Turkey’s New Middle East Policy and Greece

George Papandreou’s recent visit to the Middle East was a long-awaited and welcome move. After many years and despite current economic hardships, Greece has manifested its interest in reclaiming a role in a crucial region where it used to enjoy strong political and economic ties. But is this the beginning of a new foreign policy, or simply an act of opportunism as Turkey’s Middle East policy shifts against Israel?
Turkey’s strong involvement in Middle Eastern affairs dates to the rise of the AKP government in 2002 and is linked with the name of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. According to Davutoglu’s strategic vision, Turkey due to its history and geography possesses “strategic depth,” has multiple regional identities and belongs to the group of “central powers”; in other words, it has been poised to undertake a special role in world history and politics. In a nutshell, Davutoglu suggests that Turkey needs to cease to play the role of the bridge of the client state of the West and develop a strategic vision of its own.
Despite all the hype about Davutoglu’s “strategic doctrine,” it is true that much of what he proposed is not really new. Visions about Turkey’s multi-faceted, multi-polar foreign policy were coined by Prime Minister Turgut Ozal in the late 1980s and Foreign Minister Ismail Cem in the late 1990s. What Davutoglu did was to add two significant conditions for Turkey to realise its full potential in the region. Turkey needed to resolve its two most pressing domestic problems, the Kurdish issue and the debate over  the role of Islam in the public sphere. Turkey also needed to overcome all pending bilateral disputes through a “zero problem policy” with its neighbours.
Syria, Turkey’s arch-enemy in the Middle East, had maintained territorial claims on the province of Alexandretta. It objected to Turkey’s construction of dams  that limited the flow of the river Euphrates into Syria. Thus, Syria was until the late 1990s one of the main sponsors of the PKK activity in southeast Turkey and even sheltered its leader, Abdullah Ocalan. A decade later, Turkish-Syrian economic relations are booming, and relations at the political level are better than ever. A free trade agreement has been in operation since 2007, and minister-level Council of Strategic Cooperation to promote cooperation.
Iraq was another difficult area. Turkey’s unease with the prospect of Kurdish autonomy in the north was no secret. Turkey opposed the second Gulf War precisely because it feared a breakup of Iraq. Turkish Parliament famously refused the use of Turkish territory to US troops on the eve of the Iraq invasion, and consequently Turkish troops did not play a major role in post-war Iraqi security.. Yet the AKP government was quick to develop a working relationship with the Kurdistan Regional Government and Iraqi Kurdish political parties. It developed strong relations with both major Iraqi Kurdish political actors, the President of Iraq Jalal Talabani and the President of the KRG Massoud Barzani. Economic relations were boosted.
Relations with Israel stood in stark contrast to these improvements. Ever since the AKP invited Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal to Ankara for talks in February 2006, Turkish-Israeli relations have been undergoing a slow but steady deterioration. Rare outbursts against Israel took place, sometimes in the limelight of international events. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly upbraided  Israeli President Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum summit in Davos in January 2009. Turkish Ambassador to Israel Oguz Celikkol was publicly humiliated a year later by Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon. The low point came on May 31, when a humanitarian aid flotilla attempted to break an Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. Israeli troops intercepted it, killing nine Turkish activists.
The severe worsening of Turkish-Israeli relations has cast doubt on Turkey’s ability to promote peace and reconciliation in the Middle East. By taking such a clear pro-Palestinian –or rather pro-Hamas– stance, Turkey was wasting its ability to act as a neutral mediator, as far as Israel was concerned. Moreover, Davutoglu’s statement that the Gaza attack was psychologically like 9/11 for Turkey and his statement to a group of seventeen Arab Foreign Ministers that “Jerusalem will soon be the capital of Palestine and we will go and pray in the Al-Aqsa Mosque all together,” surprised many of those observers who considered him to be a cool-headed and shrewd strategist.
Turkey might face additional consequences due to its new Middle East policy on a different front. The Israeli lobby has traditionally lent a hand of support to Turkey whenever a key decision or vote were to made in Washington DC on issues considered key to Turkish interests. This support may well evaporate now given the new circumstances, and Turkey may encounter some nasty surprises in forthcoming votes in the US Congress.
Some argue that Turkey does not need the United States as it did in the past. While this statement might indeed be true, this would not mean that Turkey has been emancipated from Western and US strategies and policies in the Middle East. While Turkey has grown stronger by improving relations with most of its neighbours, it is not a global actor yet. It still needs to address the domestic and foreign policy issues Davutoglu has identified –at the minimum. While Turkey’s role in the Middle East will be a function of its own ability to balance its Western vocation with its Middle East agenda, it remains to be seen whether Greece develops its own active strategy, so its relations with key Middle Eastern states do not simply fill Turkey’s absences.

(Published in the October 2010 issue of Odyssey)