Foreign policy making and Ankara: a juggling act

Some key sentences covering only just the last week’s agenda may give a clue as to why journalists in Ankara eventually settle for solely taking note of certain moments rather than making analyses: The leadership of Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC) gather to draw up a roadmap in the run-up to a critical threshold on the Cyprus issue; the prime minister visits Iran, where he calls the latter’s controversial nuclear program humanitarian and peaceful, ahead of an upcoming visit to Washington; the president visits Serbia with the aim of establishing strategic relations between Serbia and Turkey; and the foreign minister visits northern Iraq, holding high-level talks with Iraqi Kurdish leaders.

Armenia, Azerbaijan, Israel, Syria and the upcoming EU summit could well be added to the above list, with a footnote indicating that the foreign policy agenda in the Turkish capital is not limited to its immediate neighborhood.

This situation sometimes prompts foreign diplomats based in Ankara to question either Ankara's sincerity in its multidimensional foreign policy or its eventual success in finalizing these moves. Those raising the first question indicate that Turkey is doing this to show off and that it has no intention of making a substantive change to the status quo in which it was once positioned, while others raising the second question are doubtful concerning Turkey's eventual performance.

 The askers of both questions are, meanwhile, assumed to have been aware of the fact that their countries are not located in such a unique place in the world -- at a point where the three continents making up the old world, Asia, Africa and Europe, are closest to each other.

 “They are wrong in posing those questions,” Bülent Aras, a professor of international relations in the department of humanities and social sciences at İstanbul Technical University, briefly replied when reminded by Sunday's Zaman of those questions floating around the diplomatic community in Ankara.

 “They are wrong because they are not aware that Turkey has expanded its scale in the foreign policy arena. They must still have been looking at it through clichés such as ‘the bridge' between Asia and Europe or the West's [outpost] in the East,” Aras continued, referring to the fact that during the Cold War Turkey was the only member of NATO bordering the then-Soviet Union.

 “Or maybe they cannot accept the potential behind Turkey's expanded scale, thus preferring to act like fortunetellers by saying that those foreign policy moves will not yield any result in the end,” Aras said, when reminded of an example of such a lack of confidence in Turkey's actions -- the normalization process with Armenia.

 Two protocols announced in late August and signed on Oct. 10 between Armenia and Turkey for re-establishing ties and reopening their mutual border were recently sent to Parliament for ratification. Yet, it is not clear when they will be voted on as there is no exact timetable for the ratification other than “within a reasonable timeframe.” That expression was used in the joint announcement on Aug. 31 when it said, “The two protocols provide for a framework for the normalization of their bilateral relations within a reasonable timeframe.”

    Such a formulization, which can be potentially labeled as “open-ended,” led to doubts within the diplomatic community over Turkey's sincerity in its intention to normalize relations with Armenia, with some suggesting that Turkey's move was “just for display purposes.”

Probably aware of the existence of such doubts, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson this week told reporters that Turkey was sincerely committed to normalizing relations with Armenia, nonetheless emphasizing that what Ankara aimed at with this process was not solely confined to progress in Turkish-Armenian ties. “Our purpose is also to pave the way for momentum in relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia,” he said. “Everyone sees that peace and stability will not come to the Caucasus if the wheels do not all revolve at the same time.”

 “Such critics are not fair; nobody can guarantee 100 percent success in these kinds of painful processes such as the normalization of ties between Armenia and Turkey. Just look at Bosnia and Herzegovina; the fundamental process is still continuing with the Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the 1992-95 war,” Aras said, referring to ongoing international efforts for making changes to the Dayton Accords.

 “What they miss here is the fact the decision for normalizing relations with Armenia was not just made yesterday. Or take the improved relations with Syria; the ground for such improvement is based on the Adana Protocol,” Aras said, referring to a protocol signed in 1998 which paved the way for a quick process of improvement in bilateral relations between Ankara and Damascus.

 “There are grounds for all foreign policy moves by Turkey; the EU's recommendation for maintaining good-neighborly relations is just one of them. Those among the diplomatic community must have never lived in a difficult ‘district' like the one in which the Turks have been living. This is a district that is the center of international security; assuming an intense and multidimensional foreign policy style on an expanded scale is imposed on Turkey by its geography.”