Over the past decade, Turkish foreign policy has become more open to engagement with its neighbors, more eager to resolve regional problems, and less focused on security issues. While this policy shift has helped Turkey improve its relations with Syria, Iraq, and Iran, it was not purely idealistic and norm-driven. Indeed, the Arab Spring is now revealing the inherent tension between the normative and Realpolitik dimensions of Turkish foreign policy.
Norms and interests have not always diverged for Turkey. When that has been the case, Ankara been a forthright supporter of democracy, as it was during the recent uprisings in both Tunisia and Egypt. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for instance, was the first Western leader to call for Hosni Mubarak’s resignation in a televised speech on Al Jazeera, and President Abdullah Gul was the first head of state to meet with the Egyptian Supreme Council in Egypt.
As the Arab spring progressed beyond these two regimes and norms and interests no longer dovetailed for Turkey, Realpolitik began to occlude the normative dimension. In Libya, Turkey initially opposed NATO’s enforcement of a no-fly zone. Since then, it has restricted its participation in the intervention to the humanitarian dimension and has pursed diplomatic efforts directed toward a negotiated cease-fire between Muammar Qaddafi and the rebels, officially calling for Qaddafi to resign only on May 3. Ankara followed a somewhat similar pattern with the Syrian uprising. Turkey initially engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity to spur President Bashar al-Assad to reform, but as the violence escalated, it took a back seat, reemerging to the forefront only when violence in Syria spilled into Turkey with masses of refugee flows.
What explains Turkey’s change in tune between Egypt, on the one hand, and Libya and Syria, on the other? In short, three words: politics, economics, and security. In Egypt, the implicit strategic rivalry between Turkey and the Egyptian regime, as well as the fact that Turkey had no large investments in Egypt, pushed Ankara into supporting the revolution in Tahrir Square. In contrast, the $15 billion worth of Turkish investments and the 25,000 Turkish citizens residing in Libya prompted Ankara to proceed cautiously. Likewise, fear of instability along Turkey’s 877-kilometer border with Syria, as well as the sectarian ramifications of the uprising there (particularly with regard to the Kurdish question), led it to adopt a status-quo, wait-and-see approach.
The Arab spring has also revealed that Turkey’s “zero problems” policy with its neighbors has rested largely on improved ties with specific leaders rather than any sort of prior commitment to strengthening the role played by the normative dimension in regional politics. To some extent, this focus on personalities was inevitable. Strengthening relations with countries governed by authoritarian regimes like those in Syria, Iran, and Libya necessarily means improving ties with their leaders, as evidenced, for instance, by the personal rapport between Prime Minister Erdogan and President Assad. The past year, however, has shown us the contradictions (as well as potential for embarrassment) inherent in this approach. Much as was Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Erdogan has been shamed for his warm ties to Qaddafi, symbolized most concretely in his acceptance from Libya of the Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights.
Finally, the Arab spring has revealed that Turkey’s activism in the Middle East, and in particular its prolific mediation activities, have been driven as much by context as they have by the personal initiative of Turkish leaders. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu does deserve some credit for spearheading Ankara’s mediation efforts, but the primary factor allowing him to do so is the fact that no one else in the region has been doing it. The United States is deeply enmeshed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Egyptian regime stands discredited in the eyes of regional actors because of its excessively compliant pro-U.S. stance. Turkey has merely filled this vacuum. This is the main light by which we should read its mediation efforts between Israel and Hamas in 2006 and 2008 and between Israel and Syria in 2008. It is telling that, in April 2011, only two months after Mubarak stepped down from office, Egypt successfully brokered a reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah.
What this means for Turkey is that, when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, its potential as a mediator has been artificially inflated by the lack of effective mediation by the regional actors (Egypt, Saudi Arabia) and international actors (the United States) that have real leverage on the conflict. As the Council on Foreign Relations’ Steven A. Cook put it: Turkey played a mediating role at a time when “the Arab world was politically dead and devoid of authentic leadership.1 This is not to say that Turkey has no mediating role to play in the conflict-ridden Middle East; rather its potential is limited to specific circumstances (for example, within Iraq, or between the West and Iran) and certainly does not extend to the protracted Israeli-Arab quagmire.
However, if in the short term the Arab Spring has highlighted the inherent tensions in Turkish foreign policy, in the longer term, the change it is fomenting in the region presents several opportunities for Turkey.
At least since the end of the Cold War, the West has heralded Turkey as a model for the Muslim world. In the early 1990s, it was a model for the Turkic world in the former Soviet space. In the 2000s, the Bush (and then Obama) administrations referred to it as a model, example, or source of inspiration for the entire Muslim Middle East. Nor has the United States been alone in putting forward Turkey as a model. The European Union, Turkey, and Middle Easterners themselves have done so as well. In 2009, a survey by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) revealed that 61 percent of respondents in Arab countries considered Turkey to be a model for the Arab world.2
The Arab spring has not and likely will not produce similar outcomes. Some countries (for example, Tunisia) are more likely to move toward democracy. Some (for example, Egypt) may see an authoritarian restructuring. Others (for example, Morocco) may timidly move towards reform. For still others (for example, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain), the future remains up for grabs. We might cautiously suggest, however, that the Middle East is unlikely to return to the status quo ante. The days of stable authoritarian stasis seem to be gone for now.
As the region moves toward an uncertain future, current and future leaders may become convinced of the need to embrace change. To the extent that they do, the idea of Turkey as a model may acquire new urgency beyond that of a slogan with some appeal to the transatlantic community and Arab public opinion. Indeed, it may become for Arab leaders yet another sophisticated option among many for grappling with wrenching domestic change.
In this case, the Turkish model could acquire a whole new meaning. Beyond the simplistic, black-and-white model of Turkey as a pro-Western Muslim secular democracy lie a number of different visions relevant to its southern neighborhood. Some of these ideas may complement the Western concept of the Turkish model; others may clash with it. Different countries (and different factions within them) will alight on in varying ways on four different aspects of the Turkish model.
First, late reformers (or non-reformers) may try to steer the winds of change by opting for modernization without democratization. This was the preference of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia and remains that of the Syrian, Jordanian, and Moroccan regimes. Turkey successfully developed itself economically by switching to export promotion in the late 1980s and, more recently, by pursuing sound macroeconomic policies, as well as regulatory, banking, and social reforms.
Second, Turkey could be a model with respect to the ongoing dialectic between secularism and political Islam. Countries such as Tunisia, for instance, may turn to Turkey as a model for consolidating constitutional and institutional guarantees of secularism; Islamist parties such as the Tunisian el-Nahda, the Egyptian Ikhwan and the Moroccan Justice and Development Party (JDP), on the other hand, may take their cues from the successful political and electoral strategies of the Turkish catchall Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Third, Turkey could act as a model for civil-military relations. In countries where the military plays an important political role, the evolution of civil-military relations in Turkey (especially its recent tilt toward the former) may inspire democrats in the Middle East, particularly in countries like Egypt or Algeria.
Finally, Turkey’s ability to maintain a relatively independent foreign policy while yet remaining in the Western camp makes it a potential model for countries where acquiescence to the West (for example, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia) has widened the gap between the regime and the people. Turkey’s reputation as a Western power with the will and power to stand up to the United States from time to time on issues like Iraq, Iran, and Israel has already solicited considerable interest in the Middle East and may continue to do so as leaders attempt to bridge the gap separating them from their people.
Given both these tensions and these opportunities for Turkey in the wake of the Arab Spring, what should it, the European Union, and the United States do to reduce the former and maximize the latter?
The best way to institutionalize a relationship conducive to these goals is in a transatlantic dialogue between the United States and the European Union in which Turkey, as a candidate for EU membership, would become enfolded within the EU camp.
Today, this is not the case. In fact, the scope for foreign policy dialogue between the European Union and Turkey has lessened in recent years. Up until the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, Turkish officials would meet regularly with the EU troika (that is, the EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, the current president, and the future president). When Turkey’s accession negotiations were moving forward (albeit slowly), Turkey also used to meet with representatives of the 27 member states at the intergovernmental conferences that opened and closed negotiations over accession chapters. Finally, during times when optimism prevailed in EU-Turkey relations, Turkey enthusiastically aligned its foreign policy positions with the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Today, however, there are fewer opportunities for Turkey and the European Union to discuss foreign policy, and Turkey, feeling snubbed by the European Union, tends to align its positions with the CSFP only when it can do so at little or no cost to itself. The stalled EU accession negotiations have also generated Turkish skepticism. Turks suspect that proposals for foreign policy dialogue are merely a ploy to trap Turkey into a “privileged partnership” with the European Union. This impasse serves no one’s purposes, particularly in the aftermath of the Arab spring.
The European Union should shape its new External Action Service (a new body serving as the equivalent of a foreign ministry and diplomatic corps) so as to institutionalize, operationalize and deepen foreign policy cooperation with Turkey3 in a manner that is complementary to the accession process.
This would involve, first, casting the EU-Turkey strategic dialogue within the context of the accession process and opening negotiation chapters on external relations and the CFSP (chapters 30 and 31, respectively) in order to enhance Turkey’s alignment with common EU foreign policy positions.
Second, the EU and Turkey should institutionalize dialogue through annual meetings between heads of state (that is, the Turkish president or prime minister and the EU president), six-monthly meetings between foreign ministers (that is, the Turkish Foreign Minister and the EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy), and regular meetings between Turkish diplomats and the European External Action Service and the Political and Security Committee of the Council.
Third, at the broader transatlantic level, the parties should seek regular dialogues between the European Union and NATO, aimed first and foremost at resolving the Cyprus impasse but also at ameliorating the Turkish-French strategic rivalry (which has hindered, for example, coordination over the Libya crisis).
Finally, Turkey and the European Union should operationalize dialogue by coordinating their neighborhood policies. Ideally, Turkey should be included as a virtual member state in the European Neighborhood Policy, which is currently under revision. Just as Turkey participates in the EU research program, it could also be included in the neighborhood policy as a contributor to the European Neighborhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI) and thus as a participant, alongside other EU actors, in Taiex (the Technical Assistance and Information Exchange Instrument), Twinning, and other programs aimed at strengthening the economy and governance structures of neighboring countries. In this way, Turkey could share its development experience with its neighbors within an EU framework.
Nathalie Tocci is deputy director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome.
1 Steven Cook, “Arab Spring, Turkish Fall,” Foreign Policy, May 5, 2011.
2 M. Akgun et al., Orta Dogu’da Turkiye Algısı (Istanbul: TESEV Yayinlari, 2009), 21‒22.
3 See Sinan Ülgen, “How to operationalize foreign policy dialogue between the EU and Turkey,” On Turkey, German Marshall Fund of the United States, April 2011.
