Who Can Trust in Turkey?

To understand how the Turkish foreign policy is changing over time and rightly to answer the question in the headline, we have to contrast two pictures very shortly. The first picture is covering the past few years. It was the last year when Turkey was in a position of mediator between the West and Iran on nuclear program issue; holding joint cabinet meeting with Syria; trying to find a solution between Palestinian factions; and organizing high level of official and business delegation to Libya of Qaddafi; joint declaration by FMs of Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon to set up an integrated economic area in the Middle East. A few years ago Turkey, pioneering indirect talks between Syria andIsrael, was the only partner ofIsrael in the Middle East; initiating a historical attempt to resolve problems with Armenia. And it was not so long ago when Turkish leaders were talking about the primacy of EU project for their country. For what all of these changes in conventional Turkish foreign policy happened? The official statement is to have ‘zero-problem with neighbors’, which is very fascinating for public opinion. But the real objective ofTurkey was to have leverage in its relations particularly with EU. Turkey considered the region around itself as a portfolio to support its negotiation position with EU.

The second picture is about today. The former picture currently seems to be upset; highly strained relations with Israel; speculation about a possible Turkish-Syrian war; offensive statement by a high level Iranian General about NATO missile shield in the south east of Turkey; spectator position in the Iranian nuclear crisis; Gaza and Palestine almost forgotten; shelving cooperative initiation with Armenia; defying EU accession project. And this describes the inversion of the policy ‘zero-problem’ to ‘problem with all’. What are the factors behind these sharp changes? Arab Awakening, Israeli attack on Palestinians, biased policies of EU leaders, soaring power ofTurkey, growing self-confidence of its leaders, or the resultant axis shift?
On the other side, it is very interesting that mainstream media inTurkey and in the region is still trying to assess the situation in favor of the Turkish government. The problem here is not with that of Arab media which searches for international support in favor of democratization, but of the Turkish media. In this outlook it is referred to Turkish support for the opposition, upholding of human rights and democracy, Turkish anti-colonial discourse in foreign policy issues and personally increasing fans of Turkish PM in the Arab streets. Sometimes I think whether this eventual media support is a part of the propaganda to frame public opinion to legitimize the government’s policy of ‘zero-problem with neighbors’. If it is really a part of this kind of propaganda, then we have to accept Turkey is successful. This is true, even if it is really difficult to make people forget about the radical differences between the implications of the two pictures above. This meansTurkey was supporting dictators just a year ago. It becomes very ridiculous to assert that Assad or Qaddafi were not dictators last year orTurkey didn’t know they are dictators. I think intensive media propaganda is trying to blur those differences.
This strategy of the Turkish government aligned with extensive media circles together with its fluctuating foreign policy should be scrutinized very closely to answer the question ‘who can trust in Turkey?’.
First, propaganda is not the only factor in international politics to achieve foreign policy objectives. Moreover propaganda primarily targets and convinces public opinion, not the rulers who rather search for reliable allies. So either former dictators or new democratic leaders are going to expect fromTurkey to step forward more concretely. IsTurkey capable or are the Turkish leaders determined to do that? It is going to be tested in due time.
Second, fluctuations in its foreign policy imply that either Turkish leaders are inexperienced or they are confused about what to follow in international politics. Fluctuations might be assessed as a result of contextual changes. But this argument is acceptable so far as we regard a certain degree of stability that is not observable in this case. On this context some critical voices are needed to see rightly what is going on and what else should be done. This is to guide to the Turkish leaders too to a certain extent. But for the moment leaders are deprived of that because of flatterer mainstream media. As much as the policies fluctuate (not change), so much as the image is that Turkey actually doesn’t have a ‘policy’, rather it tries to develop and implement tactics to win the day.
Third, if it is accepted that the consolidation of democratic reforms in the Arab world is going to take a long time, then Turkey will face a serious ‘reliability problem’ in the middle range in the Middle East. Mubarak, Ben Ali, Assad or Saleh are not the only dictators in the region. So surviving dictators will care to be distant toTurkey for their own interest from now on. Even if the democratic reforms are consolidated in some countries after a certain time, it is very difficult for the new democratic governments to forget ‘brotherly relations’ betweenTurkey and dictators in the past. So they will also care about ‘Turkish tactics’.
Turkish foreign policy makers should be aware of the contrast between the ‘political’, ‘strategic’ and the ‘tactical’. Current FM, who is a successful scholar, studied on strategy. So he should know best about the differences between those concepts. For the moment tactical initiations seem to fail.Turkey became incapable to realize ‘zero-problem’ policy and to get Middle East portfolio behind it against the West. But this failure shouldn’t be considered just for its own outcomes. More broadly it will affect the general course of Turkish foreign policy. The biggest risk is that all parties will regard Turkey as an ‘unreliable’ partner, including democracies or dictators in the Middle East ,Israel and more importantly the West.
Overall the West including the U.S.and EU will have more leverage on Turkey. What is at stake is whether Turkey will become submissive again to the West. EU will have more to say on Cyprus, Armenia, Kurdish problem and other issues within accession negotiations. And the U.S.will have more to demand fromTurkeyto prove its reliability, remembering also the crisis of 2003. Consequently, the question ‘who can trust inTurkey?’ should be asked and carefully analyzed by the policy makers.