The otherification of Turkey and Shukran Türkiye

The Sarkozys are not just usurping anti-immigrant, anti-Turkish feelings on the streets for their own electoral interests; they are also feeding those feelings. Otherification is particularly dangerous when it refers not to an imminent danger but to an imagined future one. That gives the other-hating mobs an imagined identity of being “farsighted leaders” of their people.

The Sarkozian otherification of Turkey is a European push for Turkey to slow down on its long march toward the West. It is coupled with a Middle Eastern pull; the Arab street may be willing to turn Turkey into the ultimate other of what they hate in the West. This is as dangerous as the Sarkozian push, if not balanced and controlled.

Let me clarify that I have no reservation about the Arab street identifying with Turkey and Turkish foreign policy. I have no problem with the fact that the Muslim-Arab world wants to see Turkey caring for them and sharing their pain and ambitions. The Arab pull is quite a positive thing, if it is balanced with either a Western pull or a determined position in Ankara that responds to this pull with a stronger one.

The following lines -- just as my previous article -- are not an analysis of the current situation; they are rather a projection of a future possibility.

Shukran Türkiye (Arabic for “Thank you, Turkey”) is the name of a new civil-society initiative that asks Arab businessmen to invest in Turkey as a way to say thank you to the Davos incident, in which the Turkish prime minister rebuked the Israeli president for Israeli atrocities in Gaza at the start of 2009. This is an initiative by Arab friends of Turkey, and I am sure their intentions are all sincere. As a Turkish citizen, I can only be thankful for such an initiative, especially in this year, facing a financial crisis. But this sincere and respectful initiative contains in it the potential to turn Turkey into what it should never be: a country that will never be able to join platforms where it can “rebuke” Israeli presidents, into a country that cannot appeal to the Western world as strongly as it can now.

Turkey deserves a thanks from the Arab world, not because of the “one minute” accident but because of the essential fact that the Turkish prime minister was invited to that platform to speak about a solution to the Gaza shame. The Davos incident -- or the “One Minute Incident,” as it is referred to in the Turkish and Arab press -- was an accident in history. (I use the term “accident” in its philosophical meaning.) Turkish-Arab business relations should be based on essentials and not on accidentals.

The interpretation of the Davos incident with a Western colonial dualism in the mental background is unjust and unacceptable, since the subject of that incident does not perceive the world in such a dualistic way. In the Turkish world perception, the dichotomy foreseen by Western social sciences between “I and the other” does not exist. In the Turkish perception, the world is not -- cannot -- be separated into the East and the West. That would divide Turkey and perplex the Turkish mind. Many Westerners may interpret this as Turkish pragmatism, but the multi-level foreign policy we observe in Ankara is not related to a pragmatist view of the world, but to a non-dichotomous perception of life.

Let me put this in factual terms: Turkey didn't change camps in the Davos incident because in the Turkish perception there are – there should never be -- camps on the map. Just as Turkish friendliness vis-à-vis Israel didn't necessitate a severing of friendly relations with the Arab countries, Turkey's criticism of Israel does not mean that Turkey is any friendlier to the Arab countries than it used to be.

As I noted above, I hope the Shukran Türkiye initiative will mobilize Arab capital toward more investment in Turkey, but I also hope that this won't bring about any mental-civilizational switch in Turkey's position as a bridge-building country -- a country that defies mental dualities.