Turkish Foreign Policy on the Cusp of a New Era? – Fatih Ceylan

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Milestones in International
Relations in Two Decades

Since the start of the new millennium, several events have been unfolding
and causing dramatic shifts in international politics. The scene was set by the
terror acts staged by Al Qaida in the U.S. on 9/11 2001, culminating in
military intervention by the latter in Afghanistan and the unilateral operation
in Iraq on precarious grounds, to be succeeded by the Russia-Georgia war in
2008, and the Russian illegal and illegitimate occupation and annexation of
Crimea and subversion in the Donbas region of Ukraine. The final blow came in February
2022 when Russia re-initiated its aggression in different parts of Ukraine,
violating its independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.

Throughout those traumatic years, the steady rise of China has become a
naked reality resulting in the strategic rivalry between the U.S. and China
focused on the Indo-Pacific region with the recent escalation of tension among China,
the U.S., and Taiwan over the Taiwan Strait.

First Years of AKP Rule in Türkiye’s Foreign and Security Policies

During the last twenty years, Turkish domestic politics has undeniably
transformed with its ever-increasing imprint on Türkiye’s foreign and security
policies. In that respect, the main thrust of Türkiye’s foreign and security policy
remained intact in the first eight years of the Justice and Development Party
(AKP) government.

The ruling cadres of the AKP did not tamper with the behavioral patterns
of Turkish diplomacy predicated on traditional Republican principles and
values. In the first eight years in power (2002-2010), they prioritized further
improving Türkiye’s relations with the West and its institutions, emphasizing
EU integration. That quest coincided with the restructuring of the economy and
political reforms, preparing a conducive ground for better and sounder ties
with the European countries, supporting its European vocation, which has been
one of the trademarks of its conventional diplomacy since the foundation of the
Republic.

The thrust of Foreign and Security Policies in the Early Republican Era

The newly founded Turkish Republic in 1923 first put into effect
domestic reforms necessary for nation-building under Atatürk’s leadership,
followed by foreign and security policy initiatives in the 1930s designed to
construct a broad belt of
peace and stability in all directions around the country.

At the height of the Turkish War of Liberation, Türkiye signed the
Treaty of Moscow with the Soviet Union in 1921, followed by the Treaty of Kars
the same year, to be complemented by the signing of a non-aggression pact in
1925.

Türkiye’s attempt to build
an arc of peace and
stability did not stop with striking an atmosphere of friendship with the Soviet
Union in the north. Türkiye and Greece signed a series of agreements, including
but not limited to the Athens and Ankara Agreements in 1926 and 1930 in the
run-up to the Second World War, which opened a cooperative relationship between
the two countries for almost three decades until the outbreak of the Cyprus
problem in the early 1960s.

The bilateral rapprochement between Türkiye and Greece was crowned with
the signing of the Balkan Entente in 1934 among Türkiye, Greece, Romania, and
Yugoslavia in Athens at the urging of Atatürk. Thus, the bilateral and
multilateral frames of cooperation were successfully built in the Western
direction of Türkiye as part of Atatürk’s vision of ‘Peace at Home, Peace in
the World’.

The new Republic did not neglect the ‘Eastern front’ either. The Treaty
of Saadabad was signed in 1937 among Türkiye, Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The portion of the
Middle East near Turkey was also the focus of the Republican leadership
starting from the Ankara Agreement of 1921 with France, which also recognized the
area surrounding the Tomb of Suleyman Shah as an exclave of Türkiye in Syria.
The main driving principle at this period adopted by Atatürk was not to meddle
in intra-Arab issues without prejudice to Türkiye’s need to keep good neighborly
relations with the Middle Eastern countries.

In a nutshell, Türkiye was able to build a web of peaceful relations in its
historical and cultural hinterland in all directions in parallel to improving
and strengthening its anchor within the European family of nations.

Cauldron of Challenges Since 2010

Since the beginning of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ or uprisings in 2010,
Türkiye’s foreign and security policies started to undergo dramatic changes,
particularly from within, geared toward unraveling the very tenets on which it
was based until then.

2014, when Russia illegally occupied and annexed Crimea and ISIL
launched terror acts in Syria and Iraq, declaring its ‘Islamic Caliphate State’,
could be considered as the turning point for Türkiye’s foreign and security
policies. But the real shifting moment came following the failed coup attempt
by a religious sect, the FETÖ. The deepening divergences with the U.S.,
particularly on how to shape the future of Syria and tackle the U.S. support to
PYD/YPG, an offshoot of PKK in Northeast Syria, was also instrumental in this
change. This challenge was exacerbated by open ties between Russia and
PKK/PYD/YPG and its ambivalent attitude when dealing with those terror groups
in Northwestern Syria.

Such circumstances are not only of Türkiye’s making, but the Turkish
leadership took decisions away from the well-established traditional practices they
had enjoyed before 2014, which culminated in aggravating the fragile situation
in Syria, working against Türkiye’s interest there and beyond. As a result,
Türkiye was squeezed between the power politics of the U.S. and Russia, not to
mention the disruptive acts of Iran in the region, against the backdrop of
deteriorating economic balances
in Türkiye and overstretching its resources hitting hard at domestic politics
and society.

The change did not stop in Syria and extended to Eastern Mediterranean,
involving increasing tension, particularly with Greece and Türkiye’s Western
Allies. The ongoing Cyprus problem, waiting for an enduring solution for
decades, together with the challenges in searching, drilling, and exploring
hydrocarbon reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean, further compounded Türkiye’s
relations with the neighboring countries and led to the militarization of its foreign
and security policies on a regional scale. Under such conditions, the diplomatic
track, a hallmark of traditional Turkish diplomacy in the past, receded.

The conundrum represented by the chaos in Libya and its impact on the delimitation
of exclusive economic zones in the Eastern Mediterranean was also a bone of
contention which raised the stakes for Türkiye and pitted it against its rivals
and friends in the region. This has become another serious diplomatic issue for
Türkiye to settle in its immediate vicinity. The broader militarization and de-secularization
of foreign and security policies have become hallmarks of Türkiye in a wider
regional context.

The deliberate shift from ‘Peace at Home, Peace in the World’ to
‘Polarisation at Home, Confrontation in the Wider Neighbourhood’ did not bring
any tangible and beneficial results. On the contrary, it drifted Türkiye to an
arc of loneliness in its historical and cultural hinterland.

Finally, in 2021 after realizing that foreign and security policies based
on miscalculation backfired in many aspects, be it domestic or external, the
Turkish leadership began to set the record straight with a view to turning back
to normalcy in conducting Türkiye’s foreign and security policies reminiscent
of the past. The idea to normalize relations with regional countries of
importance like Egypt, Israel, Saudia Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the
like gained traction while the Turco-Greek relations became increasingly tense,
which cannot solely be attributed to Türkiye.

What Should Be Done in the New Era?

Conditions in international politics have now radically changed. After
Russia started its second invasion of Ukraine and the increase in tension
between the U.S. and China, the strategic rivalry took center stage in the
global order with far-reaching consequences also in Türkiye’s neighborhood.
Hence, on the cusp of an entirely new era, there is a clear need for Türkiye to
reconstruct peace at home and to be an active player in shaping and
contributing to global peace and stability, starting from its immediate
hinterland by giving priority to its well-established patterns of institutional
diplomacy. The alternative would be chaotic developments at home and further
isolation in international arena.

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To cite this work: Fatih Ceylan, “Turkish Foreign Policy on the Cusp of a New Era?” Panorama, Online, 26 July 2023, https://www.uikpanorama.com/blog/2023/07/26/fc-7/

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