With one more success under his belt, the Turkish foreign minister has already moved on to new pastures. His is a diplomacy in a hurry. Wherever he goes, he sets up mechanisms to promote his “zero problem” approach in Turkey's wider neighborhood. The deal with Armenia is of course only the start of the normalization process between the two neighboring countries. The agreement signed by the two foreign ministers still has to be ratified by their respective parliaments, and the road ahead promises to be fraught with difficulties, judging by the last-minute hitch that nearly derailed the signing. Nonetheless, ink was put to paper and the Armenian president has confirmed he will continue the tradition of football diplomacy and attend the football match between the two countries in Bursa this week.
Last week Davutoğlu was focusing on yet another region, the Balkans, when he met his South European peers. During the meeting, he brought together the foreign ministers of Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in an attempt to smooth relations. Davutoğlu sees cooperation between the Balkans countries as key to speeding up their integration into the EU and NATO and stabilize the entire region.
The Justice and Development Party's (AK Party) proactive foreign policy has gathered pace under Foreign Minister Davutoğlu's expert guidance. There is of course the risk of doing too much too fast and running out of fuel, but so far this proactive approach has brought nothing but benefits to Turkey.
Since the municipal elections in March, the government appears to have moved into higher gear, leaving behind a period of uncertainty and stagnation, but progress has been more difficult to measure on the domestic front. The government's democratic opening has clearly created a new atmosphere but concrete results need to follow.
I recently measured how much the political style had changed when I attended a lunch with former President Süleyman Demirel, organized on the occasion of the 12th meeting of the Balkan Political Club. The organization was set up by former Bulgarian President Zehlyu Zhelev in 2000 to promote consultations between former heads of state, ministers and intellectuals across the region.
The former president, who will soon turn 85, has through the course of his long political career mastered the art of speaking at length while revealing little and avoiding rocking the boat. He used metaphors and historical anecdotes to hint at his positions while sidestepping direct political questions. I felt I had stepped back to Turkey in the ‘90s, when each word had to be carefully weighed and decoded.
Turkey has clearly entered a new period, one of greater openness. Much work remains to be done to consolidate the changes into law and prevent recurring problems such as the compensation case pending against novelist Orhan Pamuk based on declarations for which he was earlier acquitted or the investigation launched against a lawyer who wrote Newroz instead of Nevruz, using the banned letter “w,” in court papers.
Turkey now needs to bring the same energy it is devoting to foreign policy to the home front. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who recently reclaimed Turkey's multicultural roots in an important speech during the AK Party congress, looks set to do just that with a 50-province tour to promote his vision of a more diverse and peaceful Turkey. Hopefully his words will also be followed by some solid steps that will enshrine changes at home as boldly as the agreement signed in Zurich on Sunday did in Armenia-Turkey relations.
