Turkey and Afghanistan have always enjoyed warm relations due to their strong cultural and historical connections. For instance, immediately after Afghanistan gained its independence on 19 August 1919 under the leadership of Amanullah Khan, it established diplomatic contacts with Turkey -- while Turkeys own Independence War was still ongoing. Afghanistan became the second state after the Soviet Union to recognize the Turkish Republic. As a result, the two countries signed the Turkey-Afghanistan Alliance Agreement on 1 March 1921 in Moscow, the first official agreement between the two states. After seven years, in May 1928, Amanullah Khan visited Turkey on the invitation of Mustafa Kemal Atatrk and at that time a Treaty of Eternal Friendship was signed between Turkey and Afghanistan. Finally, Afghanistan was one of the parties to Saadabad (Nonaggression) Pact that was signed on 8 July 1937. The close relations that both countries created at the time of their establishment have preserved their strength.
Turkish-Afghan relations have been kept alive even after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Later that year, when the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a multinational peace force established under NATO, started its operations, Turkey contributed by sending 300 soldiers. Unlike other NATO member states, Turkey defined all of its soldiers as non-combatant forces. Turkey was in command of ISAF twice, between June 2002-February 2003 and between February 2005-August 2005, when Turkey also raised its contribution of soldiers to 1,300. Alongside these developments, Afghan President Khamid Karzai’s visit to Turkey in 2002 and Turkish Prime Minister R. Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Afghanistan in 2005 contributed further to bilateral relations.
The most important factors enabling Turkey to be relatively active in Afghanistan are Turkeys unique status as a Muslim-majority NATO member state as well as its close diplomatic ties with Afghanistan. Additionally, the achievements of former Turkish Foreign Minister Hikmet Cetin in his two terms as NATO Senior Civilian Representative (January 2004 and August 2006) won Turkey more support from Afghanistan and world public opinion in general. In the context of security, one of the most important recent developments has been Turkey’s leadership of the Kabul Regional Command. Turkey’s 1,800 soldier-strong military force began operations on 31 October 2009 and will remain for one year.
We can regard Turkey’s efforts as considerable in the context of politics as well. Tripartite Summit meetings between Turkey, Afghanistan, and Pakistan started in 2007 in Ankara; since then, meetings have been held every year with the participation of heads of state. The topics of each meeting has been molded by different events every year, though dialogue, economic partnership, security, and education came to the fore. With the fourth Summit, held in İstanbul on 25 January this year, concrete steps have been taken on a wider spectrum of topics. Immediately after this Summit, on 26 January, Turkey hosted Afghanistan’s neighbors at the Istanbul Summit on Friendship and Cooperation in the Heart of Asia. These efforts sought to prevent the isolation of Afghanistan in the region and create permanent and multilateral solutions for security and stability.
What Else For Afghanistan?
Turkey helps more in the social and cultural areas than military in Afghanistan. Turkey has always argued that a purely military struggle is not enough to assure security and stability. Correspondingly, Turkey has not sent a single combat soldier to Afghanistan and has made efforts to rebuild the country’s infrastructure. A Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), responsible for work in this area, was established by Turkey on 12 November 2006.
The Turkish PRT, based in Wardak and administered by a civilian diplomat, is the only provincial reconstruction team in the province, located 40 km west of Kabul. This team, consisted of 130 operatives, completed nearly 200 projects in four years with the help of the Turkish International Cooperation and Development Agency (TİKA). $30 million were spent. Projects generally focused on education, health, and infrastructure areas which would develop Afghans’ quality of life. Among them were also socio-cultural projects in which people could participate. The list of some of the projects is encouraging: Up to now, 68 schools have been established or restored, benefitting up to 65,000 students; nursing and midwifery education centers for women have been opened; a sport complex has been built at Kabul University; scholarships have been granted for education at foreign and national universities; 250 tons of humanitarian aid have been handed out across the country; clothing and school stationery has been donated; 17 hospitals and outpatient clinics have been built or reconstructed, benefiting nearly one million Afghans; people living far away from urban centers have undergone medical checkups; thousands of Afghan police officers and soldiers have been trained; education programs have been organized for judges, prosecutors and district governors; dozens of roads, bridges and drilling works have been completed and many more are underway.
In addition to the aid coming from the Turkish government, Turkish entrepreneurs have also completed projects worth nearly $2 billion since 2002. Over the last eight years, 21 Turkish companies have made investments totaling nearly $200 million in Afghanistan.
Second Turkish Provincial Reconstruction Team
The development of a second Turkish PRT took a long time in order to improve the amount of investment and aid that could be given and to tailor it to the needs of the northern regions of the country. When the Afghan government announced its consent for the new team, the Jowzjan PRT was opened on 21 July 2010 with the participation of Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ahmet Davutoğlu. The head of the Jowzjan PRT, Afghanistan’s 27th PRT, is again a civil coordinator assigned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This PRT will also include civilian agents from the Interior Ministry, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, TİKA, as well as a Police Special Operations Team and the Police Training and Mentor Team. The Jowzjan PRT will be responsible for development and capacity-building projects in the northern provinces of Jowzjan and Sare Pol. With the Wardak PRT as a model, the aims of the new PRT are similar to the projects mentioned above.
Promoting Turkey In Afghanistan
Turkey has made great efforts in Afghanistan within the scope of civilian investments, but have these efforts been recognized internationally? In January and February 2010 alone, four international meetings on Afghanistan were held: the fourth Turkey-Afghanistan-Pakistan Summit in Istanbul on 25 January, Istanbul Summit on Friendship and Cooperation in the Heart of Asia on 26 January, the Afghanistan Conference in London on 28 January and the NATO Defence Ministers Unofficial Meeting on 4-5 February in Istanbul. One of the common features of each of these four meetings was the role of Turkey. Both the fact that three of the meetings were held in Istanbul and the repeated emphasis on the importance of Turkeys role in Afghanistan, were very remarkable.
First, before the London conference, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Philip Crowley commented on Turkey’s efforts by noting, "Turkey plays a unique and important role as a key member of NATO and ISAF." The spokesperson of NATO, James Appathurai, took this one step further, stating, "No state can play that role as Turkey does." The United States’ special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, stated at the NATO Defence Ministers Meeting that "I can think of no country in the ISAF alliance that has a role that is more important than Turkeys in terms of operations inside Afghanistan." Also, General Stanley A. McChrystal, the Commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan and ISAF, remarked, "Turkish troops are very successful not only in providing security, but also in containing rebellions." Today, Turkey’s efforts continue to be praised. Most recently, at the International Kabul Conference on 20 July, Staffan de Mistura, UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon’s special representative to Afghanistan, stated that Turkeys efforts contributed a lot and were being followed closely by the United Nations.
Is it possible for Turkey to play a leading role in defining allied policy in Afghanistan? Can Turkey’s efforts be taken as a role model? The answer is, unequivocally, yes. One of the main topics in the latest conference, for instance, was the demilitarization of PRTs, something that Turkey had implemented since 2006. Canada, for instance, recently announced that they were working on assigning a civilian diplomat as a senior official to Canadas PRT. The demilitarization of PRTs is very significant because the mutual mistrust of NATO forces and Afghan civilians can only be solved by direct, mutual interaction. From a military perspective, the better relations that armed forces have with locals, the easier it is to distinguish regular Afghans from Taliban militants.
Such inspiration might not be called "the Turkish Model," and Turkey certainly has no expectations as such. Yet as the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has pledged, Turkey will continue to help Afghan people with civilian support for as long as they want it, without any doubt. NATO forces that have long since grasped the fact that the military operations alone do not work out, and a debate on this topic when the answer is so clear merely amounts to a loss of time. Every day more people die in Afghanistan, and nobody, in particular the Afghan people, can bear this fact any more.
Salih Doğan
USAK Center for Eurasian Studies
USAK Center for Security Studies
salihdogan52@gmail.com or sdogan@usak.org.tr
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