Daily Pioneer , India
Nov 8 2009

Turkey reinvents its geostrategic role

MJ Akbar

When Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul visits India early next year he
will be representing a nation that has reinvented its geostrategic
role through an independent foreign policy in barely eight years. I
hope he brings along Mr Ahmet Davutoglu, who shaped the theory and
then structured the practicals, first as principal adviser to Prime
Minister Recip Tayyab Erdogan, and now as Foreign Minister. He must be
one of the few academics fortunate enough to get a chance to make
ideas work.

The starting point was 2002, when the Justice and Development Party
(AKP) won the elections and ended the monopoly on power exercised by a
military-bureaucratic-civilian Istanbul-centric elite which claimed
the inheritance of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and his European-style
secularism which still prohibits a Turkish woman from wearing a
headscarf to university. This elite protected Ataturk’s secular
vision, but, somewhere along the way lost sight of Ataturk’s
independence.

The wives of Mr Erdogan and Mr Gul wear headscarves, but that is not
the point: The wives of many Cabinet Ministers and high officials do
not, and are not required to. What is relevant is that AKP subtly
shifted a policy that had become synonymous with America’s, without
the angry rhetoric that has become a regrettable hallmark of so many
who strut as lead actors on the anti-American stage. AKP proved that
change was possible without compromising an amicable and mutually
beneficial relationship with Washington. Their predecessors had
America’s friendship. AKP has America’s respect as well.

Turkey has played a pivotal role in two of the three great wars of the
20th century. It was an ally of Germany and the Central Powers in
World War I, but refused to declare war on the United States even when
the latter joined the Anglo-French alliance. Even though it lost its
empire in the fighting, Turkey did not permit a single enemy soldier
on its territory during wartime. Istanbul was occupied only after
truce. Ataturk, victor of Gallipoli, was the great hero of this
conflict; but took his true place in his nation’s history after 1918,
when the vainglorious trio of Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and
Clemenceau, leavening their intent with anti-Muslim Crusader
sentiment, armed and financed a Greek invasion of Turkey. Their aim
was to partition the country and leave Turkey as a rump Anatolian
state. Ataturk mobilised a proud army and people, and shocked the
victors of World War I by destroying the Greeks after they reached the
outskirts of Ankara.

Ataturk, protecting his nation’s independence, kept Turkey neutral in
World War II. Historic fears of next-door Russia, now the Soviet
Union, drove Istanbul into Washington’s embrace in the Cold War. But
when in the 1980s flexibility became an option, and in the 1990s a
necessity, Turkey remained rigid. When it looked south it could only
see Israel; when it looked east it could see nothing more than
Pakistan. Both were American allies. Turkey did not have a policy or a
vision for the 21st century.

Mr Davutoglu selected the moment of departure with uncanny vision: Mr
George W Bush’s war on Iraq in 2003. It gave an early sign of change,
when it refused to let American troops pass through Turkey on their
way to Iraq. It also realised, fairly early, that America would be
weakened by Mr Bush’s Iraq folly, creating space for new players,
since the Soviet Union was too weak to play any role at all.

Israel and Iran have sufficient muscle to fill a regional vacuum, but
both were inherently belligerent. They would be able to intervene, but
as destabilisers rather than stabilisers. Iran had a natural advantage
in Shia-majority Iraq, but it simultaneously provoked deep suspicions
in the Arab world. Turkey set itself up as the region’s centre of
stability. Ironically, this was its role during the days of the
Ottoman Empire; but this time around, it could create an arc of
influence only through diplomacy and harmony, not imposition.

Turkey set about strengthening its relations with Arab nations. It
distanced itself from warriors in Israel, without breaking ties of
trade and cooperation. It criticised Israel’s Gaza war unambiguously.
But it realised that a critical key to peace lay in the amelioration
of its own antagonisms with its neighbours. This was, given the
emotionalism that is attached to the past, difficult.

But Turkey has now signed historic protocols with Armenia, warmed icy
relations with Syria to the point where visa has been abolished,
lifted ties with Iran and become a vital partner of Iraq in the
reconstruction of the country. In October Mr Erdogan signed 48 MoUs
covering energy, commerce and security (among other things) with
Baghdad. Mr Davutoglu paid a visit to the Kurdish Regional Government
in northern Iraq, which is equivalent to an Indian Foreign Minister
dropping in on Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Not too long
ago, Turkey’s Air Force was bombing this Kurdish region as punishment
for being a base for terrorism. Turkey, America and Iraq are working
together to bring the long and bitter Kurdish war against Turkey to an
end ‘ another sign of Washington’s new respect for Istanbul.

Pakistan has recognised the change as well, but done so in its
India-centric manner. It has asked Turkey to help solve the Kashmir
problem. Istanbul is not so green as to try and do so; and certainly
New Delhi will be frosty towards any such misguided initiative. But
Turkey has found its role on the world stage. A stem in the Cold War
greenhouse has flowered in the fresh air of an open mind.

— MJ Akbar is Chairman and Director of Publications of the
fortnightly newsmagazine Covert.

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