"NEO-OTTOMAN" TURKEY?
Suat Kiniklioglu

Project Syndicate

ject-syndicate.org/commentary/kiniklioglu2
Dec 3 2009

ANKARA – Nowadays, the international media are obsessed with the
question of who "lost" Turkey and what that supposed loss means for
Europe and the West. More alarmingly, some commentators liken Turkey’s
neighborhood policy to a revival of Ottoman imperialism. Recently,
a senior Turkish columnist went so far as to quote Foreign Minister
Ahmet Davutoglu as saying that "we are indeed neo-Ottoman."

As someone who was present when Davutoglu made his presentation to the
parliamentary faction of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party
(AKP), I can attest to the fact that he did not use such terminology.

In fact, Davutoglu and all of us in the AKP foreign-policy community
never use this term, because it is simply a mispresentation of our
position.

Turkey’s neighborhood policy is devised to reintegrate Turkey into
its immediate neighborhoods, including the Balkans, the Black Sea,
the Caucasus, the Middle East, and the Eastern Mediterranean. We aim
to deepen our political dialogue, increase our trade, and multiply
our people-to-people contacts with our neighbors in the form of
sports, tourism, and cultural actvities. When Egon Bahr formulated
his Ostpolitik in the 1960’s, no one asked Will Brandt whether Germany
was lost.

God bestowed upon Turkey a geographical position that fundamentally
requires for us engage with East and West, North and South. This is
neither a choice nor a luxury – it is a necessity.

The symbol of the Byzantine and the Selcuk Empires, which occupied
roughly the same geography that Turkey does today, was a double-headed
eagle looking both east and west. It should be no wonder that Turkey
is also seeking to engage both ends of its territories and feels that
its security is best consolidated by minimizing risks together with
its neighbors.

So we find the current debate on Turkey’s orientation rather
superflous, and in some cases ill-intentioned. Our neighborhood policy
needs support, not criticism. Turkey has become an invaluable asset
in the make-up of our surrounding regions, and is already changing
the status quo in favor of more stability and predictability. Our
efforts at normalization with Armenia, for example, are destined to
bring change to the entire South Caucasus. We are doing our part in
terms of burden-sharing. Sensible Europeans understand that.

To be sure, some of our neighbors are difficult. But no country has the
luxury of choosing its neighbors. Turkey’s neighborhood policy is very
realistic, based on genuine interests, not some romantic neo-Ottoman
nostagia, as more than a few international commentators have suggested.

True, there is a neo-Ottoman revival in the cultural field, and our
citizens are eager to rediscover Ottoman life, culture, and practices.

As Turkey is normalizing domestically, it is also reinterpreting
its national historical narrative. This is a natural byproduct of
consolidating our democracy. However, trying to paint our carefully
constructed foreign-policy initiatives with imperialist overtones is
not only a stark mispresentation, but also does gross injustice to
our well-intentioned efforts to stabilize our region.

In Roman mythology, Janus was the god of gates, doorways, beginnings,
and endings. Turkey today is a Janus-like geography that offers gates
and doorways to the East and West. It offers beginnings and endings
to the Caucasus, the Black Sea, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean.

In this capacity, Turkey compliments and contributes to a unique
transitional passage between otherwise difficult regions, for it
signifies centuries-old co-existence and adjustment. Turkish foreign
policy contributes to that coming together and helps its immeditate
neighborhoods to connect with one another.

Contrary to recent charges, Turkey’s foreign policymakers are not
seeking to revive the Ottoman Empire. Instead, we seek Turkey’s
historic reintegration into its immediate neighborhoods, thereby
correcting an anomaly of the Cold War years. Such re-integration would
only benefit the European Union and our other Western, NATO allies.

None of them, therefore, has any reason to express discomfort with
Turkey.