EurasiaNet Eurasia Insight - Turkey Aims to Foster Dialogue Between West and Middle East

EURASIA INSIGHT

TURKEY AIMS TO FOSTER DIALOGUE BETWEEN WEST AND MIDDLE EAST
Yigal Schleifer 4/03/06

After decades of keeping the Arab and Muslim countries of the Middle East at an arm’s length, Turkey is trying to strengthen relations with its neighbors, while at the same time recasting itself as a regional mediator.

Turkish officials say the new policy maximizes the benefit of the country’s strategic position and historic ties in the Middle East, adding that it will help bring stability to the area. Critics inside and outside the country, however, are accusing the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) of adopting an "Islamist" foreign policy that is driven by a sentimental wish for Turkey to be a leader in the Islamic world. The new outlook could end up harming Turkey’s interests by damaging its relations with the United States and European Union, critics add.

The policy shift has not gotten off to an auspicious start, as Turkish diplomacy has taken several serious public relations hits in recent weeks. The first trouble occurred in mid-February, when a visit to Ankara by a top Hamas official was greeted with dismay in the United States and Israel, and was labeled a "blunder" by the Turkish press.

Soon after, what was supposed to have been a bridge-building trip to Turkey by caretaker Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari was undermined by news that Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, had said the visit was not officially sanctioned. Talabani also asserted that any agreements signed by al-Jafaari and the Turks would be invalid.

Commentators and Western diplomats in Ankara gasped again when the Turkish government recently announced that it was planning to host firebrand Shiite Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr for an official visit. The outcry forced the al-Sadr trip to be put on hold.

Foreign observers say that the AKP’s move to reach out to the Middle East has opened a rift within Turkey’s policy-making community. "You can see a split between the people who run the foreign ministry and the people who run foreign policy for the AKP and that’s really a struggle for the future course of Turkish foreign policy," said an Ankara-based Western diplomat, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. "This is a rather new phenomenon that has crept up over the last few months."

Initial setbacks don’t seem to be deterring Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government. Huseyin Bagci, a professor of international relations at Ankara’s Middle East Technical University, suggested the AKP’s leadership is convinced that previous neglect of its immediate neighborhood caused Turkey to miss some diplomatic opportunities. The government appears determined not to repeat what it considers to be past mistakes.

"Turkey wants to be a message-bringer from the Islamic world to the West," Bagci said. "The government really believes that it can be a bridge between East and West and this is the foreign policy."

Underscoring the shift, Erdogan delivered a speech at the opening of the Recent Arab League summit in Khartoum, Sudan, where Turkey for the first time obtained the status of "permanent guest." The prime minister’s appearance at the summit marked a first for a Turkish leader’s participation.

Meanwhile, the Turkish government recently offered to act as a kind of mediator between the EU and the Islamic world regarding the furor over the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad published by a Danish newspaper. Turkey has also suggested its ties to the EU and the United States, combined with its improving relationship with Iran, could enable Ankara act serve a go-between in the diplomatic crisis over Tehran’s nuclear program. At present, that role is being played by Russia. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

"We are living in a very sensitive region, a very volatile region ... so the first thing we want is good relations with all our neighbors," said a senior Turkish Foreign Ministry official. Given its historical links to countries in the region, the official added, Ankara has the ability to foster diplomatic dialogue. "We have trust on both sides of various conflicts," the official emphasized.

Critics of the policy shift warn that it is flawed and carries with it the risk of alienating Turkey’s Western allies. The Ankara visit of Hamas leader Khaled Mashal was strongly denounced by both Israel, the only Middle Eastern country Turkey has a military alliance with, and by members of the US congress. Meanwhile, some of Turkey’s efforts to upgrade its relations with Syria have been viewed by Western diplomats as counterproductive to international efforts to contain the regime of Syrian president Bashar Assad.

"Where [Turkey’s new policy] doesn’t work is that if you are going to become an intermediary, what you do has to have some support outside of one of the parties," said Henri Barkey, chairman of the International Relations Department at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. "This doesn’t bring results if you don’t have that support, it makes you irrelevant."

The foreign policy shift can also have domestic repercussions for Turkey, Barkey added. "There are a lot of congressmen who have been very supportive of Turkey, but [who] will now not lift a finger when something comes up that Turkey cares about," because of the Mashal visit, he said.

"I don’t think anyone in Washington expects [Turkey] to downgrade trade relations with Iran or Syria," Barkey continued. "I don’t think anyone faults the Turks for having better relations than we have with Iran or Syria. But when there is an international consensus on something -- that is a line there that shouldn’t be crossed."

Other critics suggest that while based on good intentions, Turkey’s policy is risky because it appears to presume other countries are acting in good faith, which may not be the case. "It seems like a well meaning policy, but it fails when checked against the realpolitick of the Middle East," says Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "The policy works so long as the other side needs Turkey."

But METU’s Bagci says he believes events in the Middle East have left Turkey with few options, other than to pursue its revised regional policy. "This is ultimately going to be beneficial for Turkey, otherwise Turkey is going to lose its prestige economically and politically," he said. "The 21st century is going to be a new era where East and West try to understand each other in a different way, and Turkey is a window of opportunity for the West to enter the Islamic world in a different way."

Editor�s Note: Yigal Schleifer is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul.

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