Rıdvan TÜRKOĞLU

In recent years , there is a  debate whether Turkey has been changing its axis in foreign policy or not. Some politicians and scholars argue that  Turkey is turning its back to West and coming more closer with Middle Eastern countries. For them, developing relations with these countries and especially Iran policies are the evidents for their thesis. Indeed some people labelled Turkish foreign policy as ‘Neo-Ottomanism” and sometimes western countries blame each other about losing Turkey. On the contrary, some scholars argue that recent events show that  Turkey is becoming a normal country and adjusting its foreign policy. “Turkey pays more attention to its Middle Eastern neighbors than the past because it has ignored them, not because of the worsening relations with the EU. Because Turkey’s geopolitical realities entail pursuit of active and multi-dimensional foreign policy. Recent developments in Turkish foreign policy are nothing but reflection of the new philosophy behind it. (Öztürk 2010)”

During these debates, I would like to emphasize on strong alignment of  Turkey with its Western allies, and discuss possibility of shifting axis in this policy in my article.

To begin with, I want to focus on historical dimension of relationship between Turkey and western countries. As a republic, Turkish Foreign Policy has a unchanged and constant feature: It always looks towards Europe. We need to think about this situation and reasons of this basic policy.

So, among all other Middle Eastern, Asian and African countries why Turkey is the only one muslim country that has strong relations with Western countries?

There are many reasons which show and prove us why Turkey has to act in this policy, in a historical perspective. I want to give some points from Oral Sander’s book,namely, “Turkish Foreign Policy. (Sander 1998)”

-First point is the heritage of Ataturk as a basis of Turkish Foreign Policy,

-Second one is the geographic and strategic location of Turkey. Advantages and disadvantages of this situation,

-Finally, among these two points economical policy preferences of Turkey.

Both the transformers in the Ottoman Empire and the founding fathers of modern Turkey were influenced by the cornerstones of European history like the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Atatürk’s reforms towards solidifying the modernization of Turkey are the ramifications of this revolutionary mindset. (Davutoğlu 2010)” Firstly, when Ataturk established Republic of Turkey, he tried to carry and connect European values in our new republic such as democracy, nation-state, secularism and so on. By implementing this policy, he succeed in to create an adaptation between western – developed world and new born Turkish Republic. Although Turkey is in a region that western culture is far away, it reached a consensus between two different world. Also, Ataturk’s “Peace at home, peace in the world” policy resulted in an integration between Turkey and western world. And this integration provided a long term peace and cooperation between two sides.

Secondly, Turkey’s geopolitic and strategic location has a significant position in the region. However, it causes some disadvantages as well. Especially, during the Cold War, Turkey confronted the threat of USSR. In addition to this situation, Turkey’s position as a neighbour to Middle East made Turkey feel nervous and threaten to its safety and stability because of the conflicts in there such as Suez Crisis, Israeli- Arab conflicts and so on. These environment obligated Turkey to locate itself in Western side and  to join Western political and military organizations such as NATO in order to protect its stability. There were mutual interests in this cooperation and Turkey became key partner for NATO.  “Throughout the Cold War, Turkish foreign policy was characterized by Ankara’s close alliance with Washington. Turkey had a role as the southern flank of the NATO against the Soviet expansionism. In exchange, Turkey received guarantee of protection from Soviet threat under the NATO umbrella and significant amount of military and economic aid in order to strengthen its defense. (Çelik 1999)”

This situation leads to third point , the country which has a strategic location or has vital importance for superpowers , Turkey is suitable for both situation, can get more affect and respect than its capacity.

Some scholar argued that Turkey is going to lose its importance for western allies with the end of the Cold War, but it did not happen in this way. “After the end of Cold War in the early 1990s, a new notion of Turkey emerged as a bridge country. As many new problems emerged in the post-Cold War era, among them the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the crises in the Balkans, Turkey’s main objective became the protection of its own stability. Turkey maintained its stability amid the chaos that engulfed many of its near neighbors, and the international community began to look to Turkey as an island of stability and a bridge country between east and west (Davutoğlu, “Turkey’s Foreign Policy Vision: An Assessment of 2007” 2007).”  As a bridge between Western countries and Middle East, Middle Asia, Caucasus and even Africa, Turkey is becoming more important and getting bigger role in the region to help world politics.

After the end of the Cold War, especially in recent years, US see Turkey as a strong ally and always support Turkey in western alliance. There are many issues that Turkey and US have common interests. Because of the fact that, the US president B.Obama defines this partnership as a strategic and model alliance in the region. “The emergence of Turkey as a regional power in the Caucasus, the Middle East, and the Balkans enabled the continuation of close relationship between Turkey and both the European Union and the United States. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the close alliance between Turkey and the United States continued in the form of cooperation in Afghanistan. (Kasım 2010)”

Relations with European Union (EU) and the aim of being member of EU is the another important subject for Turkish Foreign Policy for decades. Although in the past and still some of the EU members made it clear that they do not want to see Turkey in EU, Turkey spends a lot of efforts to change their decision for many years. In the last term of the Ottoman Empire and after that as a Turkish Republic, our governments and people choose to be in West part of the world and designed its structure in order to improve democracy, welfare, economy and politics in the country. EU negotiations process seems as an oppurtunity for Turkey to fulfil these aims.

Turkey applied to EEC in 1959 and this application accepted as an European country, but Turkey still makes effort to be accepted in EU. Because  Turkey accepts European values in all kinds of politics and wants to achieve and has these values to be more democratic and stronger state. Although Turkey did not born European, it makes efforts to be European. Scholar Murat Erdogan labelled this situation as “earned europeannes” (Erdoğan 2009).

Although Turkey shows its determination in order to locate itself in western alliance for decades and recently by making reforms to implement Copenhagen Criterias to join EU so far, there are still many political issues and EU treat Turkey double standardly in these issues.

“Davutoglu argued that what the Turkish Government has done so far for the last 6 years in its involvement to NATO as well as the EU membership clearly refute the claims that Turkey ignores the West. Davutoglu held that the main problems of Turkey-EU relations stem from the lack of political will among several governments in EU towards Turkey as well as the Union’s Cyprus policy that somewhat punishes the Turkish side but rewards the Greek side despite the willingness of the Turkish side for a peaceful settlement. (Yenişafak 2010)”

Davutoglu makes it clear that there is no shifting axis in Turkish Foreign Policy, but Turkey has to act according to its national interests. “It is easy to say for someone who is far away from the center of Afro-Eurasia to limit your relations with neighbours. We want this. Sorry, this is our geography; this is our future with our neighborhood (Davutoğlu, ‘The Principles of Turkish Foreign Policy’ 2010).”

As I mentioned above, Turkey is the only muslim country which is democratic and secular republic and also connected to Europe with its own morals. Turkey’s this feature gives great oppurtunity to Middle Eastern countries in order to meet democracy, human rights and free trade. Turkey has important ability to affect muslim countries and contribute a great deal to its region about these subjects. For example, Turkey is the only one European country that can speak to Iran or Hamas with language of western values. Developing relations with Middle Eastern countries not only  interest in Turkey, but also interest in West politics. “In fact, however, this perceived ‘shift’ has been less to do with Turkey turning away from the West and more to do with keeping pace with the new realities of post-Cold War geopolitics in its own neighbourhood, as well as coping with US  policies in the region. (Akçakoca 2009)” 

As a result, all historical basis and improvement of Turkish Foreign Policy rely on western values and spread of these values to undeveloped democracies. Western countries should not misread this process and need to understand that new perspective of current Turkish Foreign Policy is very compatible with European values and transatlantic orientation.

Bibliography

Akçakoca, Amanda. “Turkish foreign policy – between East and West?” European Policy Centre, 2009.

Çelik, Yasemin. Contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy. Wesport, Conn: Praege, 1999.

Davutoğlu, Ahmet. ““Turkey’s Foreign Policy Vision: An Assessment of 2007”.” Insight Turkey, Vol. 10, No. 1,, 2007.

—. “‘The Principles of Turkish Foreign Policy’.” SETAV. Washington, 2010.

Davutoğlu, Ahmet. “Turkish Foreign Policy and The EU in 2010.” Turkish Policy Quarterly, 2010.

Erdoğan, M. Murat. ” “Earned Europeanness”: Turkey and Diaspora Turks in Europe”.” American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS), 2009: pp.136-146. .

Kasım, Kamer. “The Axis Discussion in Turkish Foreign Policy.” The Journal of Turkish Weekly, 2010.

Öztürk, Hasan. “Turkish Foreign Policy Normalizes.” Bilgesam, 2010.

Sander, Oral. Türkiye’nin Dış Politikası. Ankara: İmge Kitabevi Yayınları, 1998.

Yenişafak. “http://yenisafak.com.tr/English/?t=18.01.2010&i=236159.” Washington, 2010.