Hurriyet Daily News
Ankara's Libya missteps
By İLHAN TANIR
The fight in Libya proved to be much harder to deal with for countries both in the West and East. Turkey has been no exception to that, especially as a Muslim member country of NATO which has aspirations to lead the Middle East at the same time as having extensive interests in Libya.
“We welcome Turkey to the world of double standards as a regional leader,” said one Washington-based Turkey observer this week when I asked him to comment on Turkey’s approach to Libya. According to this expert, someone who sat and talked with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently, Turkey’s sharp and abrupt oppositions to the sanctions on Libyan regime, then the NATO involvement and any foreign intervention mostly stemmed from Erdoğan’s “emotional reactions.”
Indeed, Erdoğan’s “What has NATO got to do in Libya?” inveigh will not easily fade from memories, when we observe now that same Turkish administration contributing the largest fleet to implement a naval blockade of Libya in support of the United Nations' arms embargo.
Another Turkey observer in Washington described Turkey’s Libya policy in the following fashion, “From the beginning of the Libyan crisis, Turkish foreign policy has resembled a car that is going in the wrong direction at 200 kilometers per hour, at the same time trying to convince the other cars that they are going in the wrong direction.”
At the start of the crisis, Turkey articulated extensively about its immediate concerns in Libya, pointing to its tens of thousands of citizens, along with billions of dollars in investments. Ankara’s legitimate concerns were well understood in Washington in those weeks, and its cautious steps also appeared justified in the first period. After all, Ankara had every right to look after its own interests as a foreign state, like any other.
Though Ankara's real issue, along with its knee-jerk sharp opposition to intervention calls, was its inability to adjust its position according to rapidly changing international public opinion that gained momentum against Gadhafi over the weeks. Erdoğan, following the military operation, finally stated at beginning of this week that he privately told Gadhafi to step down three weeks ago to alleviate mounting criticism against his administration’s soft take on Gadhafi’s ruthless actions.
Turkey also missed the chance by not taking a lead role to rally behind the United Nations Security Council resolution vocally, when Gadhafi forces were taking back other cities and getting closer to Benghazi to wipe out the rebels.
Instead of emphasizing this imminent and clear humanitarian situation and taking an active part with the coalition forces as an aspiring regional power, the Justice and Development Party, or AKP’s top foreign officials mounted very vague accusations against the West for it is pursuing its own “oil interest” and also failing to overcome its Orientalist mindset.
Erdoğan’s top foreign policy adviser İbrahim Kalın’s recent columns in Today’s Zaman open a wide window of opportunity to read Ankara’s ideological stand point on the matter. Kalın’s “Overcoming Orientalism and Eurocentrism in the Middle East” piece especially argues this mindset and states that “the soft revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and the uprisings in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and other places have one thing in common: Arabs do not want to be ruled by dictators. This is the first lesson for Arab Orientalism.”
The real dilemma here is for Kalın that it is Washington, and Ankara's nowadays much disfavoring capital Paris, who took the initiative to stop dictator's forces at the outskirts of Benghazi, with starting its aerial bombing campaign while Turkey’s foreign minister was calling for “no foreign intervention.”
Another argument used by Ankara is that it is Nicolas Sarkozy, an unpopular French leader who appears to be trailing other presidential candidates in his country, who pressured U.S. President Obama to start the air strike campaign last weekend, when actually Turkey was working on a diplomatic solution.
When I conveyed this argument to a Washington expert who was familiar with the decision-making process that went on at the White House’s National Security Council last weekend, he chuckled and stated, “Nobody in the world would pressure a U.S. president into a conflict that he is not entirely comfortable with the reasons, particularly at a time when there are two wars to handle.”
This expert added, “It took hours at the NSC to work on that decision when Obama's Latin America travel plans were ongoing.” Obama also risks big with this intervention, an operation that appears to have a real potential to drag into the open-ended conflict, while he was supposed to end the wars and solve budget woes.
As a Muslim member of NATO, and with its heavy ties with Libya, Turkey had a big stake over the affairs related to Libya, and its long hours of diplomacy especially on Thursday in Brussels ought to be respected. Turkey’s cautions about civilian causalities in Libya also is very dignified and makes a lot of sense when considering civilian death news reports in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Now that the decision has been reached by NATO members to take charge of the no-fly zone imposition over Libyan airspace, and there is a real possibility in the coming days of also taking over the mission of protecting civilians against the Gadhafi regime, Turkey’s role will be equally crucial with regard to use of force if necessary to deter Gadhafi forces from slaughtering rebels.
At any rate, Turkey once more has become an actor within NATO to threaten to block a major decision, following the Lisbon NATO summit in late last year where Turkey had serious issues with the concept of the missile defense shield and also previously had serious objections during the appointment process of current NATO chief Rasmussen.
Ankara's pointed statements about the West’s intentions on Libya also continued to draw a picture of Turkey in Washington that is increasingly at odds with the Western interests and general understandings with the world affairs.
Whether the pattern of Turkey’s opposing posture at stages like NATO is a signal of changing ideologies of the country, plain unpreparedness before the rapidly evolving Arab world or pure conflicting national interests is up for a debate. The answer well maybe a mix of all three.
Even in case of a greatly disturbed dictator who openly threatens to show "no mercy" on his own citizens, the AKP foreign policy team ran to borrow good old “Orientalism” arguments, in addition to fueling lots of conspiracy theories to catch fires among the Turkish public and foreign policy writers.
It is true that no living creature in the world is able to predict what the next step in Libya is. Though the revolt fever appears to be catching in Syria, Erdoğan's great friend’s land, and promising to get even closer to Ankara’s heart without any sign of an end in sight.
For region and Turkey’s salvation, it can be only hoped that Libya missteps would give Davutoglu’s team a good wake up call to work on a comprehensive foreign policy principals that can respond and support Arab peoples' universal demands in clear terms even if every country that is dealing with revolts has its own set of circumstances.
TESEV survey in Washington
On Thursday morning, the Center for American Progress, a think tank that is closely aligned with the current Obama administration, hosted Dr. Mensur Akgün and the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, or TESEV, to present their survey, called “the perception of Turkey in the Middle East 2010.” The survey follows last year’s first-ever survey taken in seven Middle Eastern countries, plus Iran.
The survey was taken before the wave of revolts began, and with a sample size of on average less than 300 people in each country. TESEV’s survey puts Turkey’s favorability rate among Arab people at 80 percent in 2010, following 75 percent in 2009.
According to the same survey, Turkey’s “Muslim background” is the most important reason for Arabs to consider it as a model by 15 percentage points, followed by its economy, then democracy and vocal support for Palestinians cause.
It is known that Turkey’s Foreign Ministry was quite happy with the results of the survey, which consists of high favorability rates as well as other remarkably high perceptions towards Turkey.
The next survey will be definitely very telling about Turkey’s performance when it comes to the big Arab Spring of 2011.
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