No, Turkey has no Ottoman nostalgia
By Suat Kiniklioglu
Commentary by

n_id=1&categ_id=5&article_id=109719
Monday , December 14, 2009

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 have likened Turkey’s
neighborhood policy as a revival of Ottoman imperialism. Recently, a
senior Turkish columnist went so far as to quote the country’s 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 as it is simply a misrepresentation of our
position.

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

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

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

So, we find that the current debate on Turkey’s orientation is rather
superfluous, 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 it is already
changing the status quo in favor of more stability and predictability.
Turkish efforts at normalization with Armenia, for example, are
destined to bring about change in the entire South Caucasus. We are
doing our part in terms of burden-sharing. Sensible Europeans can
understand that.

To be sure, some of our neighbors are more difficult than others. But
no country has the luxury of choosing its neighbors. Turkey’s
neighborhood policy is a very realistic one, based on a genuine
interests; it does not represent some form of romantic neo-Ottoman
nostalgia, as more than a few international commentators have
mistakenly 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 our
efforts to consolidate our democracy. However, trying to paint our
carefully constructed foreign-policy initiatives with overtones of an
imperialism past is not only a stark misrepresentation of reality; it
also does gross injustice to our well-intentioned efforts to stabilize
our surrounding region.

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

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

Contrary to the recent charges, Turkey’s foreign policymakers are not
seeking to revive the Ottoman Empire. Instead, we seek Turkey’s
historical reintegration into its immediate surroundings, thereby
correcting an anomaly created during the Cold War years. Such
re-integration could only benefit the European Union and our other
Western and NATO allies. None of them, therefore, has any reason to
express discomfort with Turkey’s approach.

Suat Kiniklioglu is the Justice and Development Party’s deputy
chairman for external affairs, a member of the party’s Central
Executive Committee, and member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in
the Turkish Parliament. THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in
collaboration with Project Syndicate © ().