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OPINION
Page 4 Friday, March 13, 1981 The Michigan Daly
u r fTu ort or ur e importan tfor . S.
el
The Reagan administration's proposal to in-
crease military and economic assistance to
Turkey from $450 million to $800 million could
not have been made at a more appropriate
time. As General Kenan Evren and his
progressive military government strive to
unite a country stricken in the last decade by
political terrorism and economic ruin, Turkey
turns to its strongest ally to rescue it from the
throes of what some analysts call imminent
disaster.
Before the military assumed control of the
government from the Justice Party last Sep-
tember and abolished all political
organizations, Turkey was teetering toward
anarchy. Unemployment had reached 22 per-
cent, even though more than one million Turks
were working in foreign countries. Inflation
stood at 70 percent. Urban areas, particularly
Istanbul and Ankara, were growing at a rapid
rate, and social programs proved inadequate in
meeting the new demands.
ECONOMIC FRUSTRATION, in turn.
resulted in turmoil. During a four-year period
beginning in 1976, some 5,500 persons were vic-
tims of political violence - more fatalities than
in the 1923 Turkish civil war. No one could curb
the terrorism. Civilian government was ac-
curately perceived as inept.
It was a textbook case of economic develop-
ment failing to keep pace with political
development. The threat of outright civil war
- an occurrence almost unthinkable in a
NATO country - was real. The situation was
made to order for the Soviet Union or its
surrogates, who would have filled the Turkish
power vacuum by mobilizing and
strengthening leftist elements.
The leftists would have found a temporary.
partner in the Salvation Party, a loosely-knit
group of religious zealots who demand an im-
mediate withdrawal from NATO and severan-
ce of Western ties. If the military had not grab-
bed control, chaos would have continued to
prevail and the West might have lost one of its
most important allies.
PRESIDENT REAGAN is not likely to
pressure the military leaders to restore civilian
rule. What is most needed, from an American
defense position, is a strong Turkey; strength
and stability go hand in hand. The Reagan ad-
ministration believes the United States can en-
courage the political stability of Turkey
through increased economic and military aid.
One can only hope that the president is correct.
It is encouraging that the new president has
given high priority to the strengthening of
Turkey. What American congressmen often
failed to consider in the mid-1970's is that
disaster for that sprawling Middle Eastern
nation of 44 million spells trouble for the United
States in the region. Turkey's exposed position
on NATO's southeastern flank has always been
a cause of concern to political and military
strategists in the West - never more than
when the Middle East is in its current state of
ferment.'
Turkey provides the United States with four
By Scott Lewis
military bases and several monitoring posts.
One base, Incirlik, is located on the
Mediterranean Sea just 60 miles from the
Syrian border and could conceivably be of
great value in the event of a major Middle East
war. Turkey, for its part, realizes its
vulnerability to external threats, particularly
from the Soviet Union, and has historically
sought protection from the West.
IN AN ERA of perpetual political change,
Turkey has retained a function it was expected
to serve under the Truman Doctrine: a
deterrent to Soviet ambition and aggression.
Its standing a'rmy of 460,000 ranks second in
size (to the United States) among the 15 mem-
bers of NATO. Its very location - south of the
Black Sea, between the U.S.S.R. and Syria -
precludes the Soviets from sending huge num-
bers of troops to join their Arab allies in a joint
ground attack against Israel or moderate Arab
states.
Unfortunately, the United States has not
always given Ankara the support it needs so
desperately. In 1975, five months after the
Turkish-Greek battle over Cyprus had ended,
Congress voted to suspend arms and equip-
ment to Turkey. While the three-year embargo
did not come close to rupturing bilateral
realtions (as some Turks would lead us to
believe), it did put serious .strains on a very
special friendship, a relationship that has been
mutually rewarding to both countries and of
inestimable value to the NATO alliance.
TURKS HASTEN TO point out that the em-
bargo was not the first time Americans had
betrayed their staunch supporter. In 1964,
during another confrontation with the Greeks
over Cyprus, President Johnson ordered the
removal of U.S.-made Jupiter missiles pointed
at the Soviet Union.
Johnson underestimated the magnitude with
which Turks perceive the Soviet threat, just as
some members of Congress did not take into
account Turkey's vital role in America's Mid-
dle East security scheme when they supported
the embargo.
The shabby treatment strikes one as per-
plexing and contrary to U.S. interests. Turkey,
devoted to Western ideals and, until fairly
recently, an unquestioning ally of Washington,
has been treated with suspicion and distrust. A
Moslem country that has long followed a
secular path, Turkey has gone against its
natural xenophobic inclinations to welcome a
large Western presence. One Turkish scholar
has remarked that "We (Turks) have wanted to
be part of the West more than you wanted to
accept us.
"WE FOUGHT alongside you in Korea. We
didn't question your foreign policy - not in
Israel, not even in Southeast Asia. For 58 years
we have wanted to show you that an Islamic
state can become a model of modern
democracy, that we belong with you."
An aide to the Turkish ambassador in
Washington recently described his country's
relationship with the United States as being a
"hostage of detente. Whenever your relations
with the Soviet Union are relatively good,
you're not as concerned about us," he said with
more than a trace of bitterness.
"Take the embargo, for instance. At that
time detente was moving along very well. Now,
when detente is not progressing as smoothly,
the United States is saying how valued a friend
we are. Turkey is very appreciative of the
assistance the United States gives us, but we
.don't want to be valued the same way as a piece
of real estate."
TURKEY'S VALUE IN Washington is very
high these days. So long as the military gover-
nment succeeds , in its attempt to restore
economic and civil order - and hopefully lays
the groundwork for an efficient, stable political
system - Turkey will remain one of America's
most important and dependable allies. If the
new Turkish government fails, however, the
consequences for U.S. foreign policy in the
Middle East could be enormous.
Scott Lewis, a Daily sports writer, is an
- LSA senior majoring in communication
and political science. He recently visited
the State Department and the Turkish Er'-
bassy in Washington.
----------
Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
Vol. XCI, No. 131
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board
0
Reagan's
step backward
N HIS first month and a half in
office, President Reagan has
redirected American foreign policy -
;ke many domestic policies - back in
tme- For all a administration's
rhetoric about new directions"' in
foreign policy, most of the real
changes have taken the form of a
reversal of recent progress.
This reversal can be. seen perhaps
most clearly in the new State Depar-
tment's abandonment of human rights
as a serious consideration in foreign
policy-making.
For all the failures of the Carter ad-
ministration, under its leadership the
United States took the first significant
steps toward a truly workable foreign
policy that is both comparable with our
national interests and our democratic
ideology.
Instead of building on this new
foundation of human rights, Reagan
has abandoned this concern for basic
human rights. Reagan and Secretary
of State Alexander Haig will approach
world affairs much as did Theodore
Roosevelt. The America Reagan en-
visions is one of 70 years ago, when the
Great White Fleet sailed the Pacific
and the U.S. Marines "stabilized"
Latin American insurgencies.
Reagan's foreign policy, as
promulgated by Haig, is all too
reminiscent of Teddy Roosevelt's Big
Stick diplomacy and "Manifest
Destiny."
One of the basic tenets of the Reagan
policy is that violations of human
rights should not stand in the way of
military alliances. That is, if a regime,
however unpopular or repressive, is
anti-Communist, it deserves the sup-
port of the United States.
In the short term, this approach
might work ,- if the promotion of
American influence in other countries
is the only goal of U.S. foreign policy.
But, this approach cannot work in the
long run, and the goals of our foreign
policy must be much broader. The
United States has experimented with
Reagan's short-sighted approach in
the past and it has not worked. The
United States succeeded only in
alienating most of its neighbors and
much of the world.
In Cuba, U.S. support of the
repressive and unpopular regime
culminated in violent revolution in
1959, that ousted American influence
entirely from the island. In Iran, U.S.
support of the hated Shah had even
more devastating results for American
interests.
The Carter State -Department,
although it never promoted human
rights consistently, did at least begin to
make inroads in traditionally anti-
American areas through its insistence
on human rights. The United States
pressured the release of more than
1000 political prisoners in Paraguay,
thus helping to stabilize that country.
It also began to dismantle America's
negative image in Chile, Nicaragua,
and among black South Africans.
But, in addition to the pragmatic
reasons for defending human rights,
there are clear idealistic reasons. The
United States should use its influence
abroad to promote human rights, not
merely because it protects America's
long term interests, but also because it
is right.
The United States was founded on
this principle, and it has the respon-
sibility to defend it not only at home
but around the world.
Higgins
AF6[ANISTAN WILL BE
RUSSIA'S VIETNAM.
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A couple of years ago a friend of mine
visited a local sex therapist for treatment of a
malady - clinicians delicately diagnose as
"coital dysfunction." The therapist, a disciple
of the Masters-Johnson methodology and a
practitioner of some national repute himself,
informed my friend that if he would bring his
girl friend in with him, the doctor would be
glad to initiate his program of curative
techniques.
When my freind replied that he had no
current girl friend - that indeed his state of
y'
blocks therapy
Coming
Apart
By Christopher Potter
far beyond medicine into the realm of
religious and moral transgressions; if God
doesn't license indiscriminate sex, they say,
then our nation shouldn't license "medical
whorehouses."
IT SEEMS THAT some things are simply
not done. No matter that surrogate therapy,
if strictly applied and monitored, can be
enormously beneficial in its healing effects,
that the person with sexual hangups usually
requires above all a safe, controlled environ-
ment where he or she can relax secure from
ridicule or moral condemnation; that as
human beings, each of us has the right - in-
deed, the moral imperative - to elevate one's
own suffering, to learn to enjoy what
pleasures exist within our brains and
physiologies.
Sadly, the professional sermonizers and
self-flagellators will never see things that
way. Man was born to suffer, they intone, and
we must bear our agonies gratefully and un-
complainingly. It seems unlikely the
surrogate concept, however clinically and
theraputically applied, will ever lose its im-
plied traint of liscentiousness, of sex-for-sale.
Surrogates remain as damned as the ritual
bleeding of patients was. once blessed; the
likelihood of liberalization never seemed
bleaker - not in 1981 with Moral Majority
drooling for new victims. Our new puritan
autocrats would be delighted if all sex
therapy was outlawed - hell, they'd abolish
sex itself if they could figure out a method.
SEX SHOULD NEVER - ever - grow into
a life and death matter for anyone. Yet we get
innumerable cases of human beings driven
into a suicidal corner of guilt and self-loathing
by a society which has lost all perspective of
magazines to TV, every level of our mass
media pounds home the same tyrannical
message: If you're not out there ballin'
chicks, there's something wrong with you,
fella.
The stud mythology carries over to our fic-
tion writing. When an author conjures a
character who is impotent, frigid or other-
wise 'hung up, he paints the poor soul's
malady in the most horrific tones of deep,
dark secrecy - more hideous than leprosy,
worse than original sin. To dream of cure is a
foolish fancy; better to take a gun and end
things swiftly.
Lurking behind all the requisite infamy is
the subliminal, quasi-moralistic intimatior
that the tortured sufferer is getting exactly
the punishment he or she deserves.
MILLIONS ACCEPT this cruel, loonev
premise. The victim isn't sick, he's merely
damned. Such are the. romantic perils of ob-
session. Viewed objectively (is this possible
anymore?), sex is simply one element out of
the infintisimal network which comprises the
human mind and body - a wondrous,
uniquely pleasurable element, yet still just
one among millions.
Perhaps it's an element which behooves us
to become Skinnerians, to level down sex's
psychic disproportions to a universally
rational common denominator. Life might-be
less beautiful without sex's highs - yet can
we continue to live with its canonical laws?
Christoper Potter is a Daily staff mem-
ber. His column appears every Friday.
Ii
impotence was itself the prime barrier to his
becoming involved with anyone-the
therapist shrugged, replied that he could only
work with couples, and under the circum-
stances could offer no assistance whatsoever.
Thus the would-be patient was caught in his
own interlocking Catch-22: If he wanted help
in combating his malady, he first had to
eradicate its resultant social offshoot-which
could be eradicated only if he could first ob-
tain the help.
THIS DEAD-END paradox wasn't the fault
of the doctor. The formidable obstacles to the
practice of surrogate sex therapy - which en-
tails having a professional assume the sex
role in lieu of regular partner - are not so
mn.,medical r nsvphiatrie a they are
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