By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Erdogan’s Tumultuous Leadership

The end of the Cold War marked for Turkey the end of conventional foreign policy that sought to balance the Soviet threat through alliance with the Soviet Union. Turgut Ozal tried to reorient Turkish foreign policy and redefine Turkish national identity that would suit a search for a proactive role in foreign policy in the post-Cold War era. Ozal's death in 1993 spelled the end of the process of liberalization in the domestic system, but the wave of globalization was irreversible. Slileyman Demirel who followed Ozal as President, followed a status-quo-oriented leadership and Mesut Yllmaz and Tansu Ciller, despite their liberal orientation lacked necessary skills of leadership and charisma to continue Ozal's wave of liberalization. Gradually the vacuum at the center of Turkish politics was filled by the rising Welfare Party under Necmettin Erbakan, winning Istanbul and Ankara mayoral positions in 1994 and eventually becoming the first party in 1995.

We predicted in our previous case study about Turkey, that "The reelection of Erdogan in July 2007, however will also mean that a new offensive might be launched to invade N.Iraq or so called Kurdistan." We now then proceed beyond the  election of  Prime Minister Stileyman Demirel (also briefly mentioned in our Turkey Unveiled case study) from a perspective of Turkish Foreign policy, also in regards to the Kurds.

Elected in 1993, Demirel was essentially a man of the status quo, particularly with regard to the Kurdish issue however,Turkey allowed the military to exert its overall influence in politics. Demirel  said that "we are up against the 29th Kurdish rebellion of this century, and we will crush it as we have crushed the others.“1 The Kurdish conflict continued to haunt Turkish domestic and international politics in the 1990s and the military managed to hijack the issue from civilian politics. Turkey's own failure to address the problem was rooted in its character as a nation-state and its imagined ethnic homogeneity, which was central to the Kemalist identity. However, the problem was also kept alive by Turkey's own neighbors, most notably Syria, which provided a safe haven for Kurdish guerillas in Syria and Syrian-controlled Lebanon. Assad wanted to utilize the Kurdish card as a bargaining tool to prevent the Turkish project of building a dam in southeastern Turkey known as GAP (Southeast Anatolian Project) in Turkey, which would reduce the amount of water available to Syria from the Tigris and Euphrates. The Kurdish opposition movement as a human rights issue was also given support in Europe, increasing the Turkish public suspicions that the West was behind the Kurdish question.

In addition, Turkish public opinion was shocked by the Bosnian War (1992-95) where an estimated quarter million Bosnians were killed and the inabitity or perceived unwillingness of the West to prevent it. Anti-Western feelings and feelings of Muslim solidarity with Bosnians emerged as a result of this war. The end of the Cold War meant the removal of the security threats coming posed by the Soviet Union. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Turkic Central Asia and Azerbaijan became independent. The opening up of this perceived natural sphere of interest shifted Turkish attention to a wider field of interest. Turgut Ozal responded to these new challenges and opportunities with new initiatives such as the creation of the Black Sea Cooperation Council; the formation of an alliance between Turkey, Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Croatia; the revival of the Economic Cooperation Organization that included Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and five Central Asian republics. With Ozal's death, status-quo-oriented foreign policy returned. Turkey was in search of a new identity and traditional political parties could not deliver it.

When Turgut Ozal became President in 1991, he left ANAP to a weak leadership under Ylldmm Akbulut who followed him as prime minister. Within a year, the rising star Mesut Yllmaz was able to capture the party presidency and consequently became the prime minister. By the mid-l 990s, both central-right parties already lost their electoral ground, due to mismanagement, corruption, and more significantly lack of charismatic appeal. In the absence of Demirel in active politics now however, the conservative Islamist RP under the leadership of veteran politician Necmettin Erbakan slowly but steadily increased its votes in each election. In the 1991 general elections, the RP demonstrated its ability to draw some of the support base of the DYP and the ANAP, whose share of the total vote fell to 22% each. In contrast, the RP in an electoral alliance with the nationalist MHP and the conservative IDP won 19% of the total votes--placing it a very close third after the DYP and the ANAP. In the 1994 local elections, with 22%, the RP obtained more votes than any other party, the first time for an Islamically oriented party. More significantly, the RP mayoral candidates won municipalities of Istanbul and Ankara, the country's two largest cities, as wen as in scores of other cities in the central part of the country. These two cities were critical, as approximately 15 million lived in the larger area of Istanbul and Ankara, amounting to one fourth of the entire Turkish population. Moreover, the rest of Turkey was closely linked to these two cities by means of immigration of their relatives. Hence the success story of the young Islamist mayors, Tayyip Erdogan (Istanbul) and Melih Gokek (Ankara), in solving pressing issues such as water distribution and traffic was quickly transmitted over the country and became responsible for preparing the party's eventual victory in the 1995 general elections. The RP emerged as the first party with a clear Islamist agenda to win an election in the secular system of Turkey. It won 21 percent of the votes, but this was not sufficient to form a single-party government. The Turkish political establishment, including the secularist military and big business, prevented the RP from forming the government by forcing the two bitter enemie, Ytlmaz, to form a coalition government with the external support of the CHP. However, this was a short-lived government which could not survive repeated assaults from the RP. Eventually, the RP was given the mandate to form a coalition government with the DYP in 1996. This highly unlikely coalition of a secularist cosmopolitan leader and an Islamist leader was a turning point in Turkish history. It was the first time in the history of the republic that an Islamist political group came to power, albeit in a coalition.

The Welfare Party's rise to power was one of the most significant developments in the history of modem Turkey. Led by Necmettin Erbakan, the latter  had been a junior member of coalition governments before the 1980 military coup, it was the first time that his party was a senior coalition partner and he became prime minister. Furthermore, the post-Cold War international context in which political Islam replaced Communism as the main threat to the West caused the focus of the West to be placed on this government. Erbakan's foreign policy orientation was a cause for concern and anxiety in the West, particularly in the United States. The political ideas that Erbakan adhered to seem threatening to Western, more specifically American, interests in Turkey and the region. However, many observers believed that there was not much reason for concern. In their minds, Erbakan was astute enough a politician not to allow any adventurous change of direction in Turkish foreign policy. As Philip Robins argued, Erbakan's foreign policy was characterized by continuity rather than change and his opening to the Isliunic world was only complementary to existing Turkish foreign policy.2

Erbakan's foreign policy actions were carefully watched by his coalition partner Tansuiller as well as the military. Consequently, Erbakan's previously known anti-EU views did not appear to have influenced the foreign policy orientation of the government. Thus Erbakan maintained a multidirectional orientation of Turkish foreign policy in the 1980s and the early 1990s. However, with the contribution of his Islamic orientation, Erbakan was more interested than Turgut Ozal in enhancing bilateral and multilateral relations with the Islamic world. It was noteworthy that almost all of his official visits were made to those countries with majority Muslim populations. He never visited any Western nation in his official capacity, except for a brief unofficial visit to the United States.

Beyond ideological similarities as democratic and secular states in the Middle East, there were strategic calculations that made an alliance between Turkey and Israel reasonable.16 Israelis have always been interested in building strong relations with Turkey as the only Muslim ally in the Middle East, particularly after the Iranian revolution in 1979. Turkey offered Israel lucrative military deals. Turkey also offered Israel a vast territory on which to conduct military exercises in close proximity to S.Iraq, and Iran to gather intelligence. The strategic rationale for the Turkish military was to gain power against Arab states and Iran who were seen as supporting the Kurdish guerillas. On the other hand, perhaps the most significant strategic value of Israel for Turkey was due to its privileged relations with the United States. The pro-Israeli lobbies in the United States were seen as critical for its relations with the United States as regards the issue of Armenian genocide and the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline project.

Erbakan's deals with Israel could not save him from the ultimate judgment that was best expressed by (already referred to in our Turkey Unveiled case study before) Makovsky: "Erbakan's focus on ties with Islamic radicals has put deeply into question the hopes many once harbored that responsibilities of office would moderate Erbakan.“17 It was shared by the Turkish generals. Hence, not totally unrelated to its foreign policy initiatives, the Refahyol government gradually came under the immense pressure of the military and the business elites and eventually collapsed. The Turkish military has interfered in Turkish politics roughly every ten years since the coming to power of the Democrat Party (DP) in 1950. In 1960, 1973, and 1980, the Turkish Armed Forces ousted civilian governments from power, but in each of these as, conservative-liberal parties were the targets of military coups. It is interesting to observe that there was never a military coup against the Kemalist CHP government. Following each military coup, the vast majority of Turks restored the power to parties that represented the conservative line. Although military coups did not change the basic nature of Turkish politics as dominated by conservatives and Kemalists, they created ruptures and discontinuities. They also paved the way for a young generation of leaders to come to political dominance, who would otherwise be prevented by the older generation. The ousting of Adnan Menderes was followed by the rise of Stlleyman Demirel in 1960s and 1970s, and the ousting of DemireI was followed by the rise of Turgut Ozal in the 1980s and early 1990s. Within the Islamist dimension of Turkish politics, Erbakan has established himself as the unquestionable leader and his personal charisma had prevented all possible challengers. During the times he faced political ban in the 1970s and the 1980s, he managed to control the party from the behind. By the 1990s, however, a new generation of Islamist leaders had started to mount a new challenge within the party. In the 1994 municipal elections, the Welfare Party of Erbakan made surprising gains by winning Istanbul and Ankara municipal elections as well as those in several key Anatolian cities. The new mayors of these cities were young members of the party who would later emerge as leaders of a new political party, the AKP. Refah's victory in the 1995 general elections was made possible to a great extent by the success of these mayors in their respective cities. Tayyip Erdogan and Melih, RP's mayors of Istanbul and Ankara, respectively, emerged as new stars. The old guard within the party began to see Erdogan as a genuine threat to their hegemony within the party. Yet their rise was unstoppable. Hence, in 1996, when the Welfare Party formed a coalition with the conservative-liberal True Path Party (DVP), Prime Minister Erbakan had to include many of these younger generation Islamists within the government. Particularly noteworthy among them was Abdullah Otll, who became a Minister of State, but largely viewed as Erbakan's shadow Foreign Minister responsible for maintaining relations with the Muslim world, while Foreign Minister Tansu ciller was unofficially managing relations. with the West. Foreign Minister Abdullah Otll built his personal experience in the government with Erbakan's backing only to emerge later the most significant challenger to his party oligarchy, having allied himself with Tayyip Erdogan.

Although the Refahyol government stayed in power only one year, it came under the pressure of the military and was accused for implementing a hidden Islamic agenda. In 28 February 1997, the powerful National Security Council asked Erbakan to implement a total of eighteen "recommendations," most of which aimed to curtail the rise of Islamism in the fields of education, politics, and business. Most significantly, these measures asked for the closure of "unnecessary" imam-hatip schools as well as the implementation of eight-year-long primary school education that would effectively close down the secondary school section of these schools. The recommendations included only one item on foreign policy, Iran, stating that "Iran's efforts to drive the regime in Turkey to instability should be watched closely. Policies should be implemented in order to prevent Iran's intervention into Turkey's domestic matters." As We explained in our Turkey Unveiled case study the military intervention of 1997 forced Erbakan to resign, and  President Demirel asked opposition leader Mesut Yllmaz to form a government. YIlmaz formed the government on shaky grounds without much parliamentary support. Under pressure of the military, several DYP members of parliament in addition to some RP members of parliament resigned. They included the Minister of Health Ylldmm Aktuna and the Minister of Industry and Trade Yahm Erez, who built strong ties with TUSiAD (Association of Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen). Because the intervention did not result in a direct military control of the government, the 28 February process came to be known as "soft" coup. Some assert that it was due to the accommodating role played by President Suleyman Demirel in this process that a direct military coup was avoided. Demirel who was subject to military interventions twice in the past, in 1973 and 1980, cooperated with the military and perhaps this way he managed to keep the generals in the barracks. Yet it is quite dubious to assume that it was his intention as he was also regarded as orchestrating rather than managing the process. 18

Another explanation lies in the military's recognition of its limits as far as international reactions were concerned. The intervention justified itself as a "restoration of the Westernization" project and easily obtained legitimacy among the Westernized Turkish elites who were concerned by Erbakan's Islamist orientation, and the Western circles, particularly the United States, who were worried about implications for Turkish foreign policy. However, the United States directly intervened during the February 28 process, as Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright warned the Turkish military against making any "extra-constitutional" attempts. 19 Subsequently the RP was closed down by the Constitutional Court and Necemettin Erbakan was banned from politics. In 1998, the State Security Court of Diyarbaklr convicted Tayyip Erdogan of inciting hatred among people for quoting lines from a poem by Ziya Gokalp during a speech he made in 1997 in Siirt that read: "mosques are our barracks, domes our helmets, minarets our bayonets, believers our soldiers.“2o This poem by Gokalp, who was the chief architect of the ideology of Turkish modernization and nationalism, was readily available for Turkish high school students in their state-published school textbooks as well as in books that were published by the Turkish state institutions. Consequently, Erdogan was removed from his mayoral position and served a prison term of four months. an event that only boosted his charismatic appeal among the wide segments of the Turkish population. The court decision effectively banned his participation in politics until the repeat elections in Siirt held in March 14,2003. Erdogan entered the Parliament from the same city where he had made his controversial 1997 speech.

The 28 February process resulted in the removal of the Refahyol government from power. In their place, a coalition government between the ANAP as the senior and the Democratic Leftist Party (DSP) of Bulent Ecevit as the junior partner was formed. The coalition did not survive for long, having lasted from July 1997 to November 1998. When the coalition collapsed due to internal disagreements, Ecevit was called to form a care taker government to bring the country to the elections scheduled in April 18, 1999. Now Ecevit, the fourth party in the parliament, formed the government, supported by ANAP and DYP. However, an unexpected event took place that shook this parliamentary balance. The Turkish generals, who held the real power, pressured Syria to hand over the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, which led to his eventual capture in Kenya in February 1999. Upon announcing his capture, Prime Minister Ecevit became a national hero. His image as Karaoglan (the dark boy) who made the successful 1974 Cyprus intervention rekindled in the minds of a wide base of leftist/nationalist Turkish population. The April 1999 elections made Ecevit's DSP the first party, yet it was unable to form a government without the support of ANAP and the nationalist MHP. These parties were hardly in any ideological harmony over important foreign policy matters. MHP was tamed in the government and did not bring its ideological opposition to the European Union membership to the coalition protocol. In a significant event, the coalition elected Necdet Sezer to replace Demirel, whose seven-year term ended in 2000. Sezer and the government had serious conflicts, and after a famous incident of Sezer throwing a copy of the Constitution in the face of Deputy Prime Minister Hiisamettin Ozkan, an economic crisis erupted that forced the collapse of the coalition government. An early election was scheduled for November 2002, in which all of the coalition parties failed to pass the 10 percent threshold level. Only two parties were able to do so: the AKP and the CHP. With 34.28 percent, the AKP won a clean mandate to form a single party government with the Kemalist CHP in opposition. This was the first single party government after the era of Turgut Ozal and signaled a dramatic collapse for the arbitrary interim government imposed by the 28 February process. In a way, the 28 February process which was initiated in order to "refashion Turkey's political landscape along Kemalist lines,“21 unintentionally paved the way for the rise of the AKP. As was the case for the 1980 coup which helped the rise of Ozal by imposing a political ban on his rivals, the 28 February process helped the rise of the young Islamist politicians by closing down Erbakan's political party and banning its most senior members. A new chapter in Turkish Islamist politics was opened, a chapter that would signify not only the end of Erbakan's anti-Western political Islam but also that of the ideological hegemony ofKemalism. The AKP's combination of Islamic conservatism, liberal/democratic orientation, and a globalist outlook as marked by its strong support of the ED membership process established a new hegemony in Turkush politics.

The first task of the AKP was to redefine for itself a new mission and ideology. Erdogan and other AKP leaders strongly rejected any continuity with Erbakan's Milli Gorii- movement and instead tried to locate themselves as heirs to the legacy of the center-right Menderes-Demirel-Ozalline by defining its ideology as conservative democratic. This new identity was articulated by Yalym Akdogan, an advisor to Erdogan. According to Akdogan, the term "conservative democracy" has the following connotations:

The field of politics should be firmly grounded in the culture of reconciliation. It is possible to solve social differences and disagreements in the political arena on the basis of reconciliation. A variety of social and cultural groups should participate in politics in order to add diversity to public debate in the forum of tolerance that is generated by democratic pluralism... . Conservative democracy favors a limited and defined form of political power....................... Collective democracy considers political legitimacy to be based on popular sovereignty and the rule of law, which, in turn, is based on constitutionality and universally accepted norms. These elements are the main bases of political power, and political leaders achieve legitimacy by accepting the will of the nation.22

AKP's forceful expression of support for the EU was instrumental in this repositioning. Actually with this new positioning the AKP has moved closer to the social group (cemaat) Islamism in contrast to the political Islamism of Erbakan. Social Islamic groups such as Nurcus have always supported a conservative-liberal policy orientation in an attempt to escape from the antireligious pressures of secularism by the Kemalist political establishment. Menderes, Demirel, and Ozal were globalist politicians who sought stronger integration of Turkey in the global economic system and within institutions such as NATO and the European Union. In this regard, AKP's new positioning asked for closer relations with the West in order to escape from the repressive state institutions and to obtain legitimacy both domestically and internationally. Consequently, the party declared itself as a pro-European political party and started a pro EU campaign even before coming to power in the November 2002 general elections.

In many regards, the party has followed (Ozal's reformist direction in its approach to domestic issues, particularly the Kurdish issue. AKP leader and Prime Minister Erdogan stated that Kurdish identity has to be recognized alongside other identities including the Turkish identity. This way Erdogan reduced the scope of Turkish identity into an ethnic identity rather than an identity that comprised all Muslim ethnic groups as articulated by Kemalist nationalism on the basis of Gokalp's ethnic nationalism. The National Security Policy Document (MGSB) of Turkey defines Turkish identity as comprehensive of subnational ethnic identities without recognizing a separate ethnic Turkish subnational identity. Erdogan, in contrast, believes the Turkish identity is a subnational ethnic identity alongside Kurdish, Arab, Chechen, Bosnian, or Albanian subnational ethnic identities of Turkey. Erdogan then believes that Islam serves as the principal supraidentity of Turkey. Erdogan's views on the Kurdish issue have drawn criticism from Islamist as well as the political establishment. Ahmet Tagetiren, who was the chief columnist of pro-AKP Yeni Safak, resigned in protest of an alleged censure effort by the editorial desk of his critical essay on this issue. Tagetiren argued that by framing the Kurdish issue as an ethnic issue Erdogan betrayed the Islamic discourse of the party, a discourse that could offer the only hope of solution to the problem in his opinion. Turkish President Necdet Sezer, who has played the role of the defender of secularist and Kemalist state institution to check the elected Islamist government, strongly reacted to Erdogan's new approach: According to our Constitution, the Republic of Turkey is an indispensable unity with its country and nation. Turkey has a unitary state structure. The unity is provided in a multi-cultural society with the principle of national state. It is the most influential method of co-existence by preserving diversities. Acknowledgement of every citizen as Turk does not mean rejection of different ethnic identities. On the contrary, it provides equality among citizens.23

The Kurdish problem in Turkey has a direct foreign policy implication as regards the Turkish grand strategy in the Middle East. It was this problem that defined Turkey's relations with Syria, Iran, Israel, and more significantly Iraq. Traditionally the Kurdish issue or the fear of territorial dissolution of Turkey has served as the most significant informer of Turkish foreign policy, not only in the Middle East but also in relations with the European Union and the United States. The only exception to this rule was Turgut Ozal who, as it has been discussed previously, challenged basic parameters of isolationist and fear-oriented Turkish foreign policy. Despite some discursive attempts, the AKP's record in changing basic parameters of traditional Turkish foreign policy and in implementing its own reading of Turkish security framework, however, has been marked by a mixture of failures and successes.

 

AKP’s Foreign Policy: Identity and Interests

In order to examine the influence of the AKP’s identity on its course of foreign policy, one needs to ask whether there is one single AKP identity. The AKP clearly shares the roots of Milli Gorii, but the degree to which this ideology is maintained within the party is highly debatable. On key issues, such as the EU membership, the AKP shifts from the traditional political Islamist ideology, while on other issues such as a more assertive role in the Muslim world as well as Israel it shifts from the traditional Turkish foreign policy. Yet in these issues as well, the AKP enjoys the support of the political establishment due to the changes that occurred in the security context of the Middle East following the Iraq War. In general, the party’s foreign policy has remained committed to traditional tenets of Turkish foreign policy, which are ‘’the desire to join the EU, to enhance relations with the United States, and to increase regional cooperation.“24In many regards, the AKP is a coalition of occasionally opposing views and ideas. These multiple perspectives become highly visible when it comes to foreign policy issues. As Erdogan has emphasized consultations and teamwork in policymaking, allegedly due to his initial lack of experience in foreign policy, he has managed to build a sizeable network of advisors around him. In addition, the influence of other senior leaders within the party, most significantly his deputy and foreign affairs minister, Abdullah Gill/Gül.

When the AKP formed the government immediately after the 2002 elections, Gill became the first prime minister of the AKP. He then appointed political science professor Ahmet Davutoglu as his chief advisor and later Erdogan kept him in this position. It is largely asserted that Davutoglu is the single most important architect on key foreign policy issues within the government. The New York Times describes him as Turkey’s closest equivalent to a neoconservative, in regard to the fact that “as he makes moment-to moment political judgments, he is never far from considering his country’s history and ideals.“25 Despite this asserted similarity, he faced constant criticism from both domestic and international circles. Particularly the neoconservative think tanks and publications in the United States and the pro-American liberals in Turkey. While Davutoglu’s role in shaping AKP foreign policy orientation might be debated, he certainly represents one of the foreign policy poles within the party.

In the internal party politics, Davutoglu represents a more traditional and conservative stance, calling for a greater appreciation of Turkey’s historical and geographic potentials. His foreign policy masterpiece, Stratejik Derinlik (Strategic Depth) lays out his grand vision of Turkish foreign policy. However, in order to comprehend the essence of his thinking, one needs to examine his earlier articles and books on political philosophy. It would be clear through examination of these works that Davutoglu’s main contribution to AKP foreign policy orientation was his insistence on a civilizational authenticity of Turkish identity as opposed to the idea of Turkey in a process of attaining Western civilization. In his, Alternative Paradigms, the Impact of Islamic and Western Weltanschaungs on Political Theory, Davutoglu argues that conflicts and contrasts between Islamic and Western paradigms are not merely political but essential as they stem from distinct philosophical, methodological, and theoretical backgrounds. Thus there is an essential linkage between ontology, epistemology, and axiology. While the Islamic paradigm is based on tawhid (oneness of God) and ontological differentiation, the Western paradigm is based on ontological proximity. This leads to major differences in regard to justification of political authority, emergence of power theories, and pluralism.26 In Civilizational Transformation and the Muslim World, Davutoglu elineates the essence of a Muslim grievances to the world order that was in process of being established following the end of the Cold War: The Muslim masses are feeling insecure in relation to the functioning of the international system because of the double standards in international affairs. The expansionist policy of Israel has been tolerated by the international system. The Intifada has been caned a terrorist activity while the mass rebellions of East Europe have been declared as the victory of freedom. There was no serious response against the Soviet military intervention in Azerbaijan in January 1990 when hundreds of Azeris were killed while western powers reacted against intervention in the Baltic republics. The international organizations, which are very sensitive to the rights of sman minorities in Muslim countries, did not respond against the sufferings of the Muslim minorities in India, the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Kashmir Burma, etc. The atomic powers in some Muslim countries like Pakistan and Kazakhstan have been declared a danger when such weapons have been accepted as the internal affairs of other states such as Israel and India. Muslims, who make up about 25 percent of the world’s population, have no permanent member in the Security Council and an appeals from the Muslim world are being vetoed by one of the permanent members. The Muslim masses have lost their confidence in the international system as a neutral problem-solver after the experiences of the last decade.27

In Stratejik Derinlik, Davutoglu urges Turkey to discover its geographical and historical potentials and reflect them in foreign policy. According to him, Turkey has no option to be a peripheral player; it is located at the center of world politics and thus destined to play a central role. Hence, an assertive foreign policy orientation is advocated. However, this assertiveness is built on “zero-problem strategy” in regard to relations with Turkey’s neighbors. The author asserts that there are three options for dynamically evolving nations like Turkey who confront a dynamically evolving international system. These can also be seen as three distinct ideological groups in Turkey: (1) those who advocate postponement of the task to redefine [Turkey’s] position by suppressing its power capabilities until the international system becomes more stable, (2) those who adopt a passive stance through a complete submission to the dynamism of the international system coupled by a negligence of national power capabilities; and finany (3) those who advocate melting “the national dynamism” in the pot of “the global dynamism” so as to mould it into a global power source.28 Each of these options is associated with a distinct mindset in the leadership. The first group suffer from a lack of self-confidence, the second from a crisis of identity, and the last from a lack of self-confidence and appreciation of the country’s historical and geographic depth. While the first group seek to gain time by postponing national dynamism and the second misses the opportunity under a melancholy of globalization. The third group, however, sees every moment as having the potential to shape the future and sees every wasted moment as a lost opportunity. Furthermore, the first group aims to suppress societal dynamism, and the second suffers from a cultural alienation from their own societies in order not to miss the train of global cultural trends, the third sees themselves in complete harmony with their own society and tries to mobilize every element of dynamism in it. Only this last group could establish a meaningful relationship between the local and global space of existence and attempts to prepare the conditions for future generations to be global actors with dignity.29 Hence, for Davutoglu, Turkey is on the verge of a historic crossroad. Turkey should combine “its historical and geographical depth with rational strategic planning,” in order to derive a potential for a leap in its position from these local and global sources of dynamism.30

It is a question how this mega-theoretical outline has been implemented in the AKP foreign policy. Davutoglu’s ideological influence over the AKP is a matter of contention. In many regards, the AKP foreign policy orientation reflects his overall influence, particularly in regard to pursuing a zero-problem foreign policy vis-à-vis Turkey’s traditionally problematic neighbors, including Syria, Greece, and Iran. Yet on the other hand, Turkey has a deep foreign policy bureaucracy and traditions, which can hardly be maneuvered by one single man or even a political party.

Furthermore, the AKP’s dilemma is that it is only a government, not the power, because the real power continues to be held by unelected military or foreign policy bureaucrats. This constrains the ability of the government to conduct a foreign policy independent of considerations of the domestic power balance. These arguments will be examined in the case of three foreign policy issues that confront Turkey: the EU membership process, relations with the United States, and Turkey’s Middle East politics.

 

The EU Membership Process

The AKP represents a radical shift from Erbakan's confrontational approach to the West, particularly with regard to EU membership. As a matter of fact, the RP had started to embrace the idea of membership during its tenure in power, but this was more due to the influence of the young generation in that government, particularly Abdullah Gul. After the split of the young generation, the Milli Gorii tradition as now represented by the new Felicity Party (Fazilet Partisi-SP) reverted to its traditional opposition to the idea of EU membership. The SP, which is unofficially under Erbakan's firm grip, tries to maintain its mass-level organization by more strongly highlighting its Islamic identity than the "catch-all" AKP that positions itself in the center-right platform. It should also be noted that this transformation of identity within the classical Islamic political platform was adversely affected by the controversial decisions taken by the European Court of Human Rights. The Court's decisions on human rights issues involving conservative members of Turkish society, such as the headscarfban in Turkish public and private universities, have caused a massive sense of disillusionment among conservative members of Turkish society who had begun to see European integration as a channel of emancipation. In a particular case, the Court did not find the Turkish state guilty in denying a female medical student, Leyla-ahin, equal educational opportunities due to her headscarf, citing the "special" conditions of the country facing the threat of religious fundamentalism as justification of its ruling. This was despite the description of the ban on headscarves as a violation of human rights by major international human rights organizations including the Human Rights Watch. Many human rights organizations find reference to the "special" conditions as problematic and contradictory to the universal definition of human rights. Contributing to this mood of disillusionment was developments such as the Danish cartoon crisis (2005) and the passing of a resolution in the French parliament that, if approved by the upper house, would make it illegal to reject the Armenian genocide claims (2006). This growing sense of disillusionment and decreasing enthusiasm have forced the AKP government to fine turn its approach to the issue particularly towards the end of its term. The AKP government had to balance between its firm commitment to the membership goal and necessities of electoral politics. In the context of the militarization of politics that intensified after the February 28 process, the Islamic movement revised its stance and began to give full support to the idea of membership. However, the AKP's pro-ED membership discourse should be examined within the larger context of social, economic, and cultural transformation that took place in the country since the liberalization reforms of former Prim Minister Ozal. This transformation has allowed the previously ignored and suppressed population in the conservative belt of Turkey to open themselves to the world through education and business activities. For this reason, the AKP's stance was not merely a tactical shift that occurred because of its desire to obtain legitimacy from the military elites. The AKP had to respond to demands of globalization by its own mass support base which experienced a massive upward social mobilization in the last two decades. The emergence of the Anatolian capital and social movements such as the Islamic social movement of Fethullah Gillen are part of this process.31 The Anatolian capital in the geographic center of Turkey, most famously in cities such as Konya, Kayseri, and Gaziantep appears to be more interested in foreign trade and economic liberalization than the Istanbul-based "big capital" who traditionally enjoyed the support of the state. Reflecting these social changes in Turkey, the Gulen movement was able to globalize itself by establishing a wide network of schools and cultural centers around the world.32 A similar transformation was observable within the political Islamic movement especially among the young members of the Welfare party.33 As discussed earlier, these members did not hold a menachean interpretation of international politics. The AKP, eventually formed by this group, indicated their willingness to make Turkey a full member of the European Union immediately after its establishment and before finally forming the government. The party leadership organized a massive diplomatic campaign in key European capitals before the Copenhagen summit of the EU held in December 2002. In this diplomatic campaign that aimed to secure a precise date for the beginning of negotiations for Turkish membership, Erdogan, who did not occupy any official position in the country at that time, was given a high level reception by European leaders. He was also given a White House reception by the U.S. President George W. Bush. During these contacts, Erdogan challenged Europe's unwillingness to accept Turkey as a full member of the EU. In an interview he gave to the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung Erdogan stated that Turkey would continue its membership struggle until the last second, but it had no intention of waiting another forty years.34 This decisiveness was looked upon suspiciously by the members of the Turkish secularist elite as well as by many foreign observers. Many thought that the AKP was simply trying to build a legitimacy ground for itself by appearing supportive of the Western orientation of Turkish foreign policy, and as soon as it secured power it would alter this stance. However, in the end, the AKP leadership after coming to power in 2002 has led the process through which Turkey obtained not only a negotiations date, but also started the actual negotiations with ED for full membership. While the suspicious circles maintain their views, it appears the image of the West has been transformed within political Islam from that of the Hobbesian Other to the Lockean Other as far as the AKP is concerned. In this sense, the AKP has reverted to the image of the West as perceive by the traditional Islamic social movements at the expense of Erbakan's anti -Western discourse. The smaller SP and other marginal groups continue to perceive the West as the Hobbesian Other of Turkish national identity and in this sense they agree more with the nationalist groups. A significant development was the formation of a political-intellectual alliance among the opponents of the ED membership, the nationalist front (ulusal cephe), which includes radical secularists and conservative Turkish nationalists. Interestingly, Erbakan's Felicity Party and its supporting media organ, Milli Gazete, gave tacit support to this nationalist formation, even though Kemalist nationalists eagerly supported Refahyol's collapse only five years earlier. The alliance included such unlikely partners as Kemalist Cumhuriyet's chief columnist ilhan Selyuk and the Turkish nationalist political party, MHP, which were on the opposing side of the ideological polarization of the pre-1980 era. Yeni Safak columnist Koray Duzgoren comments on this alliance as follows: "What took place was not conversion from one ideology to another, but a historical meeting on the common denominator of nationalism.. . .Nationalism brought together these two political opponents, who had poked each other's eyes in the past, and made them partners of the same fate in opposition to a globalizing world.“35 The common denominator of the two rival but equally nationalist ideologies was their firm opposition to Turkey's participation in European integration. In contrast to conventional categorizations such as the right and the left or the secularist and the Islamist, being in favor or being against the EU membership has become one of the defining characteristics of ideological polarization in Turkey. This is the area where two security cultures clash, one based on the fear of national disintegration and loss of sovereignty, and the other characterized by eagerness to engage in a globalized world, regional integration and confidence in foreign policy.36 In this new context of politics, the secularist and nationalist political discourse against the ED is being voiced by the highest members of the political establishment. In an interesting statement that discloses how Europe was perceived as the Hobbesian Other in the Kemalist mentality, the former chief of the National Security Council, General Tuncay Kllm described the ED as a Christian Club and instead recommended stronger relations with Iran and Russia. This was quite striking because the 28 February decisions that led to the collapse of the Erbakan government specifically referred to the threat of Iran. This was not a contradiction given the interplay of double Others in the Kemalist mentality. The Islamic Other, often associated with the Islamic regime of lran is evoked in opposition to the Islamists under the guise of Westernization, whereas the Western Other is increasingly remembered in the context of European integration.37 Hence in the post-Cold War era, Turkey has faced replacement of actors in the old modernization school. With the AKP, the Islamists have replaced the Kemalist nationalists as principal actors of Westernization as expressed in the goal of full membership in the EU, and Kemalist nationalists adopted the old discourse of Islamists as the main opponents to this process. This transformation took place as a result of perceived gains and loses of actors in a rapidly globalizing world and its effects on Turkish society. The AKP has so far made its stance very clear in regard to the EU membership politics. However, it has to face suspicions that its support is designed to secure political rights under the mantle of the EU membership process to weaken the secularist regime in Turkey. Many skeptics argue that AKP leadership's claim to have changed is counterfeit and that they are practicing takiyye. For instance, Ruen Aklr, a journalist specializing on Turkish Islamic movements, argued that a person like Tayyip Erdogan could not change his philosophy even if he wanted to, as "he is an Islamist since he was 12... [hence] he cannot betray his roots.,,38 Such suspicious views denied the possibility of any transformation of identity. They also overlooked the underlying social and economic transformation that the Turkish society has experienced.

Turkish Islamists' experience with a stagnant and repressive state identity that denies them representation in the public sphere has forced them to expand themselves into the world. Under the liberalization of economic activities in Turkey since the 1980s, Islamists and religious conservatives in Turkey have started to see themselves as beneficiaries of globalization and integration with Europe. These processes were regarded as expanding their opportunities for education and trade and forced a discursive shift within the Islamic movement. Without inclusion of structural changes occurring in Turkey in the last quarter century, the transformation of Islamist identity will be hard to explain. In that regard, AKP's discursive shift reflects demands and interests of its own constituency rather than being a tactical move designed to persuade domestic and international circles. According to poll data, the AKP constituency remains to be the most supportive of the ED membership among all other parties in the country. According to a poll conducted by the Pollmark for Yeni $afak, 71.2 percent of the AKP supporters support Turkey's ED membership, in contrast to the 64.9 percent of the CHP supporters who affirm the membership.39 However, overall Turkish public support to the membership has declined within the past year due to widely shared frustration over Europe's increasingly visible anxiety over religion and the Turkish membership issue. As of August 2006, only 43 percent of the Turkish people supported the membership.40 It should also be mentioned that AKP's pro-ED stance and its perceived willingness to compromise on key strategic matters such as Cyprus is seen as risky, given the open-ended nature of the ED process and the ambivalence regarding a possible Turkish membership among the increasingly restive European public. On the other hand, the change of leadership in Germany from the Social Democrats who gave full support to Turkey's full membership to the Christian Democrats who advocated "privileged partnership" is a middle-way solution between full membership and total rejection. Hence there are real limits for any party in Turkey to compromise further in order to secure membership in the EU. The AKP government has so far maintained a decisive position on this issue and challenged the basic assumption of the modernization theory that Islamic elements oppose the process of modernization.

Does AKP's support of EU membership attest the fact that the Turkish process of Westernization and civilizational reorientation has become a hegemonic ideology, regardless of what Kemalists today say? This is a hard question for any AKP leader and cannot perhaps be answered without looking at the larger context of foreign policy followed by the AKP. Yet the critical point that needs highlighting here is that the AKP has redefined the EU membership for Turkey. The membership has been presented by the AKP government as a dialogue or meeting of two civilizations rather than as entry of Turkey into Western civilization. Erdogan has come to embrace Turkey's entry into the EU as an opportunity for a "reconciliation of civilizations." He stated that [to have] a country like Turkey, where the cultures of Islam and democracy have merged together, taking part in such an institution as the EU, will bring harmony of civilizations. That is why we think it is the project of the century. Weare there as a guarantee of an entente between the civilizations. The countries that want to exclude us from Europe are not playing their roles in history. 41

Similarly Erdogan asserted, "Our greatest claim is that of civilizational alliance. We claimed that [if Turkey is rejected] the EU is doomed to stay as a Christian club. Only if Turkey joins the EU, then it will not be remembered as a Christian club, but rather as the address for civilizational alliance. "42 On another occasion, Erdogan criticized the EU's position against Turkey on the issue of Cyprus and stated that Turkey has followed a "win-win" strategy as a reflection of its distinct civilizational identity: "They win and we lose; this is not fair. We win and the they lose; but this is against our principle of justice. We come from such a civilization that in this civilization there is no oppression but justice, no discrimination, but justice. "43

Hence the AKP's position on the ED membership issue is accompanied by a new orientation of civilizational identity. In this regard, by demanding participation in Europe while refusing its civilizational centrality, AKP departs from both traditional secular­ nationalist and Islamist-nationalist discourses. AKP's civilizational discourse demands authenticity for a Turkish/Islamic civilization within Europe. Islamist intellectuals regard this transformation as reduced to a discourse of the AKP and have not yet obtained the principal state identity of Turkey. Ahmet Tagetiren, a leading Islamist intellectual, observes that, while the AKP has brought a new civilizational discourse to Turkish-EU relations, it failed to make this discourse a part of the Turkish state identity, as various units within the state continue to debate AKP's perception of Islamic belonging.44  On the other hand, the attempt to redefine Turkey's relations by the AKP leadership has received sharp criticism of secular and liberal elites. Despite such criticism, the AKP appears to be determined in its support of EU membership. The sensitivity of the political establishment on AKP's change of orientation toward an Islamic direction is quite interesting given the fact that the AKP appears to be more eager to support full membership than the secularist political establishment. In other words, AKP's support of ED membership is not regarded as sufficient for the party to pass the security clearances of the political establishment because it reimagines the meaning of Europe. This new redefinition by the AKP contradicts with the liberal secularist notion of Europe, which is printed on one side of the Kemalist coin, characterized by a desire to assimilate into the civilization rather than by an eagerness to integrate into Europe with an authentic civilizational claim. The EU membership is widely supported in the country, but Europe is no longer seen as the center of civilization into which Turkey needs to be assimilated. Turks increasingly consider EU membership in instrumental terms. The transformation in AKP's position in support of the membership reflects an already ongoing transformation of the Islamist discourse on Europe from that of confrontation to that of cooperation, competition and expansion of opportunities. AKP's change of discourse on Europe also points to the fact that the Islamists have "succeeded in challenging the Kemalist equation of urban with modem and secular, and rural with backward and Islamic."45

Overall, Turkish conservatives tend to view Turkey's integration into Europe in a more positive light than do many secularists who are inclined to defend Turkey's sovereignty. However, the cultural conservatives of Europe are either skeptical or apprehensive about Turkey's entry into the EU. They view the European Union as a "civilizational project" rather than simply a project of coexistence of civilizations and thus question the place of Turkey within this case study.

 

1 Eric Rouleau, "Turkey: Beyond Atattirk," Foreign Policy, no. 103 (1996): 72.

2 Philip Robins, "Turkish Foreign Policy under Erbakan," Survival 39, no. 2 (1997): 83.

3 Ibid., 91.

4 "No Demons Please, Turkey's New Leader is a Moderate Not an Islamic Radical," Asiaweek, September 6, 1996.

5 U. S. State Department Briefing, October 12, 1996. For U.S. criticism of the gas deal, see Thomas W. Lippman, "U.S. Decries Turkey's Gas Deal with Tehran," Washington Post, August 13, 1996.

6 "Erbakan'a Gtil Dikeni," Radikal, January 22, 1998; "Abdullah GUl: Hatalanmlz 01du," Zaman, August 30, 1998. Bulent Arinc, interview by Nilgun Cerrahoglu, "Libya Gezisi Bir Felaketti" [Visit to Libya was a disaster], Mil/iyet, February 22, 1998.

7 The US Department of State, Daily Press Briefing, October 8, 1996.

8 "Turkey Answers Criticism From US," Boston Globe, September 10, 1996.

9 Robins, "Turkish Foreign Policy under Erbakan," 89.

10 Yalym Dogan, "Don Ki~ot'un D'si: D - 81..," Mil/iyet, January 5, 1997.

11 Alan Makovsky, "Turkey: Erbakan at Six Months," PolicyWatch, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, no. 230, December 27, 1996.

12 M. Hakan Yavuz, "Turkish-Israeli Relations through the Lens of the Turkish Identity Debate," Journal of Palestine Studies 27, no. 1 (1997).

13 Meliha Altum~lk, "The Turkish-Israeli Raproachment in the Post-Cold War Era," Middle Eastern Studies 36, no. 2 (2000): 183 quoted in Gokhan Bacik, "The Limits of an Alliance: Turkish-Israeli Relations Revisited," Arab Studies Quarterly 23, no. 3 (2001): 53.

14 Kemal Kirici, "The Future of Turkish Policy toward the Middle East," in Turkey in World Politics: An Emerging Multiregional Power, ed. Barry M. Rubin and Kemal Kirici (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001), 105.

15 Philip Robins, Suits and Uniforms: Turkish Foreign Policy since the Cold War (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003), 265.

16 There are a number of articles that highlight geo-strategic nature of the alliance between Turkey and Israel during the late 1990s. See Henri J. Barkey, "Turkey and the New Middle East: A Geopolitical Exploration," in Reluctant Neighbour: Turkey's Role in the Middle East, ed. Henri J. Barkey (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1996).

17 Alan Makovsky, "Turkey: Erbakan at Six Months," PolicyWatch, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, no. 230, December 27, 1996.

18 "28 ~ubat Hareketinin Ba~mda Demirel Vardl," (Demirel was in charge of the 28 February Movement), Zaman, February 28,2005. For Demirel's response, see Yavuz Donat, "Demirel'in 28 ~ubat'taki Rolli," (Demirel's Role in the February 28 process), and "Tanklar Kl~laya NasIl Dondli," (How the Tanks Returned Back to their Barracks), Sabah, April 01, 2005.

19 "Albright Warns Turkey to Guard its Democracy," New York Times, June 14, 1997.

20 For the text of this poem titled "Asker Duasl" (Prayer of the Soldier), 1912, see Fevziye Ahmet Tansel, Ziya Gokalp Kiilliyatz-I (Istanbul: TUrk Tarih Kurumu, 1989).

21 Omit Cizre and Menderes <;mar, "Turkey 2002: Kemalism, Islamism, and Politics in the Light of the February 28 Process," South Atlantic Quarterly 102, no. 2/3 (2003).

22 Yalam Akdogan, "The Meaning of Conservative Democratic Political Identity," in The Emergence of a New Turkey: Democracy and the Ak Parti, ed. M. Hakan Yavuz (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2006), 50.

23 "Sezer'den yeni yil mesaji," Radikal, January 1,2006. As cited and translated by M. Hakan Yavuz and Ali Nihat Ozcan, "The Kurdish Question and Turkey's Justice and Development Party," Middle East Journal 13, no. 1 (2006): 119.

24 Burhanettin Duran, "JDP and Foreign Policy as an Agent of Transformation," in The Emergence of a New Turkey: Democracy and the Ak Parti, ed. M. Hakan Yavuz (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2006).

25 Christopher Caldwell, ''the East in the West," New York Times. September 25,2005.

26 Ahmet Davutoglu, Alternative Paradigms: The Impact of Islamic and Western Weltanschauungs on Political Theory (Lanham: University Press of America, 1994).

27 Civilizational Transformation and the Muslim World (Kuala Lumpur: Mahir, 1994), 108-09; text quoted in Richard Falk, "False Universalism and the Geopolitics of Exclusion: The Case ofIslam," Third World Quarterly 18, no. 1 (1997): 13.

28 Davutoglu, Stratejik Derinlik, 10.

29 Ibid., 11.

30 Ibid., 11.

31 For a comprehensive, edited volume on the Giilen movement, see M. Hakan Yavuz and John L. Esposito, Turkish Islam and the Secular State: The Gillen Movement (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003). Present author's article inside this volume examines Fethullah Giilen's overall foreign policy perspective: "The Making of Enemy and Friend: FethuUah Gulen's Foreign Policy Identity," in Turkish Islam and Secular State: The Global Impact ofFethullah Gulen's Nur Movement, ed. M. Hakan; Yavuz and John C. Esposito (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003).

32 For an analysis of Giilen's globalist vision in comparison to other Islamic groups in Turkey, see Ahmet Kuru, "Globalization and Diversification ofIslamic Movements: Three Turkish Cases," Political Science Quarterly 120, no. 2 (2005).

33 For a political economic analysis on socio-economic transformation of Turkish Islamic movement, see Ziya Onis, "Political Economy of Islamic Resurgence in Turkey: The Rise of the Welfare Party in Perspective," Third World Quarterly 18 no. 4 (1997); Ziya Onis, "The Political Economy of Islam and Democracy in Turkey: From the Welfare Party to the AKP," in Democratization and Development: New Political Strategies for the Middle East, ed. Dietrich Jung (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); and, M. Hakan Yavuz, "The Role of the New Bourgeoisie in the Transformation of the Turkish Islamic Movement," in The Emergence of a New Turkey: Democracy and the Ak Parti, ed. M. Hakan Yavuz (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2006). For an examination of the impact of globalization on Islamic identity, see Hasan Kosebalaban, "The Impact of Globalization on Islamic Political Identity," World Affairs 168, no. 1 (2005).

34 Sueddeutche Zeitung, "Die TUrkei will nicht wieder 40 Jahre warten," 12 December 2002.

35 Yeni ($afak, February 28, 2002.

36 Hasan Kosebalaban, "Turkey's EU Membership: A Clash of Security Cultures," Middle East Policy 9, no. 2 (2002).

37 For a study that examines the framing of these double Others in the sport coverage in the secularist Turkish media, see "Turkish Media and Sports Coverage: Marking the Boundaries of National Identity," Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 13, no. 1 (2004).

38 "Turkey on the Spot," Time, November 4, 2002.

39 "AK Parti 42.7 ile iktidar, CHP ile MHP Muhalefet," Yeni ($afak, March 15,2006.

40 "Turks: We Don't Want Europe," Newsweek, August 21-28, 2006.

41 Interview with Tayyip Erdogan, Independent (U.K.), December 13,2004. 42 Yeni !jafak, January 29,2006.

43 "Ab'yle Muzakereler Dursa da Limanlari Rumlara Acmayiz," Hiirriyet, June 17,2006. 44 Personal interview with the author, July 6, 2006.

45 R. Hermann, "Political Islam in Secular Turkey," Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 14 (2003).
 

 

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