"Even so, the Turkish government must be aware of one thing. It does itself no favours when adopting a needlessly brash tone on the world stage. Turkey may be playing a constructive role in attempts to stabilise Iraq and Afghanistan. But Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, prime minister, nearly wrecked the recent NATO summit with his lone opposition to Anders Fogh Rasmussen's nomination as the organisation's secretary-general. The summit was too important a stage for such petty grandstanding, which damaged Turkey's international image. "Instead, this is a time for Turkey to display quiet and responsible diplomacy. The next few months bring two great challenges. The first is to normalise relations with Armenia and reopen the border closed by Turkey in 1993 in support of Azerbaijan. The second is to reach a settlement with Greece over Cyprus, a dispute which poisons decision-making inside the EU and Nato. If Turkey can display statesmanship on both these fronts, it will significantly bolster its claims to EU accession."
The excerpt above is taken from an editorial ("Time for Turkey to try quiet diplomacy," April 12) that I find rather remarkable coming from the Financial Times, a staunch supporter of Turkey's bid for full membership in the EU. What makes it remarkable is the fact that nearly the entire bloc of pro-Turkish British press is now raising doubts about how Turkey's major policy scheme is run.
This should come as no good news to those who pay attention to perceptions in circles well known for common sense. It signals the point that Old Europe may be drowned in fruitless debate and confusion about its future, but Turkey can no longer put all the blame on it if the stance on Turkey swings even further to the negative because of the country's major mismanagement of its foreign policy.
The Financial Times is right in pointing to a single person, Erdoğan, as responsible for the country's ill performance on the global stage.
Two lines of "don't" have been crossed by him in recent months. Both are, together, the "mothers of alienation in the international arena."
The first is speaking in a language of threats and blackmail; the second is simply saying too much out in the open.
Turkey is absolutely entitled to voice its dissent whenever it deems appropriate, but if the inability to adjust the "level of brashness" leads to systematic misbehavior and to a pattern in which objection is replaced by threat, it may be doomed to end up as the loser. As I agreed in earlier articles, Ankara's point that Rasmussen was a bad choice for NATO was fully correct. By adopting a tone of mockery in İstanbul, he has already proved the suspicions of those who say he does not take any criticism of his mismanagement of the cartoon crisis seriously (his manner of refusing to listen to the views of the ambassadors of Islamic nations) and that he sees the world around him as a game for infantile people. Unless Rasmussen pulls himself together, he may be called the secretary-general of NATO, but few in the Islamic world will give him any credit for it.
This valid point was completely lost in the wall of reactions because Erdoğan voiced it the wrong way. All that was left after the row within NATO was one cranky member shouting about.
But, there is also another mistake that overshadows the intentions of Turkish foreign policy, a mistake that has become rather apparent lately, causing a great deal of harm to what was achieved in closed-door talks with Armenia.
An agreement was made that both Yerevan and Ankara would keep silent until a deal on implementing confidence-building measures was finalized, but both Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Ali Babacan chose to break it. Their talk, bringing the Nagorno-Karabakh element into debate, was aimed at "preparing" Barack Obama for further pressure on the Armenian side, but the move turned out to be a miscalculation: the Azerbaijani side, which was also kept informed and engaged in the silent diplomacy, "rose up," and the anti-Armenian lobby in Turkey found fertile ground to stimulate its cause for putting pressure on the government, which it blamed for selling out "the brethren in Baku."
This sort of counterproductive approach stems from an uncoordinated foreign policy. Prime Minister Erdoğan should change his style, tolerate dissenting views in the advice given to him and be briefed more regularly and intensely on international issues because Turkey's future now depends on them more than ever before.
This is the year the world expects him to smile, speak quietly and be convincing. This will have to work if Turkey envisages using "soft power" to resolve its thorny issues.
