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

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The Western Condition: Turkey, the US and the EU in the New Middle East sentenced over 300 officers to up to 20 years in prison, heralding the definitive end of the era of military coups, albeit amidst serious concerns of political revanchism and judicial irregularities. 106 Another watershed moment came when the widely followed murder trial of Hrant Dink ended after five years of bureaucratic foot-dragging, covered-up evidence and missing witnesses, with a verdict that left the senior bureaucrats and members of the police force implicated in the case untouched and then, eventually promoted. 107 It is against this background that Turkey witnessed the Arab uprisings. At the height of the Egyptian revolution, Prime Minister Erdoğan claimed the moral high ground long before most world leaders by calling on Hosni Mubarak to heed the people’s message and step down. In Libya, where the Turkish government had built extensive political and business relations with the Gaddafi regime, the AKP initially came out strongly against a NATO military intervention, with Erdoğan calling it “unthinkable” and President Gül saying it was “out of the question”. 108 A week later, alarmed by French President Sarkozy’s apparent eagerness to assume a leading role in a possible intervention and in an attempt not to be left on the side lines, the Turkish parliament had despatched five navy ships and a submarine to Libya and had also agreed to commit troops if necessary. 109 As noted earlier, a similar volte-face came in Syria, where after several months of sitting on the fence, the AKP government assumed a leading role in supporting the Syrian opposition. By early 2012, the main anti-Assad bloc, the Syrian National Council (SNC) designated Istanbul as their headquarter, while the wide range of disparate armed groups loosely united under the Free Syrian Army (FSA) found a safe haven and logistical base along Turkey’s porous border with Syria. It was at this moment that the Turkish – American relationship entered, in the words of Foreign Minister Davutoğlu, its “golden age”, 110 prompting the US foreign policy establishment and mainstream media to once again showcase Turkey as a model of economic growth, political stability and democratic governance and the ‘moderate Islamist’ alternative to both Shia Iran and anti-western Sunni movements in the region. US President Obama described Prime Minister Erdoğan as “an outstanding partner and an outstanding friend on a wide range of issues.” 111 Soner Çağaptay, who spent years portraying Erdoğan’s government as driven by an avowedly anti-western and radical religious ideology, now argued that the AKP had been promoting all along a “soft form of secularism that allows for more religious expression in government, politics and education”, which could serve as a better model for the Arab world than Ataturk’s 106 Kerem Öktem, ‘Turkey, the end of Islamism with a human face’, Open Democracy, 20 January 2012. 107 ‘Turkey fails to deliver justice for murdered Armenian journalist as trial ends’, Amnesty International, 16 January 2012, http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/turkey-fails-deliver-justice-murdered-armenian-journalist-trial-ends-2012- 01-16 108 ‘Turkey opposed to NATO military intervention in Libya, says Erdoğan’, Ahram Online, 14 March 2011. 109 Jonathan Head, ‘Libya: Turkey's troubles with Nato and no-fly zone’, BBC News, 25 March 2011. 110 ‘Erdoğan at bay’, Economist, 25 February 2012. 111 Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, 25 March 2012, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-pressoffice/2012/03/25/remarks-president-obama-and-prime-minister-Erdoğan-turkey-after-bilatera 43
An ambivalent decade: Three variations in the AKP’s foreign policy French-inspired “hard secularism”. 112 And while Thomas Friedman continued to write about the “Sultanisation” of Turkey under Erdoğan, this did not prevent him from advising revolutionary Arab youths to learn from the AKP “about leadership and getting things done.” 113 The basis of this rapprochement and the resultant turnaround in the mainstream American discourse was clearly strategic. A task force report by the US Council on Foreign Relations argued that although “on a range of issues, especially in the Middle East, the United States and Turkey have in recent years had different expectations of each other […] These differences should not preclude the development of a partnership, particularly since Ankara has moved closer to Washington’s position on Syria and Iran.” Claiming that “Turkey is more democratic, prosperous, and politically influential than ever before,” the report suggested that this partnership should “reflect not only common American-Turkish interests, but also Turkey's new stature as an economically and politically successful country with a new role to play in a changing Middle East”. It also recommended encouraging American support for Turkish – Israeli rapprochement. 114 Similar calls have been made with increasing frequency from within Israel and the pro-Israel lobby in Washington. “The Arab Spring provides a strong incentive for Turkish- Israeli reconciliation”, wrote Michael Herzog, a former chief of staff to Israeli defence ministry, and Soner Çağaptay in a New York Times op-ed: Middle East unrest has challenged Turkey’s “zero problems with our neighbours” policy, casting Turkey and Syria as adversaries. At the same time, the region’s revolutionary tremors have shaken the cornerstones of Israel’s national security, even raising doubts about the future of its peace agreement with Egypt as the possibility of a Muslim Brotherhood-led government in Cairo becomes more real. Moreover, both Israel and Turkey fear that a powerful Iran could fill the void in the region. 115 The Arab uprisings did not merely challenge Turkey’s ‘zero problems’ policy, as Herzog and Çaaptay suggest; they led to the dismantling of that policy altogether. Within the space of a few months, Foreign Minister Davutoğlu went from harbouring the lofty vision of having zero problems with neighbours to facing the cold reality of having almost zero neighbours without problems, especially in its southern, eastern and northern neighbourhoods. Turkey’s fallout with Iraq’s Maliki government has not only been related to Syria, although it has been exacerbated by 112 Soner Çağaptay, ‘The Empires Strike Back’, New York Times, 15 January 2012. 113 Thomas Friedman, ‘Facebook Meets Brick-and-Mortar Politics’, New York Times, 9 June 2012. 114 Madeleine K. Albright, Stephen J. Hadley and Steven A. Cook, ‘US-Turkey Relations: A New Partnership’, Independent Task Force Report No. 69, Council on Foreign Relations, May 2012, http://www.cfr.org/turkey/usturkey-relations/p28139. 115 Michael Herzog and Soner Çağaptay, ‘How America Can Help Its Friends Make Nice’, New York Times, 20 June 2012. 44
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