When East Meets West Wisely : Turkey’s president offers Clinton a valuable perspective on the region

President Turgut Ozal of Turkey met Monday with President Clinton. Ozal’s 10-day visit to the United States was “private,” according to official Turkish sources. It was clear, however, that he wished to meet with Clinton and it was awkward that the White House said, at first, that no meeting would be held.

Not meeting with Ozal would have been a major diplomatic gaffe. Not only is Turkey a crucial American ally, and currently chair of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, but Ozal is an admired analyst of regional affairs. Introducing him to a meeting of the Carnegie Endowment last week, Morton Abramowitz, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, disclosed that as early as January, 1990, Ozal had warned then-President George Bush that Iraq was a far more formidable foe than Iran. Later, as a U.S. ally during the Gulf War, Abramowitz said, Ozal warned that Saddam Hussein would be removed by force or not at all.

Ozal has made no secret of his advice to Clinton. He wants the arms embargo against Bosnia lifted. He wants air strikes to enforce the no-fly zone against Serbian planes. And he rejects the division of Bosnian territory proposed by mediators Cyrus R. Vance and Lord David Owen. Turkish support for Operation Provide Comfort, the U.N. shield protecting Iraq’s Kurds, will be in jeopardy, he says, unless the Western allies show a comparable concern to protect Bosnia’s threatened Muslims.

Ozal’s is not bullying advice. Within his own country, he is faulted for having been all too friendly to the United States during the Gulf War. But he fears, as he told the Carnegie Endowment, that “the global conflict between communism and capitalism will be replaced by global religious conflict. If we all handle these crises wrong, that conflict could be Islam versus Christianity. We have to avoid that.”

A smaller Bosnia, ceding territory to Serbia and Croatia but remaining large enough to be militarily defensible, may come about via a comprehensive Balkans settlement that will redraw other borders as well. As it will take Russian support to sell such a settlement in Belgrade, so it will take Turkish support to sell it in Sarajevo. Clinton now seems to be approaching a Balkans settlement from the right direction: the east.