The Western Condition - St Antony's College - University of Oxford

On the strategic use of the ‘Turkish model’
counterparts. In this vision, Turkey is best placed to act as an ‘order setting agent’ at the centre
of a geography spanning from the Balkans to the Middle East, drawn together by strong trade
and diplomatic ties exactly because of a shared historical, cultural and religious heritage (with an
emphasis on Sunni Islam) dating back to the Ottoman Empire. 1 The imperial legacy is thus
turned on its head as ‘order setting’ becomes legitimised through a non-coercive appeal to be
“like us” rather than “part of us”.
The Arab uprisings appeared to present Turkey’s decision makers with an ideal opportunity to
realise Davutoğlu’s vision. Encouraged by the expressed desire within parts of the ascendant
Islamist movements in these countries to emulate the AKP’s social and economic policies, as
well as by the renewed interest in the West to promote Turkey as a regional model, the AKP
government adopted an increasingly pro-active approach in dealing with the Arab uprisings. But
as is often the case, not everything has gone according to plan.
The Backdrop: the new Sunni Axis and US-Turkey rapprochement
There are clearly practical tensions between these different dimensions of the ‘Turkish model’ and
its usage by various actors. For one, Erdoğan’s rising popularity in Egypt and other Arab countries
following his public denunciations of Israel before the Arab uprisings, coupled with Turkey’s close
ties with Iran and Syria, had not only greatly strained his government’s relations with the USbacked
regime of Hosni Mubarak, but with the US as well. 2 It was in large part this tension and the
image of Erdoğan as the headstrong leader of a rising regional power that had created the ground
for the adoption of the model idea by political activists and segments of society in the Arab world.
And yet, arguably the most remarkable change ushered by the Arab uprisings has been the
rapprochement between the US and Turkey, grounded in converging security interests regarding
the geostrategic make-up of the new Middle East in the making. In this context, ‘the rhetoric of
‘Turkey as a model’ is now part of a pro-US rather than an anti-US discourse.
At the heart of this turn of events lies what has now become a prominent strategic divide in the
region, that between Shia and Sunnis. It is in this light that we need to assess the full import of
the AKP government’s abrupt termination of the strategic partnership it had meticulously built
with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and its active and leading role in supporting the Syrian opposition.
This sharp turnaround on Syria has led to a deterioration of the AKP’s once flourishing ties with
the principal supporters of the Assad regime, namely the so-called ‘Shia axis’ (led by the Islamic
Republic of Iran and involving the government of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq and Hizbullah in
1 Ahmet Davutoğlu, Stratejik Derinlik:Türkiye’nin Uluslararası Konumu (Istanbul: Küre Yayınları, 2001).
2 See Reem Abou-el-Fadl, ‘Arab Perceptions of Contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy: Cautious Engagement and
the Question of Independence’, in Kerem Öktem, Ayşe Kadıoğlu, Mehmet Karlı (eds) Another Empire? A Decade of
Turkey’s Foreign Policy Under the Justice and Development Party (Istanbul: Bilgi University Press, 2012).
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