Turk gray wolves prowl

TOULOUSE, France, July 16 (UPI) -- It was not easy to see in the glare of the cameras and the fierce Riviera sunlight. But as French President Nicolas Sarkozy launched his grandiose new Mediterranean Union project this week, the shadow of a gray wolf loomed menacingly offstage.

The shadow is called Ergenekon. This is the name of the legendary valley in the heart of the mountains of Central Asia where the Turkish race was born, and from which the Turks were led by a gray wolf on the travels that led to their modern homeland.

The gray wolf of Ergenekon is the most potent of Turkey's national myths, a symbol of patriotic devotion. The shadowy Turkish nationalist groups who fought their dirty war against Kurdish separatists and leftist students in the 1970s called themselves the gray wolves.

And this week Turkey's top civilian prosecutor in Istanbul brought charges of subversion against 86 prominent people, supposedly members of a right-wing and highly nationalist terrorist conspiracy called Ergenekon. They include two retired generals, the head of the main Chamber of Commerce, the leader of a nationalist political party, a well-known newspaper editor and a rash of senior military, security and police officials.

Prosecutor Aykut Cengiz Engin claimed a military and political coup was being planned to overthrow the elected government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A moderate Islamist who has cooled Turkey's traditional alliance with the United States and forged closer ties to Iran and other Islamic countries, Erdogan is seen by his foes as a mortal threat to the traditional secular nationalism of the modern Turkish state.

Turkey's media and political circles have been filled for months with rumors of military coups and speculation that the gray wolves of Ergenekon were planning a campaign of bombings, violence and destabilization that would force the military to step in. That would be the fourth such intervention in 30 years.

Part of the background to this has been the soft coup that is already under way, the lawsuit now before the Constitutional Court that says the ruling AKP party of Erdogan's government contravenes the secular constitution and therefore must be legally banned. This lawsuit, filed by the chief prosecutor of the Appeals Court after a six-month inquiry, is expected to produce a verdict this fall.

It could topple the government and force Erdogan's resignation, or force the AKP party to rename and reform itself and sack the hundreds of Islamic officials it has placed in key positions throughout the bureaucracy. And it certainly means a constitutional crisis, coming as the five-year economic boom that has sustained the Erdogan government so far has come to a shuddering halt with the oil price rise and the financial crisis.

This is a power struggle between Turkey's traditional "deep state," a secular and nationalist system secured by the army, and the new Turkey of the AKP. The party is supported by a host of newly urbanized and newly educated Muslims from rural backgrounds who have built careers and businesses in the cities and who want the state to reflect their interests, rather than those of the army.

One way of looking at it is to see the traditional Turkish state as defined by its loyalty to the NATO alliance, and the AKP as defined more by its aspiration to join the European Union. But the AKP's critics say it harbors secret plans to turn Turkey into an Islamist state.

This is the context of this week's launch of the Mediterranean Union project. Sarkozy initially proposed it as a transparent way to stop the ongoing process of Turkish membership in the EU by offering the MU instead.

The MU would mean access to EU markets and full economic integration for the EU's North African and Middle Eastern neighbors along the Mediterranean coastline. It would mean EU aid and investment to build up their economies, providing the jobs that would keep North Africans at home rather than immigrating to Europe. Above all, it would stop short of full membership.

So far this week, most attention was paid to the way the MU launch brought the leaders of Syria, Lebanon and Israel into the same room, and to the cool response that Germany and northern EU countries offered to the French initiative.

Some far-sighted commentators also noted that increased access to Libyan oil and to Algerian natural gas were a key component of the MU plan. Certainly Russia's Gazprom, which has been scrambling to reach deals with Libya and Algeria that might help Russia secure its growing monopoly over Europe's energy supplies, saw it that way.

Sarkozy, to his credit, seems to have understood that the growth dynamics of North Africa are starting to look promising. Birth rates in Tunisia and Turkey have fallen to below replacement levels and have almost stabilized in Morocco and Algeria. At the same time, new investment from the Gulf has spurred growth rates in Egypt, Jordan and the Maghreb, and a new service economy is taking off.

But the slow-motion coup now unfolding in Turkey can stop all that, with an ugly atmosphere of wider political violence making the mood far worse. With six dead in an attack on the U.S. Consulate last week and five dead in clashes with the PKK Kurdish separatists this week, Turkey has enough troubles already without the unfolding constitutional drama that threatens to derail not only its own hopes of EU membership but the EU's own alternative offering of the MU. The gray wolves are prowling ominously close.