COMMENTARY: A NEW OTTOMAN EMPIRE?
Asli Aydintasbas

Forbes
02/ahmet-davutoglu-turkey-obama-opinions-contribut ors-ottoman-empire.html
June 2 2009

ISTANBUL — This week, Turkey assumed the presidency of the United
Nation’s Security Council, and while that may just be a passing story
in most countries, here it is a big deal.

"This is very important and a big responsibility for our country,"
said Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu–and he should
know. Davutoglu has been the chief architect of Turkey’s neo-imperial
foreign policy that envisions a far greater role for this pro-western
Islamic country than as an aspiring second-tier member of the
European club.

No one was surprised last month when Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan appointed his longtime political adviser Davutoglu as the
Foreign Minister. The soft-talking professor–who was also an adviser
to President Abdullah Gul–has largely been responsible for reshaping
Turkey’s foreign policy over the past six years, moving it away from
its isolationist roots and toward a role as a self-declared regional
power broker in the Middle East.

Turks love the spotlight that has come from efforts to mediate
between Israelis and Syrians, act as peacekeepers in Lebanon and host
high-profile world dignitaries. They got a kick out of seeing their
globetrotting leader Erdogan in a face-off with Israeli President
Shimon Peres in Davos.

The official television station TRT has recently started to refer to
Turkey as a "global power." These days, the book du jour in Turkish
power circles is Stratfor founder George Friedman’s The Next 100 Years:
A Forecast for the 21st Century. It predicts the rise of a hegemonic
Turkish empire in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire.

All that talk may be premature, but not for Davutoglu.

Meeting the Turkish foreign minister, you would never guess that
you are talking to one of the most powerful figures in the Middle
East. Davutoglu is a short, even-tempered man in his fifties who talks,
in fact nearly mumbles, with a relaxing half-smile that gives you the
momentary hope that the world’s most vicious problems are actually
not that difficult to solve. He is more avuncular than imposing,
more monotonous than charismatic.

>>From Damascus to Tel Aviv, regional leaders have been talking to him
as the best private channel to the decision-makers in Ankara–making
him the most influential consigliore in the history of the modern
republic. His book Strategic Depth is a must-read for diplomats
coming to Turkey. He has been at the heart of every critical
diplomatic initiative over the last few years–from lobbying to
attain U.N. Security Council membership for Turkey to conducting
secret Israeli-Syrian mediation efforts.

It’s not power for power’s sake. There is a whole political theory
behind the Davutoglu Doctrine. In a nutshell, instead of defining
Turkey as the eastern flank of the Transatlantic Alliance, Davutoglu
sees it as a pivotal country ("merkez ulke"), the centerpoint of
concentric power circles. The governing Justice and Development
Party, or AKP, does not see the European Union as an end goal, and
does not regard Turkey’s western orientation as its sole strategic
axis. Instead, they talk of multiple axes of alliances to solidify
Turkey’s leadership in the Muslim world.

But not everyone is happy about the New Turkey. To his critics,
Davutoglu is responsible for the neo-Ottomanist revisionism in
foreign policy that values Muslim solidarity over the secular nation’s
long-standing alliance with the West. He was partly blamed in media
for Turkey’s refusal to open a northern front for U.S. troops in the
Iraq war, as well as Ankara’s controversial invitation to Hamas leader
Khaled Mashal in 2006.

Davutoglu defended both decisions by pointing out that Turkey,
in each case, made more gains than losses. Ankara currently differs
from the European and American positions on numerous issues, including
relations with Russia, the role of Hamas in Israeli-Palestinian issues
and Darfur, where the AKP government openly supports the regime of
President Omar al-Bashir, who has been indicted by the International
Criminal Court.

But even his critics agree, AKP reign has somehow elevated Turkey’s
stature as a democratic Muslim country and an independent actor in
the Middle East. Among his fans, including leading members of the
Islamist-oriented governing party, he has somewhat of a cult following,
"Before AKP, no one in the mainstream media had heard of his name,
but in our circles he was a legend. We used to think of him as the
next Ozal," says a conservative journalist with close ties to the
government.

Born in Konya, Turkey’s conservative heartland, Davutoglu is a pious
man who has spent a good chunk of his academic career teaching in
Malaysia–somewhat unusual among Turkish academics, who gravitate
toward European and American colleges for academic research. South
Asia’s brand of Islamic politics, marked with the growth of religion
within a democratic framework, impacted his thinking on state and
society. He has been very active in the Balkans with efforts to help
Muslims in the Bosnian war. His particular view of Turkey as seen
from the outside has led to the development of an unconventional
understanding of its place in the world stage.

Davutoglu’s vision somewhat differs from traditional Turkish foreign
policy. Weary of troubling imperial baggage and decades of wars,
the modern Turkish republic, founded in 1923, has predominantly
been isolationist–aimed at anchoring Turkey to the "civilized"
West and untangling it from the "backward" lands to the East. The
AKP challenges this view and sees an active role in the Middle East
as an asset for Turkey’s relations with the West.

Under AKP, Turkey has been delving into areas that its traditional
westward-looking foreign policy establishment considered off-limits,
acting as a power-broker in far off disputes from Afghanistan to
Palestine. In doing so, it certainly has become more enmeshed in
the Muslim world, sometimes even positioning itself as the spokesman
for the Islamic world, as reflected in Erdogan’s outburst in Davos
against Peres, or Turkey’s reluctance to accept Danish Prime Minister
Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the head of NATO, due to his stance during
the Danish cartoon crisis.

When Davutoglu coined the term "Neighborhood Rapprochement Policy"
back in 2003, the idea of Turkey becoming friends with its arch
enemies–like Syria, a rogue state that hosted Kurdish guerilla leader
Abdullah Ocalan for many years, Iran, whose efforts to export Islamic
revolution threatened Turkey’s secular foundations, or Armenia, with
its unyielding diaspora lobbying against Turkey–seemed pointless,
at best.

Today, Turkey is best of friends with historical enemies Greece,
Syria and Iran, on course to normalize its relations with Armenia
and even talking to the Kurdish regional government in northern
Iraq. Journalists who used to scoff at Davutoglu’s theories nowadays
generously throw around his terminology, like "zero conflict with
neighbors," "flexible focal point" and, of course, Turkey as a
"global power."

Conservatives who tend to credit Davutoglu with raising Turkey’s
influence through a non-aligned foreign policy were encouraged by
President Barack Obama’s visit here in April. Speaking to lawmakers
in Ankara, Obama said, "Turkey’s greatness lies in your ability to be
at the center of things. This is not where East and West divide–this
is where they come together." He sounded almost like Davutoglu himself.

One major problem with Davutoglu’s policies has always been the
question of what would happen domestically if Turkey traded its
place in the West in return for a greater regional role. While
Turks enjoy their high-profile role in the Middle East, there are
pitfalls. Typically the farther a nation moves from the West and
its mechanisms, the more likely it is to see a rise in illiberal
tendencies.

Russia, for example, is a very important country, but its independent
status is precisely what makes it impossible for the U.S. to pressure
Vladimir Putin or Dmitry Medvedev for accountability when it comes
to corruption, a free press or democratic norms.

What if Turkey were no longer a candidate for E.U. membership. Would
human rights be as closely monitored? Media freedoms and minority
rights still protected? Women’s rights guaranteed?

No one knows the answer. But Turks seem to like the ride.

Asli Aydintasbas is an Istanbul-based journalist and former Ankara
bureau chief of the newspaper Sabah.