TURKEY LOOKS TOWARDS AN AXIS OF POWER WITH NEIGHBOURS IN THE EAST
by James Bone, Rome
The Times
September 20, 2011 Tuesday 11:06 AM GMT
UK
Turkey’s Islamist-rooted Government describes its foreign policy as
“Zero problems with the neighbours”.
As they say in journalism, don’t believe anything until it’s officially
denied.
Long encircled by difficult if not outright hostile countries,
Turkey’s foreign policy could now be better summarised as “Zero
neighbours without problems”.
Buoyed by a booming economy, the country’s increasingly self-confident
government now finds itself at odds with Israel, the entire EU,
Armenia, Syria, Iraq, and increasingly Iran.
Yet its version of moderate Islam is touted as a “Turkish model”
for the Arab Spring.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister, who was once jailed for
reciting a provocative pan-Islamic poem, was re-elected to a third
term in June with an increased share of the vote.
Despite the financial woes elsewhere, the Turkish economy grew 11.6
per cent in the first quarter and 8.8 per cent in the second quarter.
Mr Erdogan has just completed a victory lap of the Arab Spring
countries of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia and is heading to the UN General
Assembly and a meeting with President Obama.
He recently became the first non-African leader to visit Somalia since
the start of the civil war in 1991. He even had to be dissuaded from
visiting Gaza, still under Israeli blockade.
Revived as a secular state on the European model after the Ottoman
defeat in the First World War, the country is now almost the smallest
it has been geographically for six centuries (it was slightly smaller
until it annexed Hatay province from Syria in 1939).
For hundreds of years, the Ottoman Empire led the Sunni Muslim world
as the Islamic Caliphate. In the WikiLeaks cables, a US diplomat
describes the Turks’ foreign policy as “neo-Ottoman” – a description
they strongly disavow.
Mr Erdogan, in Cairo last week, argued for a democratic and secular
direction for the Arab Spring. His own reorientation away from the
West towards Islamic countries and his drive to expand Turkey’s role
in its near-abroad, however, suggest he harbours revanchist dreams of
restoring the Caliphate – not literally, but as a sphere of influence.
If the Sunni majority prevails in Syria, Turkey will hold sway not just
in Syria but also in neighbouring Lebanon and take over patronage of
Hamas in Gaza. Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s Foreign Minister, told The
New York Times that he was seeking a new power axis with a democratic
Egypt to replace declining American power in the Middle East.
Though this expansion is peaceful it could easily turn ugly – as it
did in last year’s flotilla to Gaza.
Turkey is already bombing Kurdish rebel camps in northern Iraq; it is
preparing to send its warships to protect Turkish claims to undersea
gas off Cyprus; and it is reportedly considering the creation of a
buffer zone inside Syria.
Turkey’s status as a rising power led George Friedman, founder of the
Stratfor geopolitics website, to predict Turkey will become a world
power set to challenge the US in his bestseller The Next 100 Years.
There is persistent speculation that after three terms as Prime
Minister, Mr Erdogan aspires to change Turkey from a parliamentary
to a presidential system and become president himself.
The post of Sultan is no longer available.