The only thing it says is this: Turkey is taken more seriously in Western capitals than it used to be. My alternate question is this: Why does the West care -- or should it care -- about the whereto of Turkish foreign policy?First things first! We have to correct a mistaken observation about the Westward orientation of Turkish foreign policy. Both in Ottoman and Republican times Turkey always regarded its policies towards the West as a matter of priority, but it was not Western full stop. İstanbul, in the past, and Ankara, in the Republican era, played a game of “deliberate promiscuity” with the world powers of their times. During the heyday of the fin de siècle Ottoman-German alliance, Turkish diplomats were frequenting the Western European, American and even Japanese capitals with ambiguous declarations of friendship. This ambiguity was not a deception. It ruled back in İstanbul also. Many Ottoman intellectuals were surprised when Turkey joined World War I on the side of the Germans. Ankara managed to secure the support of the Soviets during Turkey’s War of Independence but never obligated itself to a particular position. Multidimensional policies continued during World War II. History cannot be written with “what ifs,” but nobody would say “How on earth?” if Turkey had joined the war on the side of the Axis powers, or of the Allies. It did neither…
Turkey did become a member of NATO, the European Council and the European customs union in due time, but it never cut its relations with the Eastern capitals altogether. There is no European country that can replace Pakistan or Azerbaijan in the “list of friends” of the Turkish people. Russia became Turkey’s largest trade partner last year. Turkey increased its economic and political presence in sub-Saharan Africa six-fold during the global financial crisis. It made a similar surge on the Latin American front. All this was not at the expense of Turkey’s relations with the United States and the European Union.
Mehmet Yılmaz wrote a brilliant article on “whether Turkey is changing it foreign policy direction” in yesterday’s Zaman. He observed that Turkey is only accommodating itself to a new international political environment where the West (the EU and US) is no longer the primary reference of world politics. Whoever says Turkey is falling away from the West is in fact underlining the primacy of the West, and this is a misperception of the new world realities, he says. The answer to my question on why the West should care about the new Turkish foreign policy paradigm lies in this observation. The West should care -- and apparently it does -- about Turkey because this is not only about Turkey. It is about the dynamics of the new asymmetric world order. If there is anything new in Turkey’s foreign policy behavior, it is the fact that Turkey is not following suit, it is setting the example to be followed. It will certainly have followers…
This is not to say that the Western dominance in world politics and economy is altogether over and that Turkey is looking for new alliances that will replace its traditional alliance with the US-EU axis. Turkey is not tired of waiting at the doors of the EU. It is tired of waiting idly at the doors of the EU. If the EU in particular and the West in general are uncomfortable with the fact that the Turkey waiting at the door is getting stronger and stronger, both politically and economically, it is their problem. If this is the case, this means that the Western capitals are not aware of the new foreign policy environment that Turkey has already fitted itself into. Instead of amazement at Turkey’s ease in dealing with what the West used to call “rogue states,” the West should follow suit. Turkey may even be helpful in that.
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