On the eve of a visit to Azerbaijan, it appears that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is turning up the heat on Armenia, calling on Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to apologize for recent comments her reportedly made to a group of students, telling them it is their duty to liberate "western Armenia" (i.e. eastern Turkey). From Today's Zaman:
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev had talks in Baku on Wednesday.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said in Baku that Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan should apologize for calling on school children to occupy eastern Turkey.
Speaking at a joint news conference with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Erdoğan said Sarksyan's remarks did not befit a statesman and called them a “historical mistake” that should be corrected.
When asked by a student at a literature contest ceremony if Armenians will be able to get back their “western territories” along with Mt. Ararat, Sarksyan said, "This is the task of your generation.”
Armenians attach great historical and cultural importance to Mt. Ararat on the eastern border of modern-day Turkey, around where Armenians are believed to have first adopted Christianity as an official religion in 301 A.D.
Sarksyan said his generation had fulfilled its task by “getting back” Karabakh, a part of what he called “our motherland.” Nagorno-Karabakh is an Azerbaijani territory which is currently under Armenian occupation.
Leaders of both countries have met dozens of times to find a settlement to the decades-long conflict but have failed to secure a peace agreement. Armenia currently occupies 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territories, including seven adjacent provinces populated by ethnic Azerbaijanis.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry also strongly condemned on Tuesday Sarksyan's remarks, calling the statement “very irresponsible behavior.”
In a post from a few days ago, I linked to a column that suggested there might be some new hope for the stalled reconciliation process on the divided island of Cyprus.That hope was based on the understanding that with last month's elections behind it, the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) can now get back to focusing on some of the unresolved political and diplomatic problems that are blocking Turkey's forward path.
Well, only a few days later, its seems like that hope might quickly be vanishing. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is today making a visit to Turkish-controlled Northern Cyprus and what he had to say there offered little comfort to those hoping for a new day on the island. From a Today's Zaman report:
Turkey is no longer prepared to accept the concessions it has agreed to in order to help with the reunification of Cyprus in line with a UN plan back in 2004 and the Turkish side will accept nothing short of recognition of a two-state solution on the island, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said.
Erdoğan, speaking to a group of Turkish Cypriot journalists ahead of a Tuesday trip to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC), said 2012 was a final deadline for a settlement on the island. “We will see if this is resolved by 2012 or not. If it is not, we will have to find solutions ourselves,” Erdoğan was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency on Tuesday. The news conference took place on Monday.
The unresolved conflict in Cyprus stands as perhaps the greatest obstacle towards Turkey's joining the European Union and one of Ankara's major foreign policy headaches. Although the island's reconciliation efforts have mostly come to a standstill, there appears to be new hope that a resolution might be in sight. Dogu Ergil, a Turkish academic and columnist for Today's Zaman, recently wrote about the reasons behind this new momentum. From his column:
Following the third electoral victory of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the Cabinet was reshaped with several basic goals. The first is to increase the innovative and productive capacity of Turkey to have it promoted to the list of developed countries; the other is to enhance relations with the European Union with the aim of gaining possible membership in due course.
Achieving both goals is connected with the solution of the so-called “Cyprus problem, which” has become a burden on Turkey in diplomatic, political and economic terms. Two pieces of news on the Cyprus issue surfaced in the papers recently -- one came from the UN (reported by the Greek Fileleftheros), which said they expected a resolution by December; otherwise they would consider redeploying the UN military forces elsewhere because both sides would have proved they have no intention of reconciling.
Are Turkey's strained relations with the European Union, which it still hopes to join, starting to spill over into other international organizations? That seems to be the case after a diplomatic spat has developed between Turkey and Austria over the selection of a new head for the Organizations for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). From the Austrian Independent:
The Turkish government decided at the weekend to veto Ursula Plassnik’s application for the position as secretary-general of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The former Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) foreign minister said earlier this year she wanted to take over from Marc Perrin de Brichambaut. The French diplomat’s term ends on 30 June.
Turkey argued that the ÖVP MP "does not accept" the country’s European identity. The Austrian was harshly criticised by Turkey during her term as federal foreign minister between 2004 and 2008 due to her opposition to the country’s bid to join the European Union (EU). Austria became a member of the EU in 1995. Turkey has held talks with European leaders about an accession since the 1960s.
ÖVP Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger said today (Mon) Turkey’s veto was "totally incomprehensible and baseless."
The minister warned Austria will consider very carefully which stand to take on Turkish regards of international meaning from now due to the country’s decision to speak out against Plassnik’s application.
Full details here. And more from Today's Zaman here.
While Turkey's much-hyped "zero problems with neighbors" foreign policy approach has been hitting some bumps along the way, one place where Ankara has made significant process in turning things around has been in Northern Iraq, where the previously tense relations with the Kurdish Regional Government there have been rapidly improving. The latest indication of this? The start of direct flights by Turkish Airlines between Istanbul and Erbil. This follows a recent high-profile visit to the region by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. More details here. And more on the use of Turkish Airlines as an instrument of Turkish foreign policy here.
Turkish diplomats have sometimes referred to themselves as the region's "firemen," hustling around the region putting out brushfires before they become full-on conflagrations. A lot of this has been done through various mediation efforts (not all successful) that Ankara has been initiating in various places.
The newest Turkish mediation effort appears to be between neighbors Azerbaijan and Iran, who don't see eye-to-eye on a host of issues. The Hurriyet Daily News has more on an upcoming meeting of the three countries' foreign ministers Turkey is convening in northern Iran.
While Turkey's relations with Iran have been rapidly improving in recent years, it might be worth nothing that Turkish-Azeri relations have been less than smooth since Ankara initiated its now frozen rapprochement with Armenia in 2009.
In this previous post, I linked to an article about Turkey's growing economic and political influence in the Balkans. The Associated Press now has a very good story on the same subject, looking at the inroads Ankara is making in the region, as well as some of the resistance, based on historical grievances, it is encountering in some places. From the article:
The minarets and Turkish coffeehouses in this southern Serbian town are reminders of the Muslim empire that once shook Europe's foundations by pushing armies all the way to the gates of Vienna.
Now Turkey — the modern state that replaced the Ottoman empire — is staging a comeback. Turkey's fast-growing economic clout is allowing it into Europe through the back door, even as its dream of joining the continent through the path of EU membership founders.
Turkey's trade with the Balkan countries increased to $17.7 billion in 2008 from about $3 billion in 2000. Turkey's companies have built the largest university campus in the Balkans, in a suburb of Sarajevo, Bosnia. And its banks provided 85 percent of loans for building a highway through Serbia for Turkish transit of goods to the EU.
On a 2009 trip to Bosnia, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu explicitly linked his nation's Balkan strategy to the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the region between the 14th and early 20th centuries.
"The Ottoman centuries of the Balkans were success stories. Now we have to reinvent this."
"Turkey," he declared triumphantly, "is back."
Many Muslims in the Balkans welcome Turkey's growing influence. Avdija Salkovic, a 25-year-old student, has spent his whole life in Novi Pazar but considers Turkey his motherland.
Ertugrul Gunay may be Turkey's Minister of Culture and Tourism, but he doesn't seem to have any trouble getting involved in foreign affairs. In what appears to be a bid to flex some muscle, Gunay has told German authorities to return an ancient sphinx dug up at a Turkish archeological site a century ago or face the prospect of having the permits of any ongoing German archeological work in Turkey revoked. The Hittite-era sphinx is currently housed in a Berlin museum. More details here.
In the meantime, before he goes too far, Minister Gunay might want to pay a visit to Istanbul's Archeological Museum, which is operated by his ministry. Some of the museum's most valuable artifacts come not from Turkey but from countries around the Mediterranean, brought to Istanbul by imperial archeologists during the Ottoman period. No word yet if the museum plans to return any of them.
Human Rights Watch today issued its annual survey of the state of human rights around the world and calls Turkey to task for what it sees as a stepping back on freedom of expression in the country, something that doesn't match up with Ankara's growing ambitions to play a leading role on the global stage. From HRW:
“Turkey’s foreign policy ambitions would be greatly reinforced by bold domestic reform on rights,” said Benjamin Ward, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Showing that it is serious about human rights would bolster Turkey’s credibility on the international stage, and deliver the change that people in Turkey deserve.”
The Justice and Development Party (AKP) government’s constitutional amendments open the way for further reforms to strengthen human rights, Human Rights Watch said. But the government has failed to address serious ongoing concerns. These include unjustified prosecutions for alleged speech crimes, the arbitrary use of terrorism laws, unnecessarily prolonged pretrial detention, a clampdown on the legal pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), and police violence against demonstrators.
The government’s partial revision of the constitution, approved by national referendum in September 2010, paves the way for creating an ombudsperson, limits the role of military courts, and gives individuals the right to petition the constitutional court to challenge the constitutionality of laws. It also ends immunity from prosecution for the leaders of the September 12, 1980 military coup and public officials who committed human rights abuses in its wake, among other reforms.
Although the Cyprus conflict is frequently overlooked these, what happens on that little divided island could have serious implications for the future of Turkey, from its stalled effort to join the European Union to what kind of legal problem it might face in European court, particularly regarding property issues.
The question of what to do with the island's contested property, in fact, is emerging as one of the thorniest issues in Cyprus's ongoing, but struggling, reunification talks. In a new report, the International Crisis Group is offering some suggestions with how to deal with this issue, in the hopes that solving the property problem can help lead towards an overall settlement to the Cyprus problem. From a release about the report.
“Less than a quarter of Cypriots say they want to return to their old homes”, says Hugh Pope, Crisis Group’s Turkey/Cyprus Project Director. “Both sides should seize the opportunity of the current talks to strike a realistic balance between the right to return with the rights of the current users. Time is only making a property settlement harder”.
The flagging talks could be revived by compromises. Innovative proposals by the Turkish Cypriots deserve careful consideration. A Greek Cypriot proposal to link negotiations on property, territory and settlers could be adapted to become the first stage of a proposal the Turkish Cypriots have made for an international conference on all negotiating topics. The two sides should commission a rapid joint audit of land owned in both parts of the island and an economic impact study of redevelopment proposals.
