Reporting from Brussels last Sunday, Reuters quoted a Turkish official who did not want to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue as stating that Turkey could block Rasmussen from becoming the next NATO chief given concerns over his past stance on Turkey and a row over Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.The news from Reuters came in the midst of uncertainty over NATO member Turkey's stance towards Rasmussen, as the alliance is expected to name the successor of current NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who will step down on July 31, at a NATO summit being held in Germany and France on April 3 and 4.
It is no secret that Ankara has long been uneasy over Denmark under Rasmussen because he has allowed Roj TV, a pro-Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) channel, to operate from its soil. The outlawed PKK is listed as a terrorist group by both the European Union and the US.
With the exception of Bulgaria, none of the expected candidates have made their candidacy official so far, testing the waters of the alliance to see if there is a consensus on their names. NATO chiefs are elected by a consensus among the 26-nation alliance and thus Turkey's position on the candidates becomes key.
According to the Reuters story, the Turkish official said Ankara would prefer to see Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay in the NATO job, pointing to Canada's political support for Turkey in the past. If this is the case, then Turkey has put itself in a paradoxical situation by raising reservations on Rasmussen's name while supporting a candidate from Canada, with which Ankara has soured relations due to Ottawa's recognition of events that took place in 1915 under Ottoman rule as genocide of Armenians, a label that the Turkish state denies.
Independent from Turkey's stated reservations about Rasmussen, there is a belief among Turkish officials that a row over Danish cartoons in 2006 depicting the Prophet Muhammad, which prompted serious uproar in the Muslim world, may cause problems for NATO under Rasmussen in its ongoing operations both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, two Muslim nations where Islamic fundamentalism is at a peak.
The current official Turkish mindset leads us to believe that Ankara will not favor Rasmussen as the next head of NATO, the only international organization in which Turkey has veto power.
But there is a possibility that if the US insists on Rasmussen's name, Turkey may shift its policy to favor the Danish prime minister, taking into consideration Turkey's stated policy of making a fresh start in its relations with its close ally the US. Turkish-US relations, which soured when the former barred US troops from using its soil to invade Iraq in 2003, made a good start under the new US administration as Ankara is preparing to host US President Barack Obama on April 6 and 7.
Another test for Turkey at NATO is how Ankara will handle France's return to the alliance's integrated military command. Foreign Minister Ali Babacan indicated in the beginning of February that Ankara would not raise any objections to France's return to the military command of the alliance, from which it withdrew in 1966.
But behind closed doors, Turkey has been negotiating with both the NATO secretariat as well as with France to ensure that Paris -- which along with Germany, and to a certain extent Denmark, has already raised objections to Turkey's membership in the EU -- will not further complicate the already complex relations between Turkey and the alliance on security-related matters. This is because both Greece and the Greek Cypriots have been putting obstacles before Turkey. As an EU member that is not recognized by Turkey as a state, Greek Cypriots have been using their veto in the union to prevent Turkey from getting closer to the EU defense structure while Turkey has been rejecting Greek Cypriot participation in joint NATO-EU peacekeeping missions.
The current situation in NATO is like a vicious circle for Turkey. As Ankara has gradually shifted from a tough old mindset based on hard power to a one based on soft power, how it will handle both the French return to NATO and the election of a new NATO secretary-general will be a big test for Turkey's mastery of the art of diplomacy.
