Turkey as a deal maker

We all know that Turkish diplomacy has been playing an active role in order to contain the nuclear crisis and contribute to a peaceful solution. The smiling pose of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül and Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani in Ankara was indeed one of the most positive results of the intense diplomacy between Ankara, Tehran and Western capitals to have been seen for more than two years.

It should be said that bringing Iran and the EU together is not an exceptional success or an extraordinary development. In contrast, it is just one of the many similar initiatives Turkish diplomacy recently developed.

In the last few months of 2005, Ankara was able to bring Israel and Pakistan for direct talks in Turkey. The Sept. 1 meeting in the Turkish city of İstanbul between Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and his Pakistani counterpart, Khurshid Kasuri, was historic. There have been no public official contacts between the two nations since Pakistan was founded in 1947 and Israel in 1948. The meeting represented a major breakthrough in Israel’s efforts to overcome diplomatic isolation and also indicated that Turkey’s determination to play a more active role than previously thought.

Another example of such initiatives was the meeting between the US and Iraqi Sunnis under the auspices of Turkish diplomacy in İstanbul. In that meeting, Iraqi Sunni Arab leader Tariq al-Hashimi and US Ambassador to Baghdad Zalmay Khalilzad came together and both met with Turkish Foreign Minister Gül before the critical Dec. 15, 2005 elections in Iraq. Through that meeting, it became possible to convince Iraqi Sunnis who boycotted the constitutional referendum to participate in the general elections.

Turkey played a very important role, first in holding an international meeting in Baghdad at the diplomatic level -- where Iraqi neighbors and members of the UN Security Council sit around same table. In that meeting representatives of Iran and the US exchanged their ideas with each other directly. Ankara welcomed to host the follow up meeting in İstanbul at the ministerial level, though later it was decided to hold the meeting in Egypt.

For some time Ankara has been offering to play a mediation role between Syria and Israel, which has been welcomed by Damascus many times despite the hesitation of the Israeli side. Turkey was also very active in realizing the historical meeting between leaders of Saudi Arabia and Iran, just as she was very instrumental in the hostage crisis between Iran and Britain. Last but not least, Ankara is preparing to host the first meeting between Afghan leader Hamid Karzai and Pakistan leader Musharraf in order to discuss their territorial disputes.

In order to check how much importance the world media gave to Solana and Larijani’s meeting in Ankara, I visited Google news on Thursday and realized that there were 782 entries about the event, making it one of the most important events of the week.

It is clear that recently Turkey has increased her diplomatic capacity to deal with problems in the region and this capacity will grow as Turkey will get more democratic and continue her stability. Indeed, the post-Sept. 11 world conjecture assigned Turkey the role of a “decoder” between the Muslim world and the West. However I have serious doubts about how much Western capitals appreciate that critical role.

But why does Ankara feel obligated to play an active role in the Iran crisis? The main factor is that Turkey will suffer the most if the crisis turns into a military conflict. Turkey’s losses will include, among others, halting trade with Iran at a time when the current account deficit poses a significant problem; shutting down the transit route that passes through Iran; and a possible escalation in terror, which has lately been increased by the situation in northern Iraq.

A second factor is that Ankara sees Iran’s possessing nuclear weapons as a threat, and is concerned this initiative might well change the balance of power in her region. One other factor is that Ankara knows that an Iraq-like conflict in Iran will deeply affect Turkey from a political and humanitarian standpoint. An Iran-US confrontation will fan the flames of anti-Americanism, which is already at a peak in Turkey, and drag Ankara-West relations into a deadlock. This is because in Turkey and in the Middle East, a majority of the people believe Israel’s nuclear weapons, not Iran’s, pose a threat to world peace, and perceive as double standards the US pressuring Iran while remaining silent over Israel.

Taking all these factors into account, it has been good for the world as well as for Turkey to hear that both Larijani and Solana left Ankara with positive feelings about a peaceful settlement.