Newsletter No. 166
January 20, 2006

 

THE LIGHT AND SHADOW OF JAPAN-TURKEY FRIENDSHIP
By Michael Penn

There can be little doubt that Japan’s relationship with Turkey is the strongest and deepest bilateral relationship that Japan maintains with the nations of West Asia and North Africa. Although oil has made the Persian Gulf more crucial for Japan strategically, there is still a certain shallowness in those relationships in terms of real affection and trust. Egypt, with its ancient pyramids and sphinx, maintains a hold on the Japanese imagination, as it does with all people around the world. However, for Japan, Turkey is something even more special.

The Ottoman Empire and Persia dominated the West Asian region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Arab peoples were still subject to the Ottomans, the British, the French, and finally, after 1911, the Italians. Japanese travellers passed through British-Ottoman Egypt on their way to Europe even before the Suez Canal was completed in 1869. By the 1870s and 1880s, curious Japanese had begun visiting Istanbul (a.k.a. Constantinople) every few years, and there was talk of establishing direct diplomatic relations as well.

It was the Ertugrul disaster that really consolidated the friendship, however. In the summer of 1890, a decrepit Ottoman warship called the Ertugrul arrived in Tokyo Bay on a diplomatic mission. The Ottoman Sultan had sent a medal of honor to the Meiji Emperor in return for one that he had received in Istanbul from the visiting Prince Akihito Komatsu in 1887. The leader of the Ottoman mission, Rear Admiral Osman Pasha, charmed the elite of Tokyo with his polished manners in the “high-collar” context of Rokumeikan society. However, when the ship began its journey home, it was swept up by a typhoon and destroyed off the coast of Wakayama prefecture. Hundreds died and only 69 men survived. As a token of friendship, the survivors were cared for lavishly and sent home to Istanbul aboard two Japanese frigates, the Hiei and the Kongo.

In the 1890s, tokens of friendship continued to be passed between the Meiji Emperor and the Ottoman Sultan, and private citizens like Shotaro Noda and Torajiro Yamada tried to keep the national friendship alive and vital. Although Japan and Turkey were destined to be on opposite sides of both World Wars in the early 20th century, there was never any animosity between them, but only the calculations of national interests and European alliances. Some British planners wanted Japan to send troops to Mesopotamia (Iraq) to fight German and Ottoman troops in 1917, but the project was scrapped due to concerns about what Japan might request later in a postwar settlement. As for the Second World War, Turkey stayed out of it until 1945, and didn’t play a serious military role.

During the 1920s and 1930s, and then beginning again in the 1950s until this very day, Japan and Turkey maintained strong relations. Bilateral trade was never very crucial due to geographical and economic constraints, but, especially in diplomatic circles, a distant but deep friendship was acknowledged and celebrated. Many Japanese tourists go to Turkey, and Japan maintains a positive image among most Turks. It has been noted as well that the Japanese language and the Turkish language may be very distantly related, and it is possible that in the pre-historic past, Japanese and Turks were the same people living somewhere near today’s Mongolia.

Japan provides considerable economic assistance to Turkey. One of the bridges over the Bosphorus was built with Japanese aid. Other infrastructure projects have also been built, and some sister-city relationships are maintained as well. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s upbeat visit to Turkey in early January 2006 reaffirmed the long-standing history of friendship between the two nations.

The Japan-Turkey friendship is something to be welcomed. The bilateral relationship may bring a host of positive developments for both nations. At the same time, there is something else that is hardly ever noted -- not all of the effects of the friendship are necessarily positive and constructive.

The clearest case regards the issue of Turkish Kurds.

The Turkish-Kurdish conflict has roots that go back to the terribly-botched First World War peace settlement that caused so many other conflicts in the century that followed. Both the Turkish perspective and the Kurdish perspective are quite understandable in light of history.

The Kurdish notion is that they were cheated by Turkey and the European powers after the First World War. Instead of establishing an independent Kurdistan in southeastern Anatolia, their land was partitioned between four hostile nations: Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. Kurds speak an Indo-European language related neither to Turkish nor Arabic, although it is related to Farsi. In Turkey and Iraq, in particular, the resulting conflict has been intense at times, and tens of thousands of people have died violently in both countries in recent decades. The point of view of Kurdish political leaders is simple: We are a separate people, and we demand a separate nation.

The basic Turkish view, however, is also understandable. At the end of the First World War, they came dangerously close to losing their own independence. Britain and France carved away all of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and even the Anatolian heartland was under threat. Greece laid claim to the capital city of Istanbul and most of the Anatolian coast. There was talk of an Armenia and a Kurdistan in eastern Anatolia at the same time. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Greece were happy to work together to essentially eliminate Turkish power for all time and confine them to a subject status.

It was the great historical fortune of Turkey that at precisely that time an extremely capable and intelligent leader, Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), arose among them to lead them to victory in both war and peace, and helped his people to establish a reasonably powerful nation in Anatolia. From the Turkish nationalist perspective, talk of an independent Kurdistan smacks of the divisions and humilations of the past. Ataturk had drawn the line: No more partitions of Turkey.

As a result, there is no love lost between Turks and those Kurds who want independence. The Turkish media has described Kurds as “Mountain Turks” to deny their separate identity, and also as “terrorists” to invite the sympathy of Western observers. For their part, the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) launched a rebellion in 1984 that led to the deaths of tens of thousands. In 1999, the leader of the rebellion, Abdullah Ocalan, was captured in Kenya, probably with covert American and Israeli assistance. Ocalan, with his cold-blooded, dictatorial methods, and later attempts to save his own skin, is not a very sympathetic character, but the general idea of an independent Kurdistan remains the real goal of many Kurds.

There is reason to doubt that Tokyo is very sensitive to the history and the full scope of issues that are involved in the Turkish-Kurdish conflict, but in a willy-nilly way, they have taken sides. For example, a report from Zaman Online suggests that Prime Minister Koizumi indicated during his recent visit that Japan would freeze all assets belonging to the PKK in solidarity with Ankara. Prime Minister Erdogan may also have asked Koizumi to close down the Japan-Kurdistan Friendship Association, which some Turkish sources claim is a terrorist organization.

There is also the long-running issue of Kurdish refugees in Japan, and their treatment by Japanese immigration officers and courts. Since the mid-1990s several hundred Kurds of Turkish nationality have come to Japan and applied for recognition as refugees. In general, Japanese immigration authorities are very reluctant to grant people such status, but in the case of Turkish Kurds, the hard line has been taken to extreme lengths. Ordinary Japanese citizens have signed petitions and offered support to the mostly-Saitama-based Kurdish community. For their part, Kurdish refugee applicants have protested, fought endless court battles, and even gone on hunger strikes.

One of the most vocal of these refugees was Ahmet Kazankiran, who led a sit-in at the United Nations University in Tokyo in July 2004. It was said that he had once protested for ethnic rights in Turkey and had been arrested and tortured. He told the Japan Times: “The Japanese government has never accepted a single Kurdish Turk as a refugee in deference for its diplomatic ties with Turkey, and it is only UNHCR that we can count on as the last resort… We will stay here until the United Nations take effective steps to pressure the Japanese government to do something for us.” In fact, Kazankiran was able to obtain status from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as a “mandate refugee” -- that is, a refugee recognized as such by the United Nations.

None of that, however, stopped the Japanese government from deporting the man and his eldest son back to Turkey in February 2005. The reaction in some quarters was scathing. Said the lawyer for Kurdish applicants: “We have reached a point where we cannot expect the Justice Ministry to take appropriate measures to protect asylum-seekers… This is an embarrassing incident, internationally speaking. The Justice Ministry not only ignored the U.N., but challenged and insulted it. This action will no doubt stain Japan’s position in the international community.” The UNHCR itself declared that the deportation was “contrary to Japan’s obligations under international law.” Even the Social Democratic Party, led by human rights lawyer Mizuho Fukushima, issued a statement that Japan “has neglected its duties to cooperate with the UNHCR.” Later in the year there was another scandal in which it became known that the Japanese government had passed personal information about the Kurdish refugee applicants directly to the Turkish government.

What all of this demonstrates is that there may indeed be a darker side to Japan-Turkey friendship as well. Because of Japan’s strong affinities with the country, Tokyo may be inclined to look the other way when it comes to allegations of human rights abuses in Turkey. This may be especially convenient to Tokyo as many Japanese are not particularly welcoming of non-Japanese immigrants in any case.

The ideology of the “war on terrorism” is another problem here. While it may perhaps be understood why Ankara would insist that Kurdish activists are “terrorists,” it would be a big mistake to accept that logic wholeheartedly. Like the Serbs in Bosnia or the Russians in Chechnya or even Apartheid South Africa against Nelson Mandela’s ANC, it is far too easy for political repression to be disguised as an eternal battle for national security against “terrorism.” Indeed, the whole global ideology of the “war on terrorism” has a distinct tendency to favor the international “haves” over the “have-nots.” We ought not to slip into a frame of mind that would save us from the ravages of independent thought: Each political conflict must be judged according to its own particular merits, and by the facts that can be established.

In sum, the history of Japan-Turkey friendship is an excellent tale that has brought with it much that is good and admirable. It will no doubt produce more benefits in the future as well. At the same time, however, we must always be on guard that hypocrisy and political convenience not be allowed to present itself as goodwill among nations.

 

COMMENTARY

1) From Joseph Tomei of Kumamoto Gakuen University on January 20, 2006:

Not meaning to take anything away from all the information that Shingetsu Newsletter No. 166 has, but would a discussion of the anecdotal (perhaps some other members might know if it is true or not) story about the wholesale name change from 'toruko' (turkish baths) to soaplands?

The story that I have heard (that I absolutely do not vouch for) is that the Turkish ambassador was once mistakenly taken to one by a Tokyo taxi driver instead of being taken to the Turkish Embassy and the diplomatic outcry led to them all being renamed. If the story is true (and if not, why the wholesale name change?), it would present some more evidence for Japan being very conscious of its relations with Turkey.