Over more than fifty years the American military has poured money and weapons into various Muslim states, and built expensive bases in Muslim states, assuming that certain alliances would last.
What has been the result? Along with the British, the Americans poured money and weapons into the ill-fated and essentially worthless CENTO — with Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq being the recipients of money and weaponry. That whole thing came to a final end with the 1958 coup in Baghdad, in which young King Faisal was killed, and “strongman” (that was the Homeric epithet Time magazine applied to him) Nuri es-Said’s mutilated corpse was dragged through the streets of Baghdad. The alliance with those straight-shooting, highly reliable Pakistani generals continued (they were so much more trustworthy than left-wing Nehru and Krishna Menon), and the Pakistani military is essentially the creation of American aid, that sustains it, absurdly, to this day. And American economic aid made possible the development of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. American planes may make possible the delivery of such weapons to others — either other Muslim states or groups that might use them, or the attempted dropping of such weaponry on an Infidel enemy, India or Israel.
Iran was our true friend under the Shah, but the Shah, that “pillar of stability” (as Carter called him) fell, and instead the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, and the Islamic Republic of Iran was established. And even if that regime falters or falls, and a much better regime follows, who can say whether or not, in Iran’s future, there is not another Islamic Republic of Iran, as long as Iranians remain Muslims?
And then there is Turkey. Turkey, that sent troops to the Korean War. Turkey, whose officers have for decades received training and weapons from the American military. Turkey, that it has always been assumed was, and would forever remain, “secular” Turkey, the Turkey of Kemalism, the Turkey that would never go back. But of course eighty years of Kemalism have been slowly undone, for Kemalism has not spread to all of Turkish society. The secular class failed to extend the constraints on Islam, preferring to lazily rely on intermittent interventions by the army. But the army itself has to constantly monitor to make sure that those who take their Islam seriously are not working their way up the ranks — yet despite that monitoring, such people are indeed infiltrating.
Furthermore, under the “replacement theology” of Kemalism, with Ataturk replacing Muhammad as “uswa hasana” and “al-insan al-kamil,” and the cult of “the Turk” (see Inonu’s “Sun People”) replacing the cult of the Believer (and especially the Arab Believer, best of all Muslims), lies the same kind of mental set. The “Turk,” for example, cannot be a Christian, Armenian or Greek, or a Jew, but must be a Muslim. It is the same as in Malaysia, where “Malays” who benefit from the Bumiputra system must be Muslim Malays.
That the Turks cannot own up to their own past, that their moderation is skin-deep, that they are so defensive and so quick to demand that history be ignored or else, that even before this the Turkish public was snapping up copies of “Mein Kampf” and making the box-office smash of all time a movie that depicted American soldiers as Nazis (and a Jewish doctor as harvesting the organs of dead Iraqis for buyers in Los Angeles and Tel Aviv), that Hrant Dink was killed, that important figures in the Turkish establishment denounced the Americans as “worse than Nazis” in Iraq and were not in turn denounced by other Turks, that Turkey refused to allow the Americans to make use of its own bases to send a fourth division into Iraq in March 2003 (to quickly subdue Anbar Province), that this and much more has taken place and the Turks think we will not notice any of this, or not notice a good deal more that could be mentioned, shows that in dealing with a predominately Muslim population, in a Muslim state, those who count on the “moderates” are whistling in the dark, and always will be.
I don’t know if Incirlik will be lost. The airbase in Morocco had to be given up in 1967. The huge Wheelus Air Base in Libya was lost when Khaddafy came to power. The bases in Saudi Arabia are not worth a thing, for they cannot be used except against sworn enemies of the Al-Saud (as in 1991), abroad or within the country. The bases temporarily permitted in Central Asian republics have been taken back, or are being phased out.
No, there is no Muslim state that can be relied on. That is the lesson.
Is there an alternative to Turkey? Of course there is. It is Bulgaria, one of the worst victims of Ottoman Muslim murder. See Gladstone, see what he wrote about the Ottomans round about 1876.
And learn from CENTO, from the reliance on those Pakistani generals, or the Shah of Iran, or, for that matter, Turkey. Should Turkey be kicked out of NATO? Of course it should. Then the NATO forces will be able to meet, and discuss the worldwide Jihad, and the demographic conquest of parts of Western Europe that hold deep significance for the armories of NATO, and who is to control them, and what kind of domestic tranquillity, or lack of it, the states and peoples of Western Europe will enjoy, or endure, in the future.
Turkey’s exit is not to be deplored, but to be fondly wished. Unless, of course, the forces of Kemalism come to their senses, take power in Turkey, and force a much greater enlargement of the Kemalist program. That’s a vast program, and unlikely to be undertaken.