Changing Turkey in a Changing World

Excerpt from Dario D’Urso (2010), “Shifting Turkey: Ankara’s New Dynamics Under the AKP Government”, Portuguese Journal of International Affairs, Spring/Summer 2010.

The core of Davutoglu’s vision is the ‘zero problems with neighbors’ policy, which should be pursued by exerting the maximum level of Turkey’s soft power in the region, thus decreasing the muscular role played by the military in shaping Turkish foreign policy since the founding of the Kemalist republic. The change of perspective brought by Erdogan, Gul and Davutoglu – whose personal background is rooted in central Anatolia, a more conservative and religious region of Turkey compared to the coast and Istanbul – has often been labeled, specially by its detractors, as ‘neo-Ottomanism’. The implication is immediately clear: the AKP government is pursuing an active promotion of Turkey’s strategic interests in the region of its former empire, emphasizing the role of political Islam in its external projection, neglecting Western aspirations and establishing new partnerships with other former imperial powers, such as Russia and Iran. Davutoglu has never seemed fond of such a label, always denying any ‘imperial’ ambition behind AKP’s activism in Ankara’s foreign policy, eventually preferring the term ‘Pax Ottomana’’ implying that Turkey is a privileged mediator in many of the regional conflicts around its borders. Actually, the AKP government has tried hard to build the image of Turkey as an honest broker in its neighborhood. Let us just recall some episodes of this flush of activism: Ankara mediated between Syria and Israel, until Operation Cast Lead against Hamas-run Gaza made the talks collapse; Erdogan and Davutoglu conducted an active shuttle diplomacy during the brief war between Russia and Georgia in 2008, going so far as proposing the establishment of a regional conflict-management mechanism dubbed ‘Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform’, a bold idea mostly conceived as a selfpromotion tool; the Foreign Minister has also actively attempted to alleviate recurring tension in the Balkans by promoting a series of meetings among Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia. The ‘zero problem’ policy was also pursued by engaging in the problematic relations Turkey has with several of its neighbors, although in many cases such a strategy was not simply the result of the AKP government’s efforts: reconciliation with Syria was mostly due to the end of Damascus’s support for the outlawed Party of Kurdistan Workers (PKK); cooperation with Iraq was fostered by the regime change operated by the United States; and the closeness with Russia is mostly dictated by Turkey’s will to become the main hub for Russian gas and oil to the West. When Ankara tried the path of reconciliation with Armenia, the process eventually stalled among a web of regional (Ankara’s special relation with Yerevan’s arch-enemy, Azerbaijan, and the frozen conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh) and historical implications (the thorny issue of recognizing the Armenian Genocide). Apart from the course of action inaugurated with Russia, it is in the Middle East that this break in Turkish foreign policy appears to be more significant and to a certain extent problematic, for it is in that region that the ‘zero problems with neighbors’ policy has proven to be rather selective.=

…

It is undeniable that the new course of Turkish foreign policy is also based on a certain degree of ‘Islamic solidarity’, almost an attempt – a quite successful one too, if one considers the popularity Erdogan enjoys in Arab streets – to regain the trust of those Arab countries that were once part of the Ottoman empire and whose relations with Turkey have until now been quite problematic. But the common religious factor is not the only drive for the AKP foreign policy in the Middle East and in the Muslim world. One of the main reasons for the prior strong link between Israel and Turkey was the distrust both countries felt for their Arab neighbors, who might constitute a serious potential threat. Nowadays, many of these threats do not exist anymore: Syria has abandoned its pro-PKK stance and it is gradually returning to the international community; a very weak Iraq has become a central playground for the Turkish struggle against Kurdish terrorism, while at the same time Ankara became an essential partner to the autonomous Kurdish Regional Government, with an eye on its important oil and gas resources; and Iran might also be essential in the making of Turkey’s energy strategy. Because of all this, Ankara might not need Israel as it used to in the past: an alliance which, on the internal front, was becoming more difficult to defend in the eyes of the most conservative and religious Turkish electorate which is the consensus basis for the AKP. On the other hand, Turkey increasingly behaves as the new Sunni regional power; the void left by Egypt and Saudi Arabia – whose regional projection is highly undermined by the ailing conditions of their policymakers (Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has turned 82 and veteran Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal allegedly suffers from Parkinson) seemed to have been filled by Ankara’s new proactive role in the region. Thanks to his intransigent position on the Gaza issue, Erdogan has won the hearts and minds of Arabs all over the Middle East (some commentators have even labeled him the ‘new Nasser’), something that is not necessarily appreciated by Arab governments. Nevertheless, Turkish officials vehemently rebuke any accusation of shift of axis from West to East and South at the detriment of a former ally such as Israel. Rather than a shift, Erdogan and Davutoglu prefer to speak of a rebalancing of Turkey’s foreign priorities: Ankara has ‘rediscovered’ its long-abandoned Eastern aspirations, put aside for almost a century after the demise of the Ottoman empire and the rise of the Kemalist republic pushed Turkey to anchor itself to the West. The delays on the European integration path, which should be equally shared between Ankara and Brussels, serve as a perfect reason to look East, although membership in the EU allegedly remains one of the core aims of the current Turkish government. Turkey’s repositioning towards the East is also an economy-driven choice: the financial crisis in the West has forced Turkish exporters to look more and more at new markets, not as badly hit as those in Europe and the United States. A natural choice was therefore looking to the Middle East. Exports towards Arab countries have grown substantially in recent years, while those towards Europe have begun to shrink. Although the former could not substitute the latter as the first choice for Turkish entrepreneurs, Turkish economic penetration in the Middle East is a proven trend, one that also requires, in the eyes of Ankara’s policy makers, a stronger political commitment. The recent proposal signed by the Foreign Ministers of Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria at the recent Turkish-Arab Business Forum aimed at creating a free trade area among these countries might sound more as a propaganda move right now, but it certainly proves a well-established trend in Ankara’s trade policy.