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  • Turkey's Soft Power Successes

    TURKEY'S SOFT POWER SUCCESSES
    by Wendy Kristianasen

    Le Monde Diplomatique (France)
    http://mondediplo.com/2010/02/05turkey
    Fe b 9 2010

    Turkey wants to expand its influence throughout its surrounding
    region, creating a peaceful, stable environment in which its economy
    can prosper. And as the country struggles internally to demilitarise
    and democratise, there is broad support for the AKP government's bold
    aims abroad

    Ahmet Davutoglu's vision is wide. He wants peace and security for the
    wider region around Turkey and believes Ankara is well-placed as a
    member of the G20 and Nato to make it happen. He is the architect of
    Turkey's new policy, which relies on zero problems with neighbours,
    and soft power. He was chief foreign policy adviser to the prime
    minister from the start of the Justice and Development (AK) Party
    government, which came to power in a landslide general election on
    3 November 2002. In May 2009 he became foreign minister.

    He says Turkey is well-poised to play a mediating role in various
    conflicts, with strong ties with different religious and ethnic
    groups where there are Turkish speakers. That means the Balkans, the
    Caucasus, Russia, Cyprus, the Middle East. His vision of security for
    all and peace means more than mediation; it means "high-level political
    dialogue, economic interdependency and a multicultural character".

    Davutoglu is not a politician, but an academic, and not even a member
    of parliament, so free of ties to constituents. And he has not just
    thought out an innovative foreign policy, he has implemented it. His
    achievements: "Sixty one agreements signed with Syria; 48 with
    Iraq; visa requirements lifted with eight neighbours; resolution
    of Lebanon's problem with Syria [over presidential succession];
    two protocols signed with Armenia." He has also attempted mediation
    between Israel and the Palestinians. He conducted the talks between
    Syria and Israel in 2007-8: "We came close, not to peace, but to
    agreement; but then Israel's attack on Gaza [in December 2008] put
    an end to all that work. Gaza wasn't an issue in our negotiations
    but it was a negative context... When Israel has a vision of peace
    we will be ready to listen: this is an issue of principle."

    This new foreign policy has won widespread popular support among a
    population divided internally by unresolved questions of identity:
    secular Turks worry about Islamisation and resent AKP patronage that
    excludes them (especially in the state sector).

    At the same time, this is a crucial moment as Turkey sends its military
    back to the barracks and exposes the dark secrets of its "deep state"
    - in particular shadowy elements within the military (which toppled
    four governments between 1960 and 1998) that are accused, inter alia,
    of coup attempts against the AKP government.

    These include a plot to assassinate the deputy prime minister, Bulent
    Arinc, on 19 December 2009. The findings promise for the first time to
    "touch the untouchables" within the army (1). This has been happening
    within the framework of the ongoing Ergenekon trial. In January a flood
    of media revelations provided yet greater details of coup attempts
    (including a document exposing the so-called Balyoz or Sledgehammer
    operation) (2).

    There's a new dynamic As the shades are lifted from Turkey's recent
    history, and the country demilitarises, the way is now open to real
    democratisation. Much needs to be done, including constitutional and
    other reform (not least to allow the military to be prosecuted in
    civilian courts). But the pace of change is undeniable; new elites
    are emerging, with a growing, vibrant middle class (even if disparity
    in income levels has widened).

    The energy is echoed abroad. Rising above a core divide over identity
    and internal direction, Turks can agree on a foreign policy that is
    coherent and promises economic gain and security, and expresses a
    clear sense of how Turkey sees itself in the world.

    As Ihsan Bal, professor at the Police Academy, pointed out: "There's a
    new dynamic, and it's driven by the people. The West is missing that
    point." It started in 2003, when the US had wanted to use Turkey as
    a front for its invasion of Iraq. "And it was the people - the MPs
    and their constituents - who said no."

    You would expect Turks to worry about the effects of the global
    financial crisis, and unemployment (near to 15%; probably 30% among
    the young) but they discuss Gaza instead. A year ago 5,000waved
    flags to greet their prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on his
    return from the World Economic Forum in Davos. He had just stormed
    out of a televised debate, on 29 January 2009, with Shimon Peres,
    the Israeli president. Erdogan told Peres: "You are killing people",
    and the moderator refused to allow him to rebut Peres' justification of
    the war on Gaza (3). Turks care about Palestine. They appreciate that
    Erdogan's feelings are genuine and respond to his charisma, ordinary
    origins, and the always present family of this populist prime minister.

    The Davos incident made Erdogan an instant hero among Arabs and
    Muslims. The US seemed not too unhappy about the outburst, although it
    wishes that Turkey would show sympathy for Fatah, and not just Hamas,
    to help unblock the frozen peace process. A number of Turks feel that
    government support of Hamas (including inviting its leader Khalid
    Mesha'al to Ankara) should have paid a dividend - say the release of
    the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, captured on 25 June 2006 and held
    under Hamas authority in the Gaza Strip. Davutoglu's people reply
    that this misses the point.

    Yet when the AKP came to power in 2002, it continued Turkey's previous
    close relations with Israel, as the mediating effort with Syria
    showed. The context changed with the invasion of Gaza. Later the
    next year, in October 2009, Turkey excluded Israel from scheduled
    military exercises and postponed them indefinitely. This January,
    Israel was forced to apologise for its deputy foreign minister Danny
    Ayalon's treatment of the Turkish ambassador to Tel Aviv. Ahmet Oguz
    Celikkol, summoned to hear complaints about a Turkish TV drama seen
    as anti-semitic, was forced to sit on a low sofa without a handshake
    or the ritual Turkish flag while Ayalon explained to local TV stations
    that the humiliation was intentional.

    What does this mean for future relations between the two countries?

    Meliha Altunisik, professor at Ankara's Middle East Technical
    University, said that after the Gaza war "any government would have
    had to moderate its policy. Plus, Israel is growing more isolated
    under its present government and with Obama in power: its strategic
    position is declining". Many Turks point out that Turkey is now more
    important to Israel than vice versa, even as a marketplace. However,
    they do not foresee more than a downscaling of relations: neither
    Turks nor Arabs want Turkey to burn its bridges.

    'One of us has made it' Altunisik said of the Arab world: "People in
    the region look to Turkey to play a constructive role. The economy
    is key. But Erdogan is personally popular: I even found women in
    Damascus who are learning Turkish on his account." It started in
    2003 when Turkey stood up to the US and refused to allow the country
    to be used as a launchpad for the Iraq war. "There was the feeling
    that one of us has made it." She says that with Iran there is still
    competition. "Turkey has been trying to steal its thunder by its
    open support of Gaza, engagement of Syria with Israel, and resolving
    Lebanon's presidential crisis." With the new aim of solving problems
    through cooperation, the benefits are multiple. "Just in the Middle
    East, there is the straight benefit of developing relations with the
    Arabs; plus the extra benefit that brings over Iran; plus the economic
    benefit; plus stability. This provides a win-win possibility. It's
    a new language. And it's important."

    Iran is one of the few foreign-policy topics on which Turks disagree.

    Yavuz Baydar, political correspondent at the pro-government English
    language daily Today's Zaman, said: "No cause for concern; what goes
    on between Erdogan and Ahmadinejad is just two men of the street with
    the same body language. They are cautious of each other." But many
    feel attempts to mediate on Iran's nuclear capability are dangerous,
    pointless, or naïve. The disagreement reflects the difficulty of
    deciphering Iranian ambitions. There is also the fear of an explosive
    situation on the doorstep.

    Among Arab countries, Syria has captured the Turkish imagination: in
    university foreign affairs departments the staff talk of their latest
    trips to Damascus. Considering the old, bad relations (Syrian support
    for the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), its claim to Hatay (Alexandretta)
    (4), cross-water problems), today's social and economic relations
    seem miraculous. In Iraq, economic and social relations, and Turkish
    help in bringing Sunni groups to the negotiating table, have created a
    stable environment that contrasts with the instability of recent years
    in the Kurdish north, marked by PKK separatist activity and Turkish
    incursions (see Crossing the line). Business is booming in Africa,
    especially Libya and Sudan (scene of another prime ministerial gaffe)
    (5); Turkey's non-combatant role in Afghanistan (with 1,750 troops)
    is approved of.

    It is not just the Muslim world: there's Russia, Serbia, Georgia,
    Greece, Cyprus, Armenia, with two protocols signed on 10 October 2009
    calling for diplomatic ties and the opening of borders.

    What about the suggestion in the western press that Turkey's turn to
    the east and south is a symptom of renewed Ottoman longings? (6). The
    idea doesn't register among Turks today. Temel Iskit, a former diplomat
    and Turkey's first director general for EU affairs in the 1980s,
    says that the idea is a "way of saying Turkey has lost interest
    in joining Europe and is going Islamic. These criticisms come from
    countries that don't want Turkey inside the EU and the pro-Israel US
    press. I think they are neither true nor sincere." Iskit is one of
    the many disaffected who supported the CHP (Republican People's Party,
    the secular centre-left party that goes back to Ataturk's single party
    state) but have lost confidence in the party under its current leader,
    Deniz Baykal. "After a lifetime of having publicly to defend all
    the old taboos on Armenia, Cyprus, the Kurds, I revised my opinions,
    and decided to speak out."

    Turkey has always had a central geopolitical place, explained Iskit.

    But because of its youth and struggle for independence, and then the
    cold war, it was always on the defensive. "What has changed is that
    Turkey has begun to democratise. That happened with agreement to fulfil
    the Copenhagen criteria, engaged before the AKP came to power, and the
    army's agreement to stop meddling in politics. This democratisation
    has led to a new spirit of â~@¨co-operation and compromise."

    Kadri Gursel, a columnist on the secularist daily Milliyet, thinks
    that Turkey's present foreign policy stance would have come about
    under any government. "Our foreign policy assets multiplied with the
    economic boom in 2002-3, the process of EU accession, and the end of a
    major security concern with the capture of [the PKK leader Abdullah]
    Ocalan." Turkey is seeing a natural adjustment to new realities of
    the post-cold war and globalisation, which have created a new dynamic.

    "But a secular party could not have profited so well: the AKP feels
    at home in the Middle East, especially with the Sunnis." Many in
    and around the government speak Arabic. But that does not mean an
    "eastern axis".

    Insurance policy Gursel thinks it's about the economy. "Turkey is
    condemned to economic growth based on export because there's no
    domestic saving structure."

    So it has to find new markets, and that means the Middle East.

    "Overall, this has worked," he says. "The government has run the
    economy properly and they're business minded, even if they behave in
    a rather tribal way and keep the benefits for themselves. Indirectly
    it helps their Anatolian base to form a new middle class and this is
    an insurance policy towards a stable democracy."

    Soli Ozel, professor of international relations at Istanbul's Bilgi
    University, said: "The eastern axis fuss is about the West's inability
    to digest a Turkey that is calling its own shots." He pointed out that
    the AKP has very good relations with the US. "Turkey wants stability,
    a zone of prosperity, security aimed at peace. In contrast to Israel
    and Iran." He, too, talked of the continuity in foreign policy:
    "The AKP have conceptualised this better than others." He thinks the
    question of Turkey's "Westness" is less about its strategic orientation
    than about whether it will become a real western country.

    "If the EU takes itself out of the equation through its inadequate
    understanding of what Turkey does, even though this is in the West's
    interest, then most of our foreign relations will be conducted
    through the US." In that case, Ozel wonders, will Washington push
    the EU harder to move ahead on Turkey's membership? "That would mean
    that it rightly sees Turkey as a member of the western alliance with
    particular strengths in the Middle East, rather than a Middle East
    country allied to the West."

    Turks hope that Barack Obama will be better able to do this than
    George W Bush. On Obama himself, Yasemin Congar, managing editor of
    the Istanbul daily Taraf (7) says: "There is a lot to be said for
    his bi-racial, multi-cultural background and knowledge of the Muslim
    world. His middle name is Hussein and Turks keep that in mind." The
    Obama message of a new dialogue with the Muslim world and respect for
    human rights is in tune with Turkey's efforts to democratise and to
    find an equitable solution to its Kurdish problem. But his failure to
    pressure Israel over the Palestinians, and particularly settlement
    activity, and his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, have
    disappointed people. At the same time, they note that Turkey's own
    outspoken stance on Israel has gone without criticism, and may not
    be unwelcome given Obama's poor relations with the current Israeli
    government. However, if Obama is to dispel the anti-Americanism of
    recent years, he will need to secure real progress on the Palestinians.

    There is deep bitterness about Europe that underlies all talk on
    foreign policy. And the opposition's complaint that the government has
    failed to pursue EU membership with sufficient enthusiasm has grown
    unconvincing since President Sarkozy's rejection of Turkey. Rather,
    Turks believe that the country's enhanced standing in the region
    means that it will be able to deliver more to the EU party. And if
    Turkey is not invited in? Its role in the world will in any case have
    been boosted.

    Zafar Yavan, secretary-general of Tusiad (Turkish Industrialists'
    and Businessmen's Association), the association for big business,
    traditionally in the hands of the old secular Istanbul families,
    complains that the government has not moved fast enough on the EU,
    especially on public procurement and other economic chapters, creating
    doubts about its enthusiasm. But he admits that maybe the slowing down
    of the pace of convergence is to do with Sarkozy, not Turkey. "The
    direction is right, as long as they stay on track. Turkey will make
    progress with or without this government. But the AKP's democratic
    attempts will remain: it's a one-way process. And the pace of the AKP
    and its perseverance is not to be compared with that of any previous
    government."

    Ayse Celikel, a former CHP minister of justice, has every reason to
    oppose the government; she heads an association (Cagdas Yasam Dernegi)
    that offers secular education to girls, now under pressure from the
    government, with 14 employees detained without charges being made
    known. She calls herself "a Kemalist, but an open-minded one". On
    foreign policy she recognises that, "with EU adhesion on the back
    burner, the government is engaged in a balancing act with openings
    to the east and south. And as long as it doesn't go any further away
    from Europe, or closer to Iran, okay".

    Armagan Kuloglu, a retired general and adviser at a new Ankara
    think-tank ORSAM (Centre for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies), is a
    self-proclaimed "Ataturkcu" (Ataturk devotee), "though not a Kemalist,
    which means defending the Turkish nation as an ethnic base". He
    defends the old taboos, and condemns the government initiatives on
    Cyprus, the Kurds and Armenia. Yet he too agrees that there has been
    no change of axis: "The government just wants good relations with
    neighbouring countries, and this is the first opportunity for this."

    (He doesn't criticise the government's EU policy either, since he
    would be happy not to enter.)

    Some Turks worry that the AKP government is juggling too much and
    may drop something. And is it in danger of overstating Turkey's soft
    power potential? Meliha Altunisik says the question is premature and
    misses the point. "How foreign policy is conducted is as important as
    the end results. We used to be peripheral to all our neighbours. Now
    you can't discuss many regions without talking about Turkey."
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