NEVER CHANGING FOREIGN POLICY AND THE WAR

EUROPEUS, France
Nov 2 2007

How quickly we have surrendered to the logic of war while talking
diplomacy, dialogue and moderation. The responsibility lies with
the political elite that keeps murmuring about the same old cliches
of a non-existing world. There are foreign policy positions of
Turkey reminiscent of military fortifications. These are at the very
foundations of the Republic and were thought as definite answers to
the problems inherited from the Ottoman era: The Armenian, Greek and
Kurdish questions. Nothing has changed in Turkey’s position regarding
these three issues, except a parenthesis on Cyprus, which opened and
quickly closed in 2004 after the rejection of the Annan Plan by the
Greek Cypriots.

On the other hand, different and new approaches unrelated to these
three issues have recently emerged in foreign relations. The Justice
and Development Party (AKP) governments have started to seek new
balances in foreign policy through openings toward the Eastern,
Ottoman and Islamic worlds. Turkey, for now, has not received anything
in return for these openings. To the quite contrary, alliances the
country formed with the West and Israel are seriously harmed by the new
positions. That is to say, in an attempt to change something once in
a blue moon, we ended up with negative results due to miscalculation
and bad timing.

Our public diplomacy on the other side starts and ends with to
the slogans of " multicultural/ multi-religious tolerance" and
"asylum granted to Sephardic Jews 500 years ago." However, the acute
anti-Semitism, widespread animosity against minorities and racist
tantrums everyday prove how far we moved away from these values in
compliance with nation-state’s rigid rules.

As a consequence, Turkey today is no more a decision-maker but a
country reacting to the decisions of others. The reactionary state
of mind, obsolete yet inflexible, lays the ground for loneliness and
does not help anything but to deepen the victim psychology. A deep
sense of not being understood and aloofness emerges: "Turk has no
friend but another Turk." The next stage is the transformation of
the victim psychology into legitimate defense syndrome and thereby
setting the stage for conflict.

"No more words nor law," or "let’s finish the outlawed Kurdistan
Workers’ Party (PKK)" slogans we are hearing louder every day are in
fact the language of lack of policy. Diplomacy continues even during
wartime. International law pertaining to the war exists since 1864
(Geneva Conventions); "no law" means the jungle law. As for finishing
the PKK, to listen what the Chief of Land Forces Gen. Ýlker Baþbuð
said recently is sufficient. The situation we are in now makes us
forget that fighting violence only with violence, as it has been
the case for decades, brings no solution. Moreover, even experts
have reservations about the military feasibility of the projected
operation. Unless brand new proactive policies are designed for
Iraqi as well as Turkish Kurds, effects of military action, even if
battles are won, won’t last. Just recall the "29th Kurdish revolt"
formula used by the former President Suleyman Demirel on the PKK and
20 plus hot pursuits realized until today into northern Iraq.

On top of that, Turkey was involved since the beginning with the
shaping of the de facto Kurdish state. Following the first Gulf War,
the security zone declared beyond the 37th parallel in order to protect
Kurds from the wrath of Saddam Hussein was the brainchild of President
Turgut Ozal. Today Turkish companies are building the Kurdish region’s
economic infrastructure. Turkey transfers electricity, buys and sells
oil to northern Iraq. This economic dependency may lead to a healthy
and permanent solution. However, current foreign and security policies
have not sustained these economic initiatives.

Last but not least in the aftermath of the U.S. occupation, Kurds
becoming the only U.S. ally in the Iraq quagmire was evident from
the beginning. Thus adapting to this eventuality was essential.

In the country, political reforms of 2002-2004 for the benefit of Kurds
couldn’t be backed by economic structuring but precipitated a return
to the same old military customs to fight PKK violence, which awakened
in July 2004. The AKP’s failure to generate a comprehensive Kurdish
policy passed the ball once more to the court of the military. In
this regard, the AKP did not manage to design policies different from
classical foreign and internal policy options of its rivals. Hence it
has lost the bet of being different, for doing politics cornered in
between the main street and the nationalist CHP-MHP opposition as well
as the military. At the end of the day, since everyone acknowledges
a positive military outcome is almost impossible, the operation would
be held to appease the opposition and the man-in-the-street.

However this time, the war may yield unexpected results, and alter
never changing foreign policy fortifications. Just like in Cyprus and
Greece after the military coup that took place in Cyprus in 1974. Or
more recently like Serbia who, while destroying Yugoslavia ended up
exhausting itself.

Cengiz is head of the EU Research Center of the Bahcesehir University
– Istanbul

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