to regain its traditional position of primacy in the region. Its growth is still fragile and can be disrupted, but there is no question that it has become the leading regional economy, as well as one of the most dynamic. Additionally, Turkey's geographic position greatly enables it to become Europe's primary transit hub for energy supplies, especially at a time when Europe is trying to reduce its dependence on Russia.

This obviously has increased its regional influence. In the Balkans, for example, where Turkey historically has been a dominant power, the Turks have again emerged as a major influence over the region's two Muslim states -- and have managed to carve out for themselves a prominent position as regards other countries in the region as well. The country's economic dynamism has helped reorient some of the region away from Europe, toward Turkey. Similarly, Turkish economic influence can be felt elsewhere in the region, particularly as a supplement to its strategic relationship with Israel.

Turkey's problem is that in every direction it faces, its economic expansion is blocked by politico-military friction. So, for example, its influence in the Balkans is blocked by its long-standing friction with Greece. In the Caucasus, its friction with Armenia limits its ability to influence events. Tensions with Syria and Iraq block Syrian influence to the south. To the east, a wary Iran that is ideologically opposed to Turkey blocks Ankara's influence.

As Turkey grows, an interesting imbalance has to develop. The ability of Greece, Armenia, Syria, Iraq and Iran to remain hostile to Turkey decreases as the Turkish economy grows. Ideology and history are very real things, but so is the economic power of a dynamic economy. As important, Turkey's willingness to accept its highly constrained role indefinitely, while its economic -- and therefore political -- influence grows, is limited. Turkey's economic power, coupled with its substantial regional military power, will over time change the balance of power in each of the regions Turkey faces.

Not only does Turkey interface with an extraordinary number of regions, but its economy also is the major one in each of those regions, while Turkish military power usually is pre-eminent as well. When Turkey develops economically, it develops militarily. It then becomes the leading power -- in many regions. That is what it means to be a pivotal power.

In 2003, the United States was cautious with Turkey, though in the final analysis it was indifferent. It no longer can be indifferent. The United States is now in the process of planning the post-Iraq war era, and even if it does retain permanent bases in Iraq -- dubious for a number of reasons -- it will have to have a regional power to counterbalance Iran. Iran has always been aware of and cautious with Turkey, but never as much as now -- while Turkey is growing economically and doing the heavy lifting on the Kurds. Iran does not want to antagonize the Turks.

The United States and Iran have been talking -- just recently engaging in seven hours of formal discussions. But Iran, betting that the United States will withdraw from Iraq, is not taking the talks as seriously as it might. The United States has few levers to use against Iran. It is therefore not surprising that it has reached out to the biggest lever.

In the short run, Turkey, if it works with the United States, represents a counterweight to Iran, not only in general, but also specifically in Iraq. From the American point of view, a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq would introduce a major force native to the region that certainly would give Iran pause in its behavior in Iraq. This would mean the destruction of Kurdish hopes for independence, though the United States has on several past occasions raised and then dashed Kurdish hopes. In this sense, Novak's article makes a great deal of sense. The PKK would provide a reasonable excuse for a Turkish intervention in Iraq, both in the region and in Turkey. Anything that blocks the Kurds will be acceptable to the Turkish public, and even to Iran.

It is the longer run that is becoming interesting, however. If the United States is not going to continue counterbalancing Iran in the region, then it is in Turkey's interest to do so. It also is increasingly within Turkey's reach. But it must be understood that, given geography, the growth of Turkish power will not be confined to one direction. A powerful and self-confident Turkey has a geographical position that inevitably reflects all the regions that pivot around it.

For the past 90 years, Turkey has not played its historic role. Now, however, economic and politico-military indicators point to Turkey's slow reclamation of that role. The rumors about Turkish action against the PKK have much broader significance. They point to a changing role for Turkey - and that will mean massive regional changes over time.

For example we earlier mentioned spate of shelling reportedly started up around Aug. 14. The last Iranian military offensive in northern Iraq occurred June 8, when Iranian aircraft bombed Kurdish rebel hideouts a day after Turkish forces conducted hot-pursuit operations across the Iraqi border.

An Iranian army helicopter crashed near the northern Iraqi border Aug. 18 while engaged in an operation against the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) and Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels, leaving six security force members dead. The Iranian military labeled the helicopter crash a technical failure, which followed another Iranian helicopter crash in February that killed 14 army personnel, including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders. This causes a great deal of embarrassment for Tehran, whose military is notorious for mechanical failures because of shortages of U.S. parts and hardware.

The aggressive operations in northern Iraq allow the Iranians to save face from the incident and flex their muscles in the region. The thought of Iranian troops venturing across the border to carry out military operations will also allow Iran to unnerve Washington. Any hint of an Iranian military incursion into Iraq could create a crisis in Washington and Baghdad over Iranian threats and the U.S. inability to respond to those threats. The Iranian regime knows how U.S. politics are played, and is watching the scene in Washington closely for a window of opportunity to increase its leverage in the Iraq talks.

The Iranians recently also have been putting much effort into strengthening ties with Turkey, which they see as their fellow non-Arab regional powerbroker. A prevalent theme in Iranian Friday prayers over the past few weeks has been the common ties that Turkey and Iran share as Islamic governments given the recent parliamentary win of the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party in Turkey. The prayers also have emphasized the need for the two countries to join to resist foreign elements, e.g., the United States. Iranian and Turkish officials also spent the weekend discussing ways to deepen energy cooperation, much to the consternation of Washington. While Iran is heavily playing up the uptick in Iranian-Turkish cooperation, the Turks are proceeding with caution in their relations with Iran. Ankara prefers to downplay these agreements, using these gestures toward Tehran as a way to pressure Washington into doing more to contain the Kurdish rebel threat in northern Iraq.

Though Iraq's Kurdish leadership has an interest in bringing as much international attention to these Iranian aggressions as possible, it probably has had implicit knowledge of these operations for some time. There is little love lost between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq and PKK and PJAK rebels. The Kurds often can be their own worst enemy, and Kurdish factions in Iraq have been known to pit these rebel groups against each other in their own internal fights. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki led a delegation to Turkey on Aug. 14 to discuss with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan what can be done on the Iraqi side to help contain the PKK. Al-Maliki's delegation included Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, who privately agreed on behalf of the KRG to allow commando operations against the PKK along the Turkish-Iraqi border.

Most recently, the Mayor of Choman Abdul Wahid Gwany said Iranian soldiers crossed in 10 places, traveling some 5 km into the mountain region and bombing villages as they drove. Some villagers were killed. The apparent targets were Iranian Kurdish rebels, members of PJAK, who are reported holed up in mountain havens in this part of Iraqi Kurdistan.

* According to one of its founders, the aim of the Special Organization was concrete and twofold: "The first was Pan-Islamism that would place the entire Turkish race under one political unit." To achieve this Turkish-Islamic unity, the organization operated domestically and abroad. In the "foreign" struggle, agents were sent to countries colonized by the West-especially by Britain -and to Central Asia to foment revolution. It was widely agreed that we would send our [more] capable people. Everywhere they went they would work with doggedness and determination, like Jesuit priests. We were going to incite India, Baluchistan, Iran, Afghanistan and all the Muslim peoples of Africa. The world of Islam would come under the command of the Caliph. Revolutions would follow one after the other. Britain and France would find themselves in a disastrous situation, where they would be routed out of crucial regions. The domestic objective was every bit as important. After its reconstitution in 1914, in particular, the organization became "the foremost institution for both internal and external security for the Ottoman state." (Quoted in Taner Akcam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, 2006, p.96).

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