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Meet The Man Shaping Turkey's New Diplomacy

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  • Meet The Man Shaping Turkey's New Diplomacy

    MEET THE MAN SHAPING TURKEY'S NEW DIPLOMACY

    Tehran Times
    Nov 30 2009
    Iran

    Expect to hear a lot more of the name Ahmet Davutoglu. The former
    university professor who became Turkey's foreign minister last year is
    the man behind Ankara's landmark new diplomatic outreach, including
    a previously unimaginable rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia
    and a new warmth with Syria.

    Some Western analysts are dismayed at these developments, interpreting
    them as a sign that Turkey is turning East at the expense of the West.

    The mild-mannered Davutoglu typically gets angry at these suggestions,
    saying these comments come from those who begrudge Turkey its expanding
    role in the region.

    Yet while Davutoglu is no stranger to Turkish politics -- he began
    serving as chief foreign-policy adviser to the ruling AKP in 2002
    -- he remains something of a cipher, even in his home country. To
    remedy that, NEWSWEEK's Turkish-language partner, NEWSWEEK Turkiye,
    recently examined the forces that shaped Davutoglu and how he is
    changing relationships with Turkey's neighbors in the Middle East,
    the Balkans, and the Caucasus.

    Some of the highlights from the magazine's comprehensive profile,
    written by Yenal Bilgici with reporting by Semin Gumusel and Nevra
    Yarac:

    Davutoglu risked the deadly Izmit earthquake to save the manuscript of
    his signature book, Strategic Depth: Turkey's International Position,
    which lays out the conceptual framework for what he now calls his "zero
    problems with neighbors" policy. When the shaking started on Aug. 17,
    1999, he managed to flee his endangered Istanbul home unharmed --
    but then ignored warnings of aftershocks to dash back into the house
    and eject the computer disk containing his years of work.

    Now in its 30th printing, the book brought him national and
    international recognition.

    The foreign minister is a somewhat reluctant politician. After
    Turkey's ruling AKP won the elections of 2002, he turned down
    requests to serve in the government and opted instead to continue his
    university work while serving as an adviser to Prime Minister Recep
    Tayyip Erdogan. Five years later, he was on the verge of a full-time
    return to academia when rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party
    (PKK) attacked the Daglica military post in Turkey's eastern city of
    Hakkari, killing 13 soldiers. "I cannot leave now," Davutoglu told
    his inner circle. Instead, he stayed on to take up the position of
    foreign minister and facilitate recent agreements aimed at granting
    long-denied rights to the Kurdish minority and ending two decades of
    attacks by the PKK.

    The peripatetic minister went to 13 countries in October alone,
    raising Turkey's diplomatic profile to its highest level in years.

    Indeed, Davutoglu won unprecedented praise in Arabic media, like the
    London-based Al-Hayat newspaper, where a columnist begged the foreign
    minister to help solve Lebanon's problems as well. "You carry ideas,
    aspirations, solutions, and medicine in your luggage," wrote the
    columnist. "You are the window to the future."

    Davutoglu may be known for his temperate demeanor, but he has little
    patience with Ankara's political elites and their unassertive
    approach to diplomacy. "These rootless elites are conditioned to
    not being noticed and not taking initiative rather than coming to
    the front and being decisive during critical periods," he wrote
    in an uncharacteristically sharp tone in Strategic Depth. "They
    think of being passive as a safer and risk-free policy." These
    criticisms, writes Bilgici in NEWSWEEK Turkiye, are a beginner's
    guide to understanding Davutoglu and his policy. The second pointer
    to his character: the minister's constant use -- and embodiment --
    of the term "self-confidence." Davutoglu is also known for his work
    ethic and self discipline. A family friend told NEWSWEEK Turkiye that,
    while working on his book, the professor once spent three straight days
    without leaving his chair. A former student says Davutoglu believes
    that sleeping eight hours a night is a luxury. "We do not have the
    right to sleep this much," he frequently told the student.

    Davutoglu's conscientiousness manifested itself at a relatively early
    age. As a high-school student at the prestigious Istanbul High School
    for Boys, where he was taught by German teachers who had come to
    Turkey during World War II, he presented his teachers with ambitious
    reading lists of dense philosophical and scientific works that he
    thought would serve him well in the future. His instructors advised
    him and his friends to go out and play ball for a while instead.

    Davutoglu took the advice to heart; even after he'd become a professor,
    he continued to play soccer with his students (as a highly regarded
    forward), right up until he was appointed foreign minister.

    While honing his soccer prowess, Davutoglu was refining his language
    and academic skills too. In addition to the German learned in high
    school, he took all-English programs to graduate from the economics
    and political sciences department of Bogazici University. He learned
    Arabic while studying on a scholarship in Jordan, worked on his
    doctoral thesis at Cairo University, and learned Bahasa Malaysia while
    a professor at Malaysia's International Islamic University. His thesis,
    a comparative analysis between Western and Islamic political theories
    and images, was published in 1993 by American University Press with
    the title Alternative Paradigms: The Impact of Islamic and Western
    Weltanschauungs on Political Theory. Davutoglu's postdoctoral work
    included critiques of the theories of Samuel Huntington (clash of
    civilizations) and Francis Fukuyama (end of history).

    Colleagues say that Davutoglu's oratorical skills are equal to his
    writing ability. "There is no one the minister cannot make drop their
    guard in 10 minutes," one high-ranking team member told NEWSWEEK
    Turkiye. One example: when Ankara refused to allow U.S.-led forces
    cross Turkish territory for the 2003 invasion into Iraq, a local Jewish
    leader came over to read Davutoglu the riot act. The visitor initially
    said he could only stay 10 minutes -- partly because he needed to
    prepare for a fast the following day -- but ended up spending three
    hours with Davutoglu after being won over by the minister's erudite
    discourse about Jewish culture, history, and the background to the
    upcoming fast. Next time, the Jewish leader said, he'd like to stay
    for the day.

    Davutoglu is not without his critics; but even those who don't support
    him see him as a statesman who is both a thinker and a doer. And
    right now, he's the talk of more than just Ankara.
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