Turkey's 'zero-problem' policy at
crossroads By Ramzy Baroud
It seems that media consensus has been
conclusively reached: Turkey has been forced into
a Middle Eastern mess not of its own making; the
"zero problems with neighbors" notion, once the
foreign policy centerpiece of the Justice and
Development Party (AKP), has been condemned to a
romantic notion of no use in realpolitik.
Turkey's "policy's goal - to build strong
economic, political, and social ties with the
country's immediate neighbors while decreasing its
dependency on the United States - seemed to be
within sight," wrote Sinan Ulgen nearly a year
ago. "But the Arab Spring exposed the policy's
vulnerabilities, and Turkey must now seek a new
guiding principle for regional engagement."
This reading was not entirely unique and
was repeated numerous
times henceforth. It
suggests an air of naiveness in Turkish foreign
policy and overlooks the country's barely selfless
regional ambitions. It also imagines that Turkey
was caught in a series of unfortunate events,
forcing its hand to act in ways inconsistent with
its genuine policies of yesteryears. This,
however, is not entirely true.
The recent
skirmishes of October 4 at the Syrian-Turkish
border were reportedly invited by mortar shells
fired from the Syrian side. Five people including
three children were killed and the incident was
Turkey's "last straw". Turkey's Anatolia news
agency reported an official Syrian apology through
the United Nations soon after the shelling and the
Syrian government promised an investigation. Their
seriousness remains doubtful.
The Turkish
military was quick to retaliate, as parliament
voted to extend a one-year mandate to the military
in order carry out cross-border military action.
Irrespective of the violence at the Syrian border,
the mandate was originally aimed at Kurdish
fighters in northern Iraq and it had already been
set for a pre-scheduled vote in mid-October.
The peculiarly evolving episode seems
unreal. Not long ago, Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan had, to the displeasure of Israel
and the US, reached out to both Syria and Iran. He
referred to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as
his "brother", knowing of the full political
implications of that term. When Turkey voted
against Iran sanctions at the United Nations in
June 2010, "it provoked a crisis," a Wall Street
Journal article read. Later, Turkey quarreled with
NATO over the missile-defense initiative, a system
that is clearly aimed at Iran and Syria.
"Turkey is becoming the Alliance's
'opt-out' member in operations in Muslim
countries," said the WSJ. These developments took
place at the heels of the deadly Israeli military
raid on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, which
carried mostly Turkish peace activists as part of
a larger effort - The Gaza Freedom Flotilla -
aimed at breaking the siege on Gaza. Israel killed
9 Turkish civilians and wounded many more on the
Mavi Marmara.
Erdogan and other Turkish
officials rose to the status of superstars among
Arabs at the time when ousted Egyptian president
Hosni Mubarak was himself complicit in the Gaza
siege. Understandably, the AKP became a political
model and the subject of endless academic and
television debates. Turkey was the brand to beat
even culturally and economically.
Internally, Erdogan and his party were
credited for overseeing massive economic growth,
and successfully reining in and eventually
integrating the once insubordinate, coup-prone
military leadership into a democratic system
managed by elected civilians. Externally, Erdogan
and his Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu helped
rebrand and partly break the isolation of several
Arab leaders, including Libya's Muammar Qaddafi.
(Turkish leaders must have been fully aware of the
grievances of Arab peoples as they signed economic
deals worth billions of dollars with the very
dictators they helped oust.)
Although
Ankara's spat with Tel Aviv didn't translate into
tangible change in Israeli or US policies towards
Palestinians, a level of gratification permeated:
at last, a country strong enough as Turkey had the
courage to stand up to Israel's intransigent and
calculated insults.
Then Tunisia overthrew
its president and Turkey's foreign policy cards
were mix-up like never before. If the US, France
and other Western powers were inconsistent and
self-contradicting in their stances on uprisings,
revolutions and civil wars that struck the Middle
East and North Africa in the last 18 months,
Turkey's foreign policy was particularly muddled.
Initially, Turkey responded to what seemed
like distant affairs with good sound bites
concerning people's rights, justice and democracy.
In Libya, the stakes were higher as NATO was
hell-bent on determining the outcomes of Arab
revolts whenever space allowed. Turkey was the
last NATO member to sign onto the Libya war. The
delay proved costly as Arab media that cheered for
war seemed to target Turkey's prized reputation
and credibility.
When Syrians rebelled,
Turkey was prepared. Its policy was aimed at
taking early initiative by imposing its own
sanctions on Damascus. It went even further as it
turned a blind eye while its once well-guarded
border area became awash with smugglers, foreign
fighters, weapons and more. Aside from hosting the
Syrian National Council (SNC), it also provided a
safe haven for the Free Syrian Army that operated
from the Turkish borders at will.
While
much of that was justified as righteous Turkish
action to deter injustice, it was one of the
primary reasons which made a political solution
unattainable. It turned what eventually became a
bloody and brutal conflict into a regional
struggle. It allowed for Syrian territories to be
used in a proxy conflict involving various
countries, ideologies and political camps. Since
Turkey is a NATO member, it meant that NATO was
involved in the Syrian conflict, although in a
more understated way than its war on Libya.
The Kurdish dimension to Turkey's role in
Syria is of course enormous. Less reported is that
Turkey is industriously working to control any
Kurdish backlash in Syria's northeast region, thus
doubling Turkey's border conflict, which has been
mostly confined to northern Iraq. Writing in
Turkish Today's Zaman, Abdullah Bozkurt spoke of
"a high-stakes game plan for Turkey to control the
fast-paced developments in northern Syria using
the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in
neighboring Iraq as a proxy force without getting
directly involved in Syria."
Moreover,
Ankara has more discreetly worked to compel
favorable policies by the SNC regarding the
Kurdish question. Bozkurt further reports that
"Ankara has silently pushed SNC to elect an
independent Kurd, Abdulbaset Sieda, in June as a
compromise leader ... as a safeguard measure for
Turkey to exert influence over some 1.5 million
Kurds in Syria."
Indeed, the so-called
Arab Spring has partly confused and eventually
helped realign Turkish foreign policy towards Arab
countries, and even Iran. Turkey however was
barely a passive player before or after the
upheaval. The impression that Turkey has stood at
the fence as competing agendas south of their
border finally pushed Ankara to the brink, is both
erroneous and misleading. Regardless of how
Turkish politicians wish to formulate their
involvement, there is no escaping that they have
taken part in the war against Libya, and are now
entangled, to some extent by choice, in the brutal
mess in Syria.
The sad irony is that hours
after Turkey's retaliation to the Syrian fire,
Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor told
reporters in Paris that an attack on Turkey is an
attack on NATO, an underhanded gesture of careful
solidarity. He added, "If the Assad regime were to
fall, it would be a vital strike on Iran." Israeli
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman could barely
hide his excitement, for what the US
neoconservatives failed to achieve, is now being
done by proxy. Lieberman, hardly a visionary,
predicted a "Persian Spring" on the way that, he
urged, must be supported. For Israel and the US,
now that Turkey is on board, the possibilities are
endless.
Ankara must reconsider its role
in the deepening calamity and devise more sensible
policies. War should not be on the agenda. Too
many people have died that way.
Ramzy Baroud(www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally
syndicated columnist and the editor of
PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My
Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story
(Pluto Press, London.)
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