Problem Solving
BY GUNDUZ AKTAN

Turkish Press
May 5 2005

RADIKAL – Our failure to solve the Armenian issue is considered as the
failure of our foreign policy. People made the same comment about the
Cyprus issue as well. Actually our Iraq policy, our relations with
the US, our EU bid and Aegean issues can be mentioned in the same
context. It’s true that our foreign policy’s problem-solving capacity
isn’t high. However, we can’t separate this issue from our failure to
solve problems, because we were the last to bring down our inflation,
and such problems as traffic, taxes, roads and utilities, etc. still
haven’t been solved. Obviously, the fact that we entered democracy
early had a role in the failure to solve these problems. Political
parties chose not to deal with such problems which cannot be solved
without disturbing the public. They were afraid of losing support in
elections. As a result, almost all of the public made unlawfulness
a normal way of life and the problems became permanent.

Political powers, not used to solving problems in domestic politics,
started to wait for the problems in foreign policy to solve
themselves. What’s more, foreign policy has its own problems. As
each problem is a conflict with two sides, a solution doesn’t
only depend on us. If our rival resists solving the problem in our
favor, then the conflict continues for a long period of time. In
other words, a ‘win-win’ solution becomes impossible. In addition,
economic interests don’t prevent political conflicts. Maybe it’s sad,
but politics supercedes the economy in foreign policy. In conflicts
with countries having one problem, it’s more difficult for countries
having multiple problems to protect their interests. For example,
Turkey has a number of vital strategic problems, whereas Greek
Cypriots only think of swallowing the island and Armenians think of
making us accept the so-called genocide. It can’t be denied that the
most important weakness of our foreign policy comes from ourselves.
Turkish foreign policy of the last 50 years always belittled its own
power and considered others superior. We couldn’t understand that
we can accomplish nothing in foreign policy without taking risks,
and it was difficult for us to seek help from others. Our foreign
policy also has two other obstacles. Following World War II, Turkey
was in the Western world, but the West couldn’t overcome historical
prejudices and didn’t consider Turkey a Western country. Following
the Cold War and during our EU membership process, this situation
became clearer. If the West had been fair, would the Armenian issue
be treated this way? Meanwhile, many ‘liberal intellectuals’ in Turkey
claim that Turkey should do everything requested by the West in order
to become Western. Western countries use these intellectuals’ lack
of identity. The number of academics dealing with foreign policy
problems was very small. In addition, the number of lawyers and
historians in the fields of genocide, terrorism and the rules of war
is insufficient. As a nation, we also want conflicts to be solved
immediately. We can’t feel enmity over long periods. We shouldn’t
forget that solving conflicts in a short period of time requires
making concessions.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress