`Window to the Future’
What you need to know about the person shaping Turkey’s muscular new foreign
policy.
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Nov 28, 2009
Expect to hear a lot more of the name Ahmet Davutoglu. The former university
professor who became Turkey’s foreign minister last year is the man behind
Ankara’s landmark new diplomatic outreach, including a previously
unimaginable rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia and a new warmth with
Syria.
Some Western analysts are dismayed at these developments, interpreting them
as a sign that Turkey is turning East at the expense of the West. The
mild-mannered Davutoglu typically gets angry at these suggestions, saying
these comments come from those who begrudge Turkey its expanding role in the
region.
Yet while Davutoglu is no stranger to Turkish politics-he began serving as
chief foreign-policy adviser to the ruling AKP in 2002-he remains something
of a cipher, even in his home country. To remedy that, NEWSWEEK’s
Turkish-language partner, NEWSWEEK Türkiye, recently examined the forces
that shaped Davutoglu and how he is changing relationships with Turkey’s
neighbors in the Middle East, the Balkans, and the Caucasus.
Some of the highlights from the magazine’s comprehensive profile, written by
Yenal Bilgici with reporting by Semin Gümüsel and Nevra Yaraç:
Davutoglu risked the deadly Izmit earthquake to save the manuscript of his
signature book, Strategic Depth: Turkey’s International Position, which lays
out the conceptual framework for what he now calls his "zero problems with
neighbors"policy. When the shaking started on Aug. 17, 1999, he managed to
flee his endangered Istanbul home unharmed-but then ignored warnings of
aftershocks to dash back into the house and eject the computer disk
containing his years of work. Now in its 30th printing, the book brought him
national and international recognition.
The foreign minister is a somewhat reluctant politician. After Turkey’s
ruling AKP won the elections of 2002, he turned down requests to serve in
the government and opted instead to continue his university work while
serving as an adviser to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Five years
later, he was on the verge of a full-time return to academia when rebels
from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) attacked the Daglica military post
in Turkey’s eastern city of Hakkari, killing 13 soldiers. "I cannot leave
now," Davutoglu told his inner circle. Instead, he stayed on to take up the
position of foreign minister and facilitate recent agreements aimed at
granting long-denied rights to the Kurdish minority and ending two decades
of attacks by the PKK.
The peripatetic minister went to 13 countries in October alone, raising
Turkey’s diplomatic profile to its highest level in years. Indeed, Davutoglu
won unprecedented praise in Arabic media, like the London-based Al-Hayat
newspaper, where a columnist begged the foreign minister to help solve
Lebanon’s problems as well. "You carry ideas, aspirations, solutions, and
medicine in your luggage," wrote the columnist. "You are the window to the
future."
Davutoglu may be known for his temperate demeanor, but he has little
patience with Ankara’s political elites and their unassertive approach to
diplomacy. "These rootless elites are conditioned to not being noticed and
not taking initiative rather than coming to the front and being decisive
during critical periods," he wrote in an uncharacteristically sharp tone in
Strategic Depth. "They think of being passive as a safer and risk-free
policy." These criticisms, writes Bilgici in NEWSWEEK Türkiye, are a
beginner’s guide to understanding Davutoglu and his policy. The second
pointer to his character: the minister’s constant use-and embodiment-of the
term "self-confidence."
Davutoglu is also known for his work ethic and self discipline. A family
friend told NEWSWEEK Türkiye that, while working on his book, the professor
once spent three straight days without leaving his chair. A former student
says Davutoglu believes that sleeping eight hours a night is a luxury. "We
do not have the right to sleep this much," he frequently told the student.
Davutoglu’s conscientiousness manifested itself at a relatively early age.
As a high-school student at the prestigious Istanbul High School for Boys,
where he was taught by German teachers who had come to Turkey during World
War II, he presented his teachers with ambitious reading lists of dense
philosophical and scientific works that he thought would serve him well in
the future. His instructors advised him and his friends to go out and play
ball for a while instead. Davutoglu took the advice to heart; even after
he’d become a professor, he continued to play soccer with his students (as a
highly regarded forward), right up until he was appointed foreign minister.
While honing his soccer prowess, Davutoglu was refining his language and
academic skills too. In addition to the German learned in high school, he
took all-English programs to graduate from the economics and political
sciences department of Bogazici University. He learned Arabic while studying
on a scholarship in Jordan, worked on his doctoral thesis at Cairo
University, and learned Bahasa Malaysia while a professor at Malaysia’s
International Islamic University. His thesis, a comparative analysis between
Western and Islamic political theories and images, was published in 1993 by
American University Press with the title Alternative Paradigms: The Impact
of Islamic and Western Weltanschauungs on Political Theory. Davutoglu’s
postdoctoral work included critiques of the theories of Samuel Huntington
(clash of civilizations) and Francis Fukuyama (end of history).
Colleagues say that Davutoglu’s oratorical skills are equal to his writing
ability. "There is no one the minister cannot make drop their guard in 10
minutes," one high-ranking team member told NEWSWEEK Türkiye. One example:
when Ankara refused to allow U.S.-led forces cross Turkish territory for the
2003 invasion into Iraq, a local Jewish leader came over to read Davutoglu
the riot act. The visitor initially said he could only stay 10
minutes-partly because he needed to prepare for a fast the following day-but
ended up spending three hours with Davutoglu after being won over by the
minister’s erudite discourse about Jewish culture, history, and the
background to the upcoming fast. Next time, the Jewish leader said, he’d
like to stay for the day.
Davutoglu is not without his critics, who have accused him of double
standards for criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza while failing to condemn
the approach of a fellow Muslim-Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir-in Darfur.
But even those who don’t support him see him as a statesman who is both a
thinker and a doer. And right now, he’s the talk of more than just Ankara.
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© 2009
From: Baghdasarian