Ankara’s preconditions of progress in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute and subsequent outrage over a Yerevan constitutional court decision to press for genocide recognition may leave it in a worse position than before the reconciliation process began, the article implies. This is because it is Turkish intransigence which is being blamed for the inertia. A stalemate could in turn steel the courage of the US Congress to pass a resolution recognizing the events of 1915 as genocide. That would infinitely compound the problems of an already dangerously isolated Ankara, “squeezed between proud nationalists at home and outraged Azerbaijanis abroad.”Whether the situation is really so dire remains to be proved, but the simple point is that Turkey’s foreign policy overtures have yet to find an appreciative audience. “There is no upside in foreign policy,” writes one economic newsletter I receive, in making the argument for the growing possibility of the government cutting its losses and rushing to an early general election. Indeed, a looming breakdown of talks over Cyprus could lead to the distinct “downside” of confrontation with the European Union. This would further isolate the government, particularly from its own liberal wing and urban swing voters.
All this might be an unjust reward for Turkey’s stated determination to get along with the countries in its vicinity and expand its role as a peacemaker. It may be too early to ask what has gone wrong, but it is still worth posing the question of why things are not going right. The first, slightly shallow answer is that problems are by definition intractable, and you can’t just wish them away. More to the point, solving problems requires an ability to make concessions, which in turn means having the winds of public opinion at your back. Normalizing relations with Syria has, for example, proven successful and has been done with general public approval.
Of course, the government’s most popular policy has been the result not of mending fences, but driving straight through them. Abdulhamid Bilici, in his column for this paper, writes that Israel would be fooling itself if it believed that Turkey’s tough stand is motivated by a search for domestic popularity and that the remedy would be to see this government replaced with another. While the second part of the argument may be true, and while Mr. Erdoğan may not have set out to woo public opinion, it is undoubtedly the case that the Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) standing at the polls rose a full 20 percent after he berated the Israeli president at Davos one year ago. That “one minute” moment was again depicted on a poster as tall as a high building, suspended from a building crane in advance of the prime minister’s appearance at an Istanbul rally over the weekend before his advance team had the sense to have it taken down.
Turkey’s foreign policy reorientation is depicted by its supporters not as a feint away from the West but as an attempt to strengthen Turkey’s value as a principled, strategic ally. Its strategy of befriending Damascus has borne dividends and has helped lessen tension and may ultimately help Syria away from one-family rule. Turkey pursues its own interests in Iran as well as playing the good cop in the hope of luring Tehran away from its risky course of nuclear proliferation. This is all good sense. Yet as The Economist underscored, trying to retreat from a policy initiative may be worse than not having embarked on one at all.
The AK Party’s most important policy initiative, undertaken when Abdullah Gül was foreign minister in 2004, was to set Turkey on a course for full membership in the European Union. There are well-rehearsed reasons for why those negotiations are not going smoothly. The state of those negotiations remains a fundamental ambiguity in Turkish policy. Until this is addressed and resolved, other initiatives will remain overshadowed.
