TURKEY: CREATIVE FOREIGN POLICY IN THE GUL ERA
View By Ihsan Yilmaz
Journal of Turkish Weekly, Turkey
Aug 27 2007
Turkey is in a very difficult sociopolitical area, full of challenges
and opportunities. It is obvious that isolationism is not an option
for Turkey, which needs a proactive and dynamic foreign policy. Mr. Gul
as president is an excellent chance for Turkey at this juncture.
We desperately need harmonious relations between the president,
the government and especially the Foreign Ministry.
We are surrounded by difficult neighbors and we must use our energies
efficiently. The European Union accession process, democratization
and economic development will hopefully minimize the energy we have to
spend with regards to the Aegean Sea and Cyprus problems. The Turkish
part of Cyprus will no longer be economically deprived in 10 years’
time, even if the status quo continues. As tourism and construction
industries will prosper the country, the Turkish Cypriots will no
longer be harmed by the unjust isolation. Thus we can focus our foreign
policy energies toward the chaotic East, as I assume the EU process
will naturally be an important business of the whole government anyway.
Iraq is becoming Vietnam the Second very fast. Before the invasion,
about half of the British people opposed it. Now almost everyone in
the UK wants the British troops to be withdrawn without severing ties
with the US. We do not know what the post-Bush US administration will
decide, but there are signs that they are losing hope. Iraq will be
our major foreign policy issue and we need to convince the Iraqis
that a divided Iraq is not for the good of the Middle East and that
nobody can win if Iraq is divided.
To convince we need to be credible. To be credible we first need to
treat all our citizens well, including Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, Jews
and Turks. A prosperous and fully democratic Turkey with good human
rights record will almost be free of Kurdophobia, Arabophobia and yes,
Islamophobia and thus will be more credible. President Gul can easily
be a "symbol" of this new era with the help of the government and this
symbol, even without any political power, will be an efficient foreign
policy instrument. This is the real "peace at home, peace abroad."
President Gul will also be in constant dialogue with the world’s NGOs
and diaspora –Turkish, Kurdish, Alevi, Jewish, Armenian and Greek —
and will establish close, friendly and sincere ties with them. He
will actively look for ways of peacefully coexisting in the global
village by agreeing to disagree.
The new Turkish foreign policy should also actively deal with the
Nagorno-Karabakh problem so that we can start normalizing our relations
with Armenia in order to speak more easily about the Armenian genocide
allegations. Otherwise many of our allies will increase their efforts
to use this problem as a bargaining chip against Turkey. We have to
face this problem and creatively tackle it.
We also need to be in close dialogue with Israel and the Jewish
diaspora to explain to them that the 70 million people living in Turkey
have also existential priorities, to ask for reciprocal empathy and
to underline that in this telecommunications age, it is no longer
possible not to listen to the people in democratic Turkey.
The recent election results should have shown that the Turkish people
do not like top-down interference, enforced policy and pro-coup
lobbying.
It is obvious that a powerful army is also an important part of the
foreign policy and equally obvious is that to have a powerful army
we need to have a strong economy and this cannot be achieved without
full democracy in Turkey. It is true that Turkey is not Norway,
but it is not China either.
To reach and protect full democracy we also need to have — among
other obvious things — efficient government intelligence apparatus
that will operate at home and abroad.
To summarize, Turkey will need to double its Foreign Ministry and
intelligence budgets and personnel in the Gul era for creative
solutions.