Davutoghlu & His Geo-Strategic Vision.

Davutoghlu & His Geo-Strategic Vision. As Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoghlu describes it, Turkeywas NATO's "wing state" during the Cold War, at the edgeprotecting the core. The only NATO country besides Norway to border theSoviet Union, Turkey was the first place the Truman Doctrine ofcontaining Communism was put into practice. This Western allegiance andits military character suited Turkish state elites and so, for 44 years,in exchange for money and arms, Turkey guarded itself and thesouth-eastern corner of Europe from the red threat. Then as the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed in theearly 1990s, and Samuel Huntington, Francis Fukuyama and Robert Kaplanwere writing their post-Cold War versions of the thoughts of "thefather of containment", American adviser, diplomat and politicalscientist George Kennan, another scholar of international relations,Davutoghlu, began to make his own map of the new geo-politicallandscape. From his post as a professor of international relations, Davutoghluargued that Turkey, now freed from the East-West geography of the ColdWar and embedded in the new globalisation, should no longer be thoughtof as an appendage of the West, but rather as a country at the centre.He elaborated this idea in his 2001 book Strategic Depth and the titlehas since become a short-hand description of Davutoghlu's"doctrine". The basic idea is that Turkey, a central, pivotalcountry, must use its unique geography and history to its foreign policyadvantage. Born in 1959 in the central Anatolian city of Konya, Davutoghlu waseducated in Istanbul and received his doctorate in political sciencefrom Bogazici University. In the early 1990s he taught in Malaysia thenreturned to Beykent and Marmara universities in Istanbul. His ideasconvinced the AKP leadership; and when it came to power in November2002, Davutoghlu was appointed chief foreign policy adviser to AKPleader Erdoghan. In early May 2009 he was appointed foreign minister. Davutoghlu did not stand for election and is not an MP, and foreight years he has had the enviable position of being a politicallyunaccountable politician with the job of turning his personal theoryinto his country's policy. If Turkey's strategic advantage is,as Davutoghlu says, in its geography and history, then this advantage iscertainly deep. Located in Asia and Europe, Turkey borders the Balkans, theCaucuses and the Middle East. Across the water from its Black Sea,Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, Turkey has 25 coastal neighbours. Alltraffic into and out of the Black Sea goes through the Turkish Straits.The Tigris and Euphrates rivers begin in Anatolia, and thus Turkeycontrols the fresh water of Syria and Iraq. At least 12m Kurds live inTurkey and more than 5m Kurds live over its border in northern Iraq.Turkic languages and cultures cover the ground between south-easternEurope and north-western China. And Istanbul, once seat of the Sunnicaliphate and the Ottoman Empire, ruled Jerusalem, Sarajevo, Mecca,Cairo, Belgrade, Damascus and Baghdad for generations. Davutoghlu has pushed Turkey to use this "strategicdepth" to become a key global player and take stakes in theworld's, especially the West's, most high-profile issue areas.With the largest NATO army besides America's, Turkey wants toensure stability in northern Iraq once the Americans are gone. Turkey is the central country for the Nabucco natural gas pipelineproject, intended to free Europe from reliance on Russian gas. Turkeyhas sought a reputation for mediating tough disputes: in Bosnia; betweenIsrael and Syria; and between its two friends, Iran and America. Turkishtroops are in Afghanistan training the Afghan National Army. Turkey isin the middle of its two-year term on the UNSC and is a proud member ofthe Group of 20 (G-20). Turkey and Spain helped establish the Alliance of Civilisations, aUN-supported forum for improving relations between the Muslim world andthe West. Seeking "zero problems with neighbours", Turkey andSyria have lifted visa requirements and Turkey hopes to get a similardeal with Russia in 2010. Turkey has signed, but not yet ratified, apeace deal with Armenia. Turkey wants to be a full member of the EU by2014. If Turkey succeeds, the EU will border Iran, possess huge militaryresources and see a six-fold increase in its Muslim population. IfTurkey fails, it will be difficult for the EU to convince the world thatIslamophobia is not a European value. Though in the thick of major Western concerns - AfPak, Iran, Iraq,Israeli-Arab peace, energy, Islam, the EU - the central goal of all thispolicy is business: increase trade, attract foreign investment andprovide for Turkey's economy. In AKP foreign policy speeches, one regularly hears aboutTurkey's "young and dynamic people" who will need jobs,and whose careers and businesses will have to grow. Since modern Turkeywas founded in 1923, its foreign policy has been dominated by a concernfor keeping the country whole. Mustafa Kemal (Atat?rk), modernTurkey's founder, watched for two generations the great powersconspiring to pick apart the dying Ottoman Empire. The 1920 Treaty ofSevres is the cause of Turkish fear of foreign plots. Turks from all walks of life still fear that foreign powers aretrying to break up their country; and almost every Turk today has beentaught this: "Turkey is surrounded on three sides by the sea, andon four sides by the enemy". But Turkey has been liberalising itseconomy since the 1980s, and in the past decade Turks have succeeded inopening the national interest to more than national security. The AKP is both de-militarising Turkish politics and privatisingbillions of dollars of state assets. Under Davutoghlu and the AKP, thenew axiom may well be this: "Turkey is surrounded on three sides bythe sea, and on four sides by markets". Many call Davutoghlu'sforeign policy "neo-Ottoman". AKP politicians speak of theirpride at seeing the Ottoman walls which enclose the old city ofJerusalem, and of the Bascar si in Sarajevo. This is Ottoman nostalgia warming the foreign policy imaginationsof at least some in the Turkish government. Davutoghlu has himself said:"whenever there is a crisis in the Balkans, the victims of thosecrises, like Bosnians, Albanians and Turks of Bulgaria, they look toIstanbul. We are paying the bill of our history". Davutoghlu rejects the label "neo-Ottoman" as an attemptby his opponents to tarnish his foreign policy with connotations ofcolonialism. His recent decision to renovate all Turkish embassies in a"Turkish style" - i.e., "Ottoman" - may not help hiscase. A threat to Davutoghlu's credibility is the faltering peacedeal with Armenia. Last October in Zurich, in front of Mrs Clinton andRussian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Davutoghlu and his Armeniancounterpart Edouard Nalbandian signed two sets of ground-breakingprotocols supposed to lead to full diplomatic relations and an openborder. The rapprochement is currently on hold, however, largely becauseBaku is resisting the deal over Armenia's control ofNagorno-Karabakh inside Azerbaijan. The spokesman of the Turkishparliament's Foreign Affairs Committee said the AKP leaders did notknow Azerbaijan was going to react that way. Despite Davutoghlu calling it a "main fixture" of thecountry's foreign policy, Turkey's bid to join the EU hasstalled. Frustrated with perceived European insincerity, a minority inthe AKP is arguing Turkey no longer needs the EU. One reason given isthat EU membership would curtail Turkey's foreign policyindependence. Davutoghlu will have to manage this debate, as well as amore general debate over priorities as the Foreign Ministry realises itsresources may not match its ambitions. Critics say Davutoghlu and the AKP have Islamised Turkish foreignpolicy. Religion is part of the global perspective of the AKP andaffects the way it governs. But the accusation of Islamisation isdesigned to play on prejudices and scare Western and secular observers.Many liberals and progressives in Turkey dismiss - or ignore - theaccusation as a point of principle. These two poles of fear-mongeringand dismissal have kept much helpful debate from reaching foreign ears. Given the accusations of Islamisation, there is no moral basis toDavutoghlu's foreign policy. But treating all parties with"mutual respect" and on a principle of "equality",as Davutoghlu advocates, risks being blind to real differences betweenGreece and Iran, or Israel and Sudan. This is, at least partially, whymany find it easy to wonder whether Turkey is leaving the West. This may not be a problem for those who think George W Bushdiscredited the whole notion of distinguishing dictators from democrats.The AKP stresses that engagement with its neighbours is not a luxury,and claims they do communicate misgivings privately. But the questionremains: will the masses of Turkish voters who keep the AKP in powereventually demand to hear in which terms - ones nobler than economicself-interest - their government describes its goals abroad, and on whatgrounds it considers one to be a friend. After all,"democracy" and "democratisation" are the AKP'sdomestic policy mantras, and the AKP has been happy to point outAmerica's and the EU's various double standards.