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Economist: Looking east and south: Turkey and the Middle East

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  • Economist: Looking east and south: Turkey and the Middle East

    The Economist
    October 31, 2009
    U.S. Edition


    Looking east and south: Turkey and the Middle East


    Frustrated by European equivocation, Turkey is reversing years of
    antagonism with its Arab neighbours

    IT IS a thousand years since the Turks arrived in the Middle East,
    migrating from Central Asia to Anatolia. For half of that millennium
    they ruled much of the region. But when the Ottoman Empire fizzled out
    and the Turkish Republic was born in 1923, they all but sealed
    themselves off from their former dominions, turning instead to Europe
    and tightly embracing America in its cold war with the Soviet Union.

    The Turks are now back in the Middle East, in the benign guise of
    traders and diplomats. The move is natural, considering proximity, the
    strength of the Turkish economy, the revival of Islamic feeling in
    Turkey after decades of enforced secularism, and frustration with the
    sluggishness of talks to join the European Union. Indeed, Turkey's
    Middle East offensive has taken on something of the scale and momentum
    of an invasion, albeit a peaceful one.

    In the past seven years the value of Turkey's exports to the Middle
    East and north Africa has swollen nearly sevenfold to $31 billion in
    2008. From cars to tableware, dried figs to television serials,
    Turkish products, unknown a decade ago, are now ubiquitous in markets
    from Algiers to Tehran. Already a vital conduit for sending energy
    from east to west, Turkey is set to grow in importance as more
    pipelines come on stream. The most notable is Nabucco, a proposed ?7.9
    billion ($11.7 billion) scheme to carry gas across Turkey from
    Azerbaijan and possibly Turkmenistan, Iran, Iraq and Egypt. A single
    Turkish construction firm, TAV, has just finished an airport terminal
    for Egypt's capital, Cairo, and is building others in Libya, Qatar,
    Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates. Turks have scooped up hundreds
    of infrastructure contracts in Iraqi Kurdistan, and invested in
    shopping malls, hotels and even schools.

    These achievements are partly due to an energetic pursuit of trading
    privileges, such as Turkey's free-trade pacts with Egypt, Israel,
    Morocco and Tunisia. It is seeking a similar deal with the six-member
    Gulf Co-operation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia. Earlier this
    month, teams of Turkish ministers travelled to Baghdad and Damascus to
    sign a package of 48 co-operation deals with Iraq and 40 with Syria.
    Covering everything from tourism to counter-terrorism and joint
    military exercises, the deals could end decades of tension between
    Turkey and its former Ottoman provinces.

    Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has just been warmly
    received in the Iranian capital, Tehran, a reflection of the
    realpolitik that has kept links open despite the Islamic Republic's
    international isolation. Turkey requires no visas for Iranians, and Mr
    Erdogan, who has stressed Iran's right to nuclear power for civil
    purposes, pointedly congratulated Iran's president, Mahmoud
    Ahmadinejad, after his disputed election win in June. Turkey only
    recently made an historic breakthrough in relations with another
    eastern neighbour, Armenia. If the parliaments of both countries
    endorse the move, diplomatic ties may be restored after a 16-year
    freeze.

    This dogged diplomatic pragmatism has been ardently pursued by the
    foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, an ebullient professor of
    international relations who had long advised Mr Erdogan before his
    appointment in May. Mr Davutoglu, who in a book described the Middle
    East as "Turkey's strategic depth", has called for a policy of "zero
    problems with neighbours". Reflecting the mild, modernist Islamism of
    the Justice and Development party, known by its Turkish initials AK,
    which has ruled Turkey since 2002, the new policy seeks to use the
    soft power of trade, along with historical links, to project stability
    beyond Turkey's frontiers. This marks a distinct shift in worldview.
    In the past Turkey tended to see itself as an eastern bulwark of the
    NATO alliance, whereas its Middle Eastern neighbours were viewed as
    threats to be contained.

    Whatever Mr Davutoglu's persuasive powers, this reorientation could
    not have happened without dramatic changes in Turkey. Reforms
    undertaken partly to meet demands for EU membership have shifted power
    from threat-obsessed generals to civilian institutions, and to a new,
    more self-consciously Muslim elite rooted in Anatolia rather than
    Istanbul, Turkey's Western-looking commercial and intellectual
    capital. The AK party has also reversed decades of official policy by
    trying to meet the demands of Turkey's large Kurdish minority (some
    14m in a total population of 72m). The granting of more cultural and
    political rights, and the admission of past discrimination, have
    soothed tempers not only among Turkish Kurds, but among their ethnic
    kin in Iraq, Iran and Syria.

    Yet a reason for the success of Turkey's kinder, gentler approach is
    that it takes place in the context of a regional power vacuum. Such
    relative Arab heavyweights as Egypt and Iraq no longer wield much
    clout. American influence has also dipped in the wake of its troubles
    in Iraq. Indeed, Turkey's biggest breakthrough in Arab public opinion
    came in 2003, when its parliament rejected an American request to open
    Turkish territory as a second front for the invasion of Iraq. Turkey
    did allow the use of an airbase to supply the war, but escaped the
    opprobrium heaped on America's Arab allies who grudgingly lent support
    to the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

    Turkey has also been welcomed back because many Arabs see it as both a
    moderate counterweight to Iran and as a window to the West. Iraqi
    Shias, for instance, are still wary of Iranian meddling in Iraq, even
    though Iraq's main Shia parties have close relations with Iran. Iraq's
    Kurds, despite age-old tensions with Turkey, have also warmed their
    relations as trade has boomed and the looming departure of the Kurds'
    American protectors raises the spectre of isolation. The secular
    government of Syria, an ostensible ally of Iran, in fact shares little
    cultural affinity with its stridently Islamist rulers, compared with
    the AK party's businesslike, tie-wearing officials. Improved relations
    with Turkey, which now include visa-free travel, bring much-needed
    relief to Syria, isolated diplomatically and economically backward. In
    fact, so eager has Syria been to woo Turkey that in 2005 it scrapped a
    longstanding territorial claim to Hatay, a province granted to Turkey
    in 1939 by France, Syria's colonial master at the time.

    Turkish officials, however, have been careful to explain that their
    renewed interest in the Muslim east does not mean a chill towards the
    West. Instead, they present Turkey as a useful bridge, a regional
    force for peace, and the model of a democracy that is compatible with
    Islam. Its Western allies have generally shared that view and have not
    opposed Turkey's eastward shift. Yet such benign indifference could
    change, if Turkey's prospects for joining the EU die, or if Turkey is
    seen as undermining attempts to pressure Iran.

    Already, Turkey's gentle realignment has carried some costs, most
    obviously to its relations with Israel. These flourished into a
    full-blown strategic partnership in the 1990s, before the AK party's
    rise, when peace between Palestinians and Israelis seemed possible.
    Joint military exercises and Israeli arms sales brought the two
    countries' military establishments close, while trade and tourism
    expanded fast. Israel even offered to shield Turkey from lobbies in
    the American Congress that sought to punish Turkey for disputing the
    genocide of Armenians in Ottoman territory during the first world war.

    But ties have frayed as Turkish public opinion, which now counts for
    more, has turned increasingly hostile to Israel. Mr Erdogan, a tough,
    streetwise politician, felt slighted last year when Israel attacked
    Gaza only days after he had met Israel's then prime minister, Ehud
    Olmert, who assured him that Turkish-brokered peace talks between
    Israel and Syria would resume. The bloodshed in Gaza outraged many
    Turks, who heartily praised Mr Erdogan when he stormed out of a debate
    with Israel's president, Shimon Peres, at Davos in Switzerland earlier
    this year.

    The Turks were again angered in September when Israel denied Mr
    Davutoglu permission to cross into Gaza during a visit to Israel.
    Earlier this month Turkey, citing Israel's failure to deliver an order
    of military drone aircraft, abruptly cancelled joint air exercises.
    Israel, for its part, lodged a formal protest at the airing, on
    Turkish state television, of a serial depicting Israeli soldiers as
    brutal killers. Some Israeli officials say they detect signs of
    anti-Semitism that disqualify Turkey from mediating any longer between
    Syria and Israel.

    Turkish officials respond that they have no intention of breaking off
    relations with Israel, and think they can still be a useful
    interlocutor with the Jewish state. But they remain indignant. "We
    might have lost leverage with Israel," says an AK party man. "But I'd
    rather be on the side of history, of what is right, of justice." One
    of Mr Erdogan's advisers puts Turkey's case more boldly, in a sign of
    its growing confidence as a regional leader. "We are conditioning
    relations with Israel on the progress of the conflict," he says. "This
    is what the West should do."

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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