Turkey's Maturing Foreign Policy

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July 7, 2011

SNAPSHOT

Turkey's Maturing Foreign PolicyHow the Arab Spring Changed the AKP

Mustafa Akyol

Mustafa Akyol is a Turkish journalist, and the author of the just-releasedIslam Without Extremes: A Muslim

Case for Liberty [1].

On June 12, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the most popular Turkish prime minister of the last half century, marked his

third straight electoral win by averring his leadership over not only Turkey but the entire region. Believe me, he

said in a victory speech, Sarajevo won today as much as Istanbul; Beirut won as much as Izmir; Damascus won

as much as Ankara; Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, the West Bank, Jerusalem won as much as Diyarbakir. The speech

reaffirmed the foreign policy that Erdogans Justice and Development Party (AKP) has pursued since it came to

power in 2002. As the AKPs foreign minister, Ahmet Davutolu, puts it, Turkeys goal has been to have zero

problems with its neighbors. And over the past decade, Davutolu has dramatically improved Ankaras

relationships with capitals across the region through constant diplomatic engagement, fostering mutual trade, and

opening national borders.

Some in the West have seen Turkeys new foreign policy as a shift Eastward. Indeed, Turkey has drawn closer to

authoritarian governments in Iran and Syria. And Erdogan and his teams Muslim identity have influenced some of

their foreign policy rhetoric, such as their strong stance in support of Palestine. Accordingly, some, including the

British historian Niall Ferguson, even suggest [2] that Turkey might be heading toward a revived Ottoman

Empire that would dominate the whole Middle East.

But warnings about Turkeys neo-Ottomanism are more sensational than factual, and miss a broader point. Like

any major power, Turkey bases its foreign policy on calculations of hard national interests, and coats it in

value-laden rhetoric that reflects popular sentiments. Moreover, even as the AKP has supported friendly autocrats,

it has positioned itself as a model democracy for the rest of the Muslim world. At a May 2003 summit of the

Organization of the Islamic Conference in Tehran, Abdullah Gl, who was then Turkeys foreign minister and is

now its president, argued for a vision of accountability, transparency, fundamental rights and freedoms, and

gender equality. And in 2006, in remarks before a meeting of AKP members in support of President George W.

Bushs Freedom Agenda, he said, Had there not been freedom and democracy in Turkey, we would not be in

power right now.

The popular protests that swept the Middle East this spring put the dual nature of the AKPs foreign policy to the

y's Maturing Foreign Policy http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/67903?pa

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test. At times, especially in the case of Libya, Turkeys reaction to events seemed haphazard. According to Steven

Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Erdogan and his team looked like stumbling

politicians afraid of a new regional order [3]. But a closer look at events reveals that Turkish foreign policy

was actually the result of careful balancing between hard policy and values. In fact, as Ibrahim Kalin, the chief

policy adviser to Erdogan,argued [4] recently, the Arab Spring might have vindicate[d] the new strategic thrust

of Turkish foreign policy.

The first two stages of the Arab Spring -- Tunisia and Egypt -- were fairly unproblematic for Turkeys foreign

policy. Tunisias President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali had been dictatorial but fiercely secularist and, like the AKPs

opponents in Turkey, had banned headscarves and suppressed religious movements. AKP party leaders found it

easy to publicly sympathize [5] with the protesters who took to Tunisias streets in December. Pro-AKP media in

Turkey even drew parallels between the protests and the AKPs own fight against what they see as Turkeys

excessively secularist Kemalist order.

Similarly, the AKP viewed President Hosni Mubaraks February 11 ouster from Egypt as a welcome development.

Mubarak had also been a secular dictator, suppressing Islamic parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood. In

addition, his regime resented Turkeys rising regional influence, which seemed to have sidelined Egypts role innegotiating Israeli-Palestinian peace. No wonder that when thousands gathered in Cairos Tahrir Square, Erdogan

publicly lauded their efforts and called [6] on Mubarak to listen to the wishes of the people. In the same speech,

Erdogan reminded Mubarak that every Muslim would go to the grave as neither a president nor a prime minister

but as a humble man or woman who would be measured only by his deeds.

It was not as easy, however, for the AKP to condemn Libyas Muammar al-Qaddafi; Libya has been one of

Turkeys major economic partners, and Turkish businesses have invested billions of dollars there in the past few

decades. Hence, when the anti-government riots started in Benghazi in February, some 25,000 Turks were living in

Libya. The AKP focused on evacuating these people first, and refused to speak out against Qaddafi, since, in the

words of one Turkish diplomat, any condemnation of the regime could put our citizens at risk. Still, even after

most Turkish citizens in Libya had returned home, Ankara remained unwilling to denounce Qaddafi. Davutolu

explained that he wanted to be able to speak with both sides of the conflict so he could find a mutually agreeable

settlement. Surely, he also wanted to protect Turkeys vast economic interests in the region.

When Ankara proved reluctant to back the ongoing NATO operation to support the Libyan rebels, many were

quick to criticize [7] the AKP for backing away from its values -- including Libyas provisional government in

Benghazi, protestors across the Middle East, and politicians in the West. The opprobrium changed the AKPs

calculations. Zero problems foreign policy has always required the AKP to be in good standing among Middle

Eastern leaders. But the empowerment of the regions people meant that the AKP could no longer rely on its

standing among government officials alone. So in May, Erdogan, who had shifted gradually from criticizing the

NATO operation to backing it, finallycalled [8] on Qaddafi to step down, and welcomed the head of the Libyan

opposition, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, to Ankara later that month. During the meeting, Abdul-Jalil noted that Turkeys

support for the rebels proved that NATOs military action is not a (medieval) crusade, as alleged by

Moammar Qaddafi [9]. And when Davutolu visited Benghazi in early July, he was welcomed by anti-Qaddafi

masses, who cheered [10], Thank you, Turkey.

The AKP applied what it learned in Libya to Syria, as that country, too, was engulfed in protests. Before the AKP


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came to power, the relationship between Syria and Turkey had been cold. Syria was a longtime supporter of the

outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a terrorist group and one of Turkeys biggest headaches; Syria had

hoped to use the PKK as a bargain chip in order to win access to more resources and water. But once Davutolu

was in power his zero-problems policy paid off: one by one, the two countries resolved many of the biggest

problems between them, including their border disputes and Syrias support for PKK terrorism. In 2008, Ankara

even came close to brokering a peace agreement between Syria and Israel, which was halted by Israels December

2008 operation in Gaza.

When the Syrian regime began cracking down on popular protests, Ankara tried to use its leverage in Damascus to

convince the regime to reform. But Erdogans rhetoric grew harsher as it became clearer that Assad would not

reform. Still, in early June, when Turkey criticized Assad for his barbarism against the protesters, Assad, and his

backers in Tehran, felt betrayed. Meanwhile, Turkey welcomed the thousands of Syrian refugees who fled Assads

violence, housing them in camps on the Turkish side of the Syria-Turkey border.

All this underlines an increasingly people-focused tone in Ankaras policy toward the Middle East. As Ersat

Hurmuzlu, an adviser to President Gl, put it in a June interview [11] with Turkeys Star, a daily newspaper,

Turkey is with the people, not the regimes. In a conference of Turkeys regional and Western ambassadors,Davutolu called [12] the Arab Spring a late normalization process, citing Turkey as a source of inspiration

for the region.

Davutolus characterization might not be too far-fetched. Indeed, the AKPs Turkey is not just an economic

success. It also shows a third way between the two extremes that have haunted the modern Middle East -- secular

authoritarianism and Islamist authoritarianism. Having thrown off secular authoritarianism, Turkeys new system,

which incorporates both secular democracy and Islamic values, offers an attractive model. It was not an accident,

for example, that both of the mainstream Islamic parties in Tunisia and Egypt -- the NAHDA and the Muslim

Brotherhood -- announced [13] that they would use the AKP as their example and run in elections, rather than

striving for complete control.

To be a truly admirable model, of course, Erdogan still has some work to do. The AKPs success story is

incomplete because of Turkeys own conflict with Kurdish nationalists and the AKPs waning incentive for political

reform after nearly a decade firmly in power. In the coming years, the AKP will have to heed popular calls to draft

a new liberal constitution and build the political consensus to ratify it, which will necessitate reconciliation between

Turkeys conservatives and secularists, and Turks and Kurds. If Erdogan can accomplish that grand consensus, he

might really turn Turkey into a beacon of democracy for all other Muslim nations.

Meanwhile, the Arab Spring seems to have been a learning experience for Ankara. It also showed that the UnitedState's foreign policy conundrum -- how to maintain the tricky balance between national interests and idealism -- is

not unique. Other countries looking to lead on the world stage will have to find that balance, too. It isnt far fetched

to believe that, soon, Turkeys policymakers and think tanks will be discussing some of the same questions as the

American ones, namely how to support democracy in the Middle East, where autocrats have been so politically,

and economically, useful.

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Links:

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Islam-without-Extremes-Muslim-Liberty/dp/0393070867

[2] http://www.newsweek.com/2011/06/19/turkey-the-mideast-s-next-dilemma.html

[3] http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/05/05/arab_spring_turkish_fall[4] http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/kalin2/English

[5] http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=the-gods-that-are-failing-2011-01-21

[6] http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/201121115128839350.html

[7] http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?load=detay&newsId=240293&link=240293

[8] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13265825

[9] http://www.todayszaman.com/news-244878-libyan-opposition-thanks-turkey-for-its-support.html

[10] http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/mob_nx.php?n=davutoglu-delights-libyans-in-benghazi8217s-tahrir-square-

2011-07-04

[11] http://www.stargazete.com/roportaj/yazar/fadime-ozkan/turkiye-rejimlerin-degil-bolge-halklarinin-yaninda-haber-

362210.htm

[12] http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=turkey-looks-for-central-role-in-arab-spring-2011-06-17

[13] http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/02/2011233464273624.html


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Turkey's Maturing Foreign Policy