Turkish Daily News
March 8 2007

The best Turkey can hope…
Thursday, March 8, 2007

The best we can hope for during the year 2007 is damage control
rather than constructive policies

Cengiz ÇANDAR

Turkey is increasingly turning inwards. Despite the
intense diplomatic activity in the Middle East that it is also
considered a major trouble, its increasingly inward looking posture
is a fact and it will remain to be so for the rest of the whole year.
2007 is a very crucial election year for Turkey. We are only two
months away from knowing who will be the heir to Kemal Atatürk at the
most venerable post in the Turkish political system, the post of the
president, for the next seven years. There will be no time for
sobering. The presidential election will be followed by an intense
campaign for the parliamentary elections due to be held in fall.
Until the last month of the year, we will be unable to know what kind
of a government Turkey will have, possibly, for the next five years.
That is not the ideal climactic period for bold initiatives in the
area of foreign policy, and the politicians would tend to respond to
the appeals of populism more than anytime else. The overall Turkish
political climate is intoxicated by a heavy dose of ultra-nationalism
that no political party or personality could ignore during a quixotic
election period. Tayyip Erdoðan, above all, is not an exception as he
has strong aspirations for the presidential post, nor Abdullah Gül,
the likelier next prime minister, in the case Erdoðan climbs up to
the highest post in Turkish political hierarchy. The immediate victim
to Turkish domestic agenda and political priorities would be the
option of Turkey’s rapproachment with the Iraqi Kurdish leadership.
The issue is already a controversial one and the Iraqi Kurdish
leaders, particularly of Massoud Barzani’s latest statements were not
helpful at all for Erdoðan and Gül to initiate a dialogue with him.
The best we can hope during the year 2007 is damage control rather
than a constructive Turkish-Iraqi Kurdish relationship. Such a
constructive relationship, seemingly, has to await the first months
of 2008, just like the Turkish-EU relations would be in the waiting
lounge until then.

Iran and Saudi Arabia: That realism dictated by the domestic
political environment in Turkey may not be corresponding to the new
parameters of the Realpolitik that seems to dominate the region
during the year. Iran and Saudi Arabia are emerging as the major
regional powers over a vacuum that Turkey’s inaction would leave
behind. Despite its high-profile diplomacy in the Middle East in the
preceding months – during which we have seen a continous flow of
heads of states, prime ministers and foreign ministers flowing into
Turkey, and while Erdogan and Gül were undertaking initiatives
ranging from starting a dialogue with Hamas to participating the Arab
League summits, from talking to every party in Lebanon to shuttling
between the odds, Tehran and Jerusalem – Turkish diplomacy could not
deliver anything to the extent that the latecomer and a generally
prudent Saudi diplomacy did during the last weeks. Lebanese daily The
Daily Star, in its editorial, was generous to Turkey though, in the
following lines: `It has been instructive in recent weeks to watch
three major local powers – Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia – each in
its own way step up and assert both interests ant its capacity to
positively influence others in the region. The noteworthy aspect here
is that Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey have opted for engagement, calm
discussions and multilateral coordination as their preferred means of
action – in sharp contrast with the Anglo-American-Israeli tendency
to shoot or change regimes first, and then sit down to chat.’
Notwithstanding with this praise, when it comes to a problem that it
is a direct party, Turkey does not act much in contrast with that
Anglo-American-Israeli tendency. It is not quintessentially eager for
engagement with Iraqi Kurdish authorities opting for calm discussions
when it comes to discuss how to tackle the PKK presence in northern
Iraq and what to do in resolving a potential conflict on Kirkuk or to
probe the possibility of a multilateral coordination. For
multilateral coordination, the United States, whose participation is
a sine qua non, will, instead, be the focal point of Turkish anger,
if the Armenian Genocide Resolution comes to the floor of the
Congress. Under such adverse circumstances, some of which is its own
making, what Turkish diplomacy could hope for the best is to host the
international meeting on Iraq, next month in Istanbul. And, of
course, the damage control for the rest of the year in an extremely
volatile region where damage might prove uncontrollable.