All in all I would say it has been quite a hectic but pretty successful year. Of course, not all of Davutoğlu’s initiatives have borne fruit, but given the often unfortunate constraints of Turkish domestic politics, he has still not done too badly. Davutoğlu has seen the profile of his country, and of course, himself, rise on the international stage, and Turkey has become an increasingly powerful and influential regional player.Turkey has moved away from its old image of being something of a troublesome and unreliable neighbor and taken on a far more flattering image of a proactive and pragmatic actor in its direct neighborhood and indeed far beyond. While his predecessor, current Economy Minister Ali Babacan, was also quite successful and popular, Davutoğlu has had a greater level of success. The combination of his academic background and foreign policy experience, including several years spent advising Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan along with his very “down to earth approach,” has given him a special edge and sparkle, and he enjoys close and intimate relationships with counterparts all over the world. He has the ear of both Brussels and Washington and uses this very much to Turkey’s advantage.
His “strategic depth” book, which was published in 2002 (the year the Justice and Development Party [AKP] came to power) and which outlines the challenges faced by Turkey in a radically modernizing world, has become a “must read” for anybody working on Turkish foreign policy, and his “zero problems with neighbors” slogan has become famous the world over. In short, Davutoğlu has turned words into action and has turned Turkish foreign policy on its head. While Turkey remains a committed ally to its partners in the West, at the same time it has reached out and formed pragmatic and strategic relationships with countries which were until only a few years ago viewed as hostile. Indeed, Ankara has increased its clout in almost its entire neighborhood whether that is the Middle East, Russia, the South Caucasus or the Balkans. Ankara has also become far more aware of its unique geostrategic location and is now promoting itself as an energy super-hub. The origin of the energy is not important; rather Turkey wants to transport it and line its coffers from the lucrative role it is able to play as a transit state.
Of course, not everything is rosy. Relations with Israel are worse now than they ever have been, and the special “one nation two states” relationship with Azerbaijan has been damaged and trust eroded as a result of Turkey’s rapprochement with Armenia.
Furthermore, to a certain degree, Turkey has spread itself too thin by apparently trying to be everything to everybody, and some efforts to raise Turkey’s image abroad and to portray the country as an example to the rest of the region have been hampered by the fact that Turkey has been unable to solve some if its own long-standing problems at home. While Turkey has been more than ready to offer its services as a mediator in a whole range of different conflicts around the world, it has still failed to deal adequately with its own Kurdish and Alevis problems, for example. It is also still questionable whether Davutoğlu has enough influence in domestic policy to determine whether or not his foreign policy will be successful when the stakes are really high. Clearly, the Armenia-Turkey rapprochement is a good example of this. It was a great policy but such was the influence of domestic pressure that the government seemed to crack, which resulted in Prime Minister Erdoğan linking it to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which has damaged Turkey’s credibility.
Turkey also has a bad habit of having too many pans boiling at the same time and a tendency to switch attention to something else when one project starts to go off the rails. When the Kurdish opening hit trouble, the rapprochement with Armenia was suddenly in the spotlight. Now that this has stalled, Davutoğlu has begun to busy himself with Iran, which keeps Turkey in the headlines for the right reasons.
And, of course, with European Union membership talks heading toward “crunch time” -- because unless there is some change vis-a-vis Cyprus, Turkey will soon run out of negotiating chapters -- Turkey is trying to pile up as many “assets” as possible on to the table to demonstrate to the EU that the EU has no other option than to keep the process moving forward and find some way out of this apparent dead end because the EU simply needs Turkey too much to consider any other options.
