Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Dec 28 2008

All quiet on EU front, but several foreign policy surprises on eastern
front

It was February 2008 when Foreign Minister Ali Babacan pledged to
surprise all with a new wave of EU reform, while admitting that there
had been a considerable slowdown in the government’s activity
concerning the reforms necessary for the country’s accession to the
EU.

`Reforms concerning the EU were affected because 2007 was an election
year and Parliament was closed for a while. Perhaps 2007 was a lost
year, but Turkey underwent a major test of democracy and emerged from
this test strengthened and having accepted the reforms made so
far. Now there is a new president, Parliament and government. Our
infrastructure for continuing with a new wave of reform is ready,’
Babacan said then. `2008 will be the year of the EU. It will be quite
a different year. You will be surprised.’

That didn’t happen; on the contrary, there has been mutual
disappointment on the EU and Turkish side, with the latter blaming the
former for dragging its feet in opening more chapters although Ankara
has fulfilled all technical requirements.

According to EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, the upcoming year
will be an important litmus test of whether Turkey is serious about
its EU accession goals.

When suspending accession negotiations on eight chapters in 2006
because of Turkey’s refusal to open its air and sea ports to traffic
from Greek Cyprus, the EU said it would review the situation in 2009.

With the government giving no sign of a change in its policy of not
budging on the issue until a permanent resolution is found to the
decades-old Cyprus issue, analysts also do not expect any bold steps
that would satisfy the EU’s expectations, such as a constitutional
reform, at least until after the local elections scheduled for March.

The fact that there have been no positive surprises on the EU front,
contrary to what was suggested by Babacan in early 2008, doesn’t mean
a complete absence of positive surprises in Turkey’s foreign
policy. Actually, there have been several when it comes to Turkey’s
neighbors on the eastern front.

Taking pains in the Caucasus

The rapprochement with its estranged neighbor Armenia, with whom it
has no diplomatic relations, seems to be Turkey’s boldest foreign
policy initiative. Amidst secret talks between Armenian and Turkish
diplomats that reportedly took place in Switzerland in early July, an
open call by Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan to Turkey to launch `a
fresh start’ in relations between the estranged neighbors found a
positive response in the Turkish capital.

Eventually, President Abdullah Gül responded positively to
Sarksyan’s invitation to visit Yerevan to watch a game between the
Armenian and Turkish national soccer teams on Sept. 6 in a FIFA World
Cup 2010 qualifying match. The visit made Gül the first Turkish
president to visit the Armenian capital.

Armenia occupied Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan in the
early 1990s after a protracted war between Azerbaijan and the
Armenians of the mountainous region that began in the late 1980s. In a
show of solidarity with Azerbaijan, Turkey severed its diplomatic ties
and closed its border with Armenia and announced that Armenian
withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh was a precondition for normalizing
ties.

Gül’s visit started a new period of dialogue with
Armenia. Later in September, on the sidelines of the UN General
Assembly in New York, Babacan had three-way talks with Armenian
Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister
Elmar Mammadyarov to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.

Preparations for a second such trilateral summit are under way, with
Ambassador Ã`nal Ã?eviköz, the deputy undersecretary
of the Foreign Ministry, having bilateral talks with his Armenian and
Azerbaijani counterparts.

Ankara, which has always described the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as a
problem not only for Azerbaijan but also for Turkey and the entire
region, acknowledged that resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
will have a positive impact on Armenian-Turkish relations.

In the meantime, a regional platform for the Caucasus initiated by
Turkey has made progress. Deputy foreign ministers of the five member
countries of the Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform met on
the sidelines of a meeting of the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) held in Helsinki in early December. It
was the first time representatives from the group sat around the same
table.

Turkey proposed the platform for conflict resolution in the volatile
Caucasus following a brief war between Russia and Georgia over the
breakaway region of South Ossetia in August. The platform consists of
Russia, Georgia, Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Strategic dialogue with Iraq

A shadow cast over bilateral relations between Iraq and Turkey due to
the presence of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) gradually
dispersed during 2008, while Turkey also improved its relations with
the regional Kurdish administration following a long hiatus after the
US invasion of Iraq.

The United States is cooperating with Turkey by providing intelligence
on the PKK in Iraq and allowing Turks to use Iraqi airspace for aerial
strikes on PKK targets in the northern part of the country. The Iraqi
central administration in Baghdad also condemns PKK attacks but says
it has little power in the Kurdish-run north to curb them. A land
operation launched in February into northern Iraq against the PKK was
followed by a landmark visit by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

In July, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an and his Iraqi
counterpart, Nouri al-Maliki, during ErdoÄ?an’s visit to
Baghdad, signed a strategic partnership agreement that commits Turkey
and Iraq to cooperation in the political, economic, energy, water,
cultural, security and military fields. Gül, meanwhile, is
expected to reciprocate Talabani’s visit in early 2009.

Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said in October that the Iraqi Kurds
could be part of a three-way mechanism if the Baghdad administration
agrees. Babacan also said then that Ankara was considering tripartite
consultations with the United States and Iraq on ways to stop PKK
attacks, as proposed by Talabani in a phone conversation with his
Turkish counterpart, Gül, after an Oct. 3 attack by the PKK on
a military outpost located near the border that left 17 soldiers dead.

Last month, during a meeting in Baghdad, senior Iraqi, Turkish and US
officials formed a joint committee to combat the PKK. The trilateral
meeting was also attended by two representatives from the regional
Kurdish administration in northern Iraq, including regional Interior
Minister Karim Sinjari.

The trilateral meeting and Babacan’s remarks followed a meeting in
Baghdad between a Foreign Ministry delegation headed by the Turkish
special envoy for Iraq, Murat Ã-zçelik, and Iraqi Kurdish
leader Massoud Barzani. The meeting broke a taboo in Turkish foreign
policy following several years in which Ankara refused to have talks
with the Kurdish administration, accusing it of supporting the PKK.

Mediation between Israel, Syria

Ankara’s proactive foreign policy in 2008 was not limited to improving
bilateral relations with its neighbors. Back in the spring of this
year, despite news reports concerning Turkey’s mediation between
Israel and Syria, Ankara had been tightlipped concerning its
efforts. The Turkish capital broke its silence in May only after
Israeli and Syrian officials revealed that negotiations were taking
place through Turkey.

The talks are focused on the fate of the Golan Heights, a strategic
plateau which Israel captured in 1967. Damascus wants the whole
territory returned. Israel wants Syria to scale back ties with its
main foes — Iran, Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hezbullah.

Yet talks were suspended about three months ago after Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert decided to resign over a corruption scandal. The
last round of direct talks between Israel and Syria stalled in 2000 in
a dispute over how much of the Golan Heights should go back to Syria.

`We’re not seeking to show off. We do not hold unreasonable
expectations, either. But Turkey will continue its efforts in a calm
manner,’ a senior government official told Today’s Zaman at the time,
displaying the Turkish capital’s sincere eagerness to contribute to
the maintenance of regional peace in the Middle East.

Second summit with Afghanistan, Pakistan

In early December, despite rising regional tension between New Delhi
and Islamabad in the aftermath of the Nov. 26 terrorist attacks on
multiple locations in Mumbai, Ankara managed to host a trilateral
meeting of Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan for talks aimed at
boosting cooperation between the two neighbors.

The meeting, which gathered President Gül with his Afghan
counterpart, Hamid Karzai, and Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali
Zardari, in Ä°stanbul, was actually a follow-up to an earlier
trilateral summit in 2007.

In the spring of 2007, Turkey arranged a meeting between Karzai and
his then-Pakistani counterpart, Pervez Musharraf, after Kabul accused
Islamabad of not doing enough to stop militants from entering
Afghanistan from Pakistan.

Ties between Karzai and Zardari’s governments have improved, with
signs of cooperation among Afghan, Pakistani and foreign troops,
especially in dealing with cross-border movements of fighters and
equipment.

UN Security Council seat

In October, Ankara’s years of unrelenting effort to gain a seat on the
UN Security Council bore fruit. While officials hailed Turkey’s
nonpermanent seat for 2009-2010 as a well-deserved reward for its
diplomatic campaign for more influence in regional politics and
reforms at home, analysts warned that the role in the UN’s main
decision-making body will also mean tough choices for Ankara,
especially on whether its neighbor Iran should face sanctions over its
nuclear program.

The government, which has built good ties with Iran since it first
came to power in 2002, advocates a peaceful solution to the row over
Iran’s nuclear program, but is against nuclear weapons in the Middle
East.

Election to the UN’s powerful decision-making body has been widely
interpreted as a boost for ErdoÄ?an’s government, which has
lobbied intensely for the position since it declared its candidacy in
July 2003.

A more active role will not only give Turkey the power to speak more
forcefully on issues of national concern, such as Cyprus, but will
also put Ankara in a tight spot over Iran’s nuclear program and its
relations with the United States. Turkey has also recently secured
membership in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the main
international organization reporting on Tehran’s nuclear program.

External anchor and regional influence

Turning back to relations with the EU, which were once described by
Babacan as a vital external anchor for Turkey, all of these active and
progressive foreign policy achievements by Ankara have been generously
lauded by Brussels.

Yet, the EU has also warned that none of these achievements can serve
as a substitute for reforms. During a visit to Ankara in November, a
European Parliament delegation led by Hannes Swoboda, the vice
president of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, made
clear that those bold steps in the foreign policy field could be
accepted as `an addition and complementary to reforms.’

When reminded of this fact by the visiting delegation during their
meeting with Gül, the president conceded, a European Parliament
deputy who was at the meeting told Today’s Zaman.

`Turkey’s strategic importance and regional influence in the East
highly stems from its relation with the EU and its potential
membership in the bloc,’ Gül was quoted as telling the
delegation in response.

2009 will show everyone whether the government will also concede to
this fact in its thorny relationship with Brussels.

28 December 2008, Sunday
EMÄ°NE KART ANKARA