Opposition leaders shy away from global engagement

Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal canceled a planned visit to Iraq on Nov. 8, citing the unavailability of flights at that time, despite a special jet assigned for that purpose by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. Baykal has been quite openly against the government's Kurdish initiative announced this summer seeking to expand democratic freedoms in order to end the country's long-standing problem with terrorism.

He postponed his visit to Iraq indefinitely, saying it was “not a good time” to go to Iraq. Had he gone, he would have met with, in addition to Talabani, Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the parliament speaker and representatives of Turkmen groups, as well as Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish administration in northern Iraq.

Baykal has been to Germany, Belgium and France on official visits in the past five years. US President Barack Obama, who visited Turkey in April, invited Baykal to the US; however, the invitation is likely to go unanswered.

Baykal also failed to attend a 2008 Athens meeting of the Socialist International (SI), of which his party is a member, fearing criticism from social democratic parties against his party for being too conservative in the face of liberal reforms. Instead of the SI meeting, Baykal chose to attend a berry festival in the Ayaş district of Ankara.

Baykal opened a CHP representative office in Brussels, where he spent two days on Feb. 9 and 10, 2008. On June 20, he visited Germany for the funeral ceremony of nine Turks who were killed in a fire started by extremists in Ludwigshafen. Before that, he had visited an international security summit in Munich on Feb. 8, 2007. His most recent visit was to the EXPO 2015 in Paris on Dec. 9, 2008.

MHP leader visits two countries

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli has not visited any countries other than German and Holland in the past five years. His last visit before that was to China and some Turkic republics in 2000.

Bahçeli’s lack of foreign visits is despite a change to his party’s bylaws in May this year that calls for opening representative offices in 30 countries and six bureaus in the US. In his last trip abroad, Bahçeli visited Germany to open a facility that belongs to the Turkish German Friendship Organization in Erlenbach. He also attended the 26th Grand Turk Council in Essen. After this, he went on to Holland, where he attended the 8th Council of the Dutch Turkish Federation in Utrecht.

MHP members also criticize their leaders’ refusal to participate in foreign visits. However, there are also critics of Prime Minister Erdoğan, who have claimed that the prime minister went abroad frequently to get the official allowance allotted to prime ministerial staff for such visits.

Erdoğan and Gül set records

As reluctant as the CHP and MHP leaders are to travel, Prime Minister Erdoğan and President Gül have been setting records in their frequent visits to foreign countries. When the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) came to power on Nov. 3, 2002 for the first time, Erdoğan traveled to 24 EU countries within three months.

Erdoğan has been to Belgium and the US the highest number of times and to 73 countries on 185 visits in the past seven years. He has been to Brussels 10 times in the past seven years, and he has visited the US nine times. Germany follows these countries with eight visits. The distance he has traveled is calculated at more than 500,000 kilometers, which equals 12 trips around the world. He has had talks and meetings in all inhabited continents of the world in the past five years and has met with the premiers or presidents of 164 countries.

President Gül has also set some records, including being the first Turkish president to have traveled to Africa. In the two years of his presidency, he has made 47 visits abroad to 35 countries, compared to Ahmet Necdet Sezer, the former president who traveled to 18 countries in 49 visits during his seven years of presidency. When Gül’s visits as foreign minister and president are combined, he has met with the leaders of 150 of the world’s 192 countries.