Letters.

• Position: Review

Living With Russia:

Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski is broadly correct in his bleak picture of Russia today ("Living With Russia", Fall 2000), but there is one aspect of his essay that is truly puzzling: where he advocates the Turkey of Kemal Ataturk and his successors as a model for Russia's future. For Russia to follow this path would be utterly disastrous for Russia's ethnic minorities, for Russian democracy, and for Russia's relations with other nations, both within and outside its borders. It is hard to see how someone of Dr. Brzezinski's historical breadth cannot understand this.

The Kemalist revolution had many virtues, and perhaps nothing else could have pulled Turkey from the disastrous situation in which it found itself after defeat in World War I; but at its very heart were a state ideology and program of rigid, monolingual ethnic nationalism dedicated to the forced assimilation of all minority languages and cultures. This was quite consciously intended to replace the relatively multi-ethnic, culturally pluralist Ottoman system. Groups that protested were ruthlessly suppressed or expelled. In the 1940s, the suppression or expulsion of the minorities was extended to the Jews, with whom the Ottoman sultans had had excellent relations. Nor did the abandonment of Ottoman imperial pretensions necessarily mean the abandonment of claims to protect by force Turkish ethnic minorities beyond Turkey's borders, as Cyprus clearly demonstrates.

The denial of minority rights continues to haunt the state's relations with its Kurdish minority to this day, and was largely responsible for the PKK rebellion. Moreover, while authoritarian one-party rule gave way over time to a form of democracy, the Turkish armed forces retain a supervisory role over the state and judiciary. They have repeatedly removed elected governments of which they disapproved, and used the police and judiciary to censor the media and punish dissent.

Russia has launched a savage campaign against armed rebels in Chechnya--and one very much on the Turkish model: no negotiations, no role for international bodies, ruthless war to complete victory. With its other ethnic minorities, however, the post-Soviet Russian state's relations have so far been tolerant. The larger minorities have their own autonomous republics, in which they can develop their own cultures. The Tatars recently symbolized this by abandoning the Cyrillic alphabet in favor of the Turkish-Latin one, and introducing this throughout their school system--a move that would be absolutely inconceivable in Turkey!

We must hope that this generally benign, very un-Turkish picture continues, for a Kemalist-style move by the Putin regime to suppress these national autonomies would be utterly wrong in itself, and would run a severe risk of bringing massive ethnic conflict to the heart of the Russian Federation, with disastrous consequences for all concerned. If this is in fact Dr. Brzezinski's hope, let him state it openly.

So Dr. Brzezinski's recommendations of a Turkish model for Russia are strange enough in themselves. But what is even stranger is that whenever Russia does in fact take even limited steps in the direction of Kemalist nationalist authoritarianism, supervised by the security forces, Dr. Brzezinski himself is the first to issue furious protests! Am I missing something, or is there a very serious moral and logical disconnect here? And if so, what is the reason for it?

ANATOL LIEVEN

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Brzezinski replies:

The EU is currently considering Turkey--not Russia--for membership in Europe. Perhaps it is Anatol Lieven who is missing something here.

Talking Turkey:

Norman Stone asserts correctly that the Cyprus problem is one of the obstacles standing in the way of Turkey's entry into the European Union ("Talking Turkey", Fall 2000). He then goes on to say, incorrectly, that Turkey has so many "strong cards" that "it is Europe, not Turkey, that will have to come to terms." As this assertion relates to Cyprus, Mr. Stone blithely proposes that "the simplest answer is surely just to have Turkish Cyprus recognized as a separate state."

It is ironic that Mr. Stone chose "Talking Turkey" as the theme of his article, since that expression means "speaking forthrightly." It is certainly not forthright or fair, either to Cypriots of both communities or to Turkey itself, to argue that the EU is not serious about or will not be able to insist on the conditions it has laid down for Turkish membership. Specifically, the EU has said that Turkey must take action to improve human rights, respect minority rights, resolve (as a legal matter) its territorial issues with Greece in the Aegean Sea, and resolve the Cyprus dispute on the basis of the relevant UN resolutions.

On the Cyprus issue, Mr. Stone chooses to focus most misleadingly on the intercommunal troubles of the mid-1960s as his justification for partitioning the island. He totally ignores the responsibility of the Turkish side for the conflict and the fact that, from 1968 until Turkey's invasion of 1974, UN-sponsored intercommunal talks took place and came close to reaching an agreement on mutually acceptable constitutional arrangements. Mr. Stone also ignores the fact that after 1974 the Greek Cypriot community made major concessions to the Turkish Cypriots by signing agreements (with Mr. Rauf Denktash, the Turkish Cypriot leader) in 1977 and 1979 to establish a bi-communal, bi-zonal federation.

For reasons known only to Mr. Denktash and his mentors in Ankara, he reneged on these agreements in 1983, when, in violation of international law, he attempted the secession of the area of the Republic of Cyprus under Turkish military occupation. Only Turkey (and not North Korea, as Mr. Stone erroneously writes) recognizes that regime and the UN has condemned the declaration of the purported secession as "legally invalid." Talks between the leaders of the two communities did, however, continue and progress was made in fleshing out the parameters of a bi-communal, bi-zonal federation through Security Council resolutions endorsed by the international community.

In 1997, however, Mr. Denktash broke off direct talks and demanded, as a condition for the resumption of talks, that Cyprus withdraw its application to join the EU and that the intercommunal negotiations be recast to, in effect, recognize the results of Turkey's aggression by discussing a possible "confederation" of "two states", in place of the previously agreed "federation" within one state.

There is no excuse for Mr. Denktash to continue to defy the international community...