Under the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), Turkey's foreign policy has been associated with the prescriptions and efforts of three men: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President Abdullah Gül, and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu.
by Ilias I. Kouskouvelis
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2013, pp. 47-56 (view PDF)
Davutoğlu, a former international relations professor, has been the most articulate exponent of the troika's ideas, penning perhaps the most authoritative summary of its worldview in his 2001 Stratejik Derinlik (Strategic Depth)[1] and coining its foremost article of faith: a "zero-problems policy" with Turkey's neighbors because Ankara "wants to eliminate all the problems from her relations with neighbors or at least to minimize them as much as possible."[2]
The primary author of Turkey's deeply problematic "zero problems" foreign policy is Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu (right), seen here with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The main thrust of Davutoğlu's writing is a deep conviction in the incompatibility of the West and the Islamic world and resentment of the West for its attempt to impose its values and political system on the rest of the world.
This might all be well and good if such words were supported by actions. But Davutoğlu has also described Turkey as a "heavyweight wrestler," hinting that it may use "the maximum of its abilities" when dealing with its neighboring "middleweight wrestlers."[3] A survey of Ankara's relations with these "middleweight wrestlers" reveals its "zero problems policy" to be little more than a cover for the AKP's reasserted "neo-Ottoman" ambitions.
Achieving a zero problems status with Greece and Cyprus would seem to be the most difficult goal for Ankara to attain, given both countries' painful history with Turkey.
Even if one could put aside the long and tortuous past—from the Greek war of independence of the 1820s, to the 1923 uprooting of Greeks from Asia Minor, to sporadic crises over Aegean islands (1976, 1987, 1996), to the continuing standoff over air space and territorial waters—the AKP's rise to power has exacerbated, not allayed, tensions.
Far from following a zero problems policy with Greece, Turkey maintains existing problems and adds new ones: It has made alleged violations of the Muslim minority's rights in Western Thrace an item on the Islamic Conference's agenda[4] and has muddied the waters over what constitutes Greece's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) by questioning the role of the Greek island of Kastelorizo (one mile off Turkey's coast) in determining that EEZ. And Davutoğlu's ambitions did not stop here:
The security of the Balkans is increasingly identified with the security considerations of Turkey's western border. The security zone that has been established in eastern Thrace during the Cold War should be extended to the west with multilateral and bilateral agreements which should be made on a Balkan level.[5]These are not mere words. Ankara has recently signed a military cooperation agreement with Albania, allowing docking privileges for Turkish warships at Durës, thereby marking the return of the Turkish navy to the Adriatic Sea after centuries.[6] The press has reported that Turkey is responsible for the cancellation of an agreement between Athens and Tirana over the delimitation of maritime zones,[7] and Turkey has also initiated major programs of military assistance to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, a state with which Greece is in dispute over the use of the name "Macedonia." Finally, Turkey continues to flood Greece and the European Union with tens of thousands of mostly Muslim illegal immigrants.[8]
Meanwhile, the already fraught relations with Cyprus have worsened. Turkey not only works against ending the continued and illegal occupation of the northern half of the island but seems bent on increasing problems. Such behavior is not all that surprising considering Davutoğlu's belief:
The zero problems policy has not failed, as has been suggested, because it was tested against authoritarian governments:[75] Greece, Cyprus, Armenia, and Israel are hardly governed by dictators, and Iraq, for all its failings, has not descended to this level. The policy has failed because it was a tool for neo-Ottoman ambitions and global aspirations that have now become all too obvious.[76]
The unvarnished truth is that Ankara acts, to use Davutoğlu's metaphor, like a heavyweight wrestler seeking to intimidate its middleweight neighbors. As such, "zero problems with neighbors" may turn into the country's zero hour as Ankara finds itself increasingly considered an unreliable partner by its allies and a regional bully by its neighbors.
Ilias I. Kouskouvelis is Professor of International Relations at the University of Macedonia, Greece, and Director of the Laboratory of International Relations and European Integration. The author thanks Nikolaos Raptopoulos, Alexander Koutsoukis, and Revecca Pedi for their incisive comments.
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