ERDOGAN IS PROMOTING AN ENCOURAGING POLICY IN TURKEY’S ‘NEAR ABROAD’
Daily Star
March 25 2009
Lebanon
President Abdullah Gul made a landmark visit to Iraq this week, as the
first Turkish head of state to set foot on its neighbor’s soil in 33
years, a long-overdue thaw in ties that have been strained going back
to the heyday of the Cold War. The players are now quite different:
instead of the generals, we have a civilian government in Ankara
that is Islamist-oriented, and instead of the Baath Party in Baghdad,
we have a US-sponsored civilian nationalists and sectarians.
Gul’s visit was a welcome development and telling sign of Turkey’s
official policy on the immediate region, or the "near abroad."
For Turkey, the name of the game is Zero Conflict. The regime, or more
specifically the government led by Recip Tayyib Erdogan, is promoting
this encouraging policy, in as many directions as possible, such as
Georgia, Armenia and Israel, as well as Syria and Iran. It wasn’t a
huge surprise to learn last year that Turkey was involved mediating
Syrian-Israeli peace moves of late.
Moving in the direction of Iraq, the Turks encounter one of their
most thorniest domestic issues: the Kurds. Iraq’s President, Kurdish
leader Jalal Talabani, promised Gul that the long-running issue of the
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and its fight against Turkish forces
across the border, would be solved. They will carry on their fight
from elsewhere, Talabani said. Of course, Turkey has a role to play
in Iraq’s present, since it’s a lifeline for the economy. Thousands
of trucks enter the country daily, bearing a vital range of supplies
and goods, are why Iraq must pay attention to the needs of its northern
neighbor. In return, Turkey should emphasize carrots as well as sticks,
in trying to end armed insurrections and what it considers "terror."
The region needs states like Turkey to step up to the plate on
providing solutions for conflict and other problems, and Ankara has
been active: it attended the recent conferences and summits in Qatar
and Kuwait and has been making the required visits to Saudi Arabia
and Egypt.
But Iraq is critical, and while it’s sure to require continued
Turkish involvement, other countries have roles to play as well. Not
interventionist roles – rather, the kind of positive engagement that
appears in the meetings of Iraq’s neighbors. The framework is there:
the half a dozen countries surrounding Iraq. The model is there:
Zero Conflict. Now all we need is the political will and the hard
work, in the form of creative and practical ideas, along with solid
institutions to implement them, and perhaps Iraq, and other states,
can benefit from the Turkish policy of encouraging an end to conflict
in the "near abroad." For now, it seems like a coherent policy,
and not a public relations exercise.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
