Posted May 8, 2011, 12:05 pm<\/p>\n
Nichole Sobecki \t \t \tGlobalPost<\/p>\n
ISTANBUL \u2013 Turkey has emerged as a regional heavyweight, expanding its web of influence across the Arab world.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/erdogan.jpeg\" "\\"erdogan\\"")
But as the old regional order crumbles beneath the tide of revolution, the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is beginning to rethink its foreign policy \u2013 which in recent years has largely been to play nice with everyone \u2013 and take a bolder stance against authoritarian regimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve been trying to steer a realistic path through this maze,\u201d said Hugh Pope, director of the Turkey-Cyprus project at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. \u201cBut this is a real wake-up call for Turkey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Turkey has longstanding ties to governments now beset by unrest, ties that have been meticulously cultivated through its much-heralded “zero problems with neighbors” policy. Under that policy, it has pushed for greater economic and diplomatic integration with countries across the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Before the uprising in Libya took hold, for instance, Turkey had sought stronger relations with its leader, Muammar Gaddafi. Turkish exports to Libya had reached $2 billion a year and 25,000 Turkish citizens were engaged in major construction projects there, mainly in cooperation with the Libyan government.<\/p>\n
But after two months of violent clashes between Libyan rebels and forces loyal to Gaddafi, in which as many as 30,000 people are thought to have been killed, Erdogan finally decided to pack it up. He closed the Turkish embassy in Tripoli \u2013 one of the last still open there \u2013 and called on Gaddafi to step down immediately.<\/p>\n
\u201cMuammar Gaddafi, instead of taking our suggestions into account, refraining from shedding blood or seeking for ways to maintain the territorial unity of Libya, chose blood, tears, oppression and attacks on his own people,\u201d Erdogan said during a televised news conference last week.<\/p>\n
It was Turkey\u2019s first move against a former partner, but probably not its last, analysts said. Wrapped in Erdogan\u2019s call for Gaddafi to step down appeared to be a message to Syria\u2019s president, Bashar al-Assad, as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI find it necessary to repeat my warning to countries in the region,\u201d he said. \u201cEquality, justice and democracy are not the right of some countries but of every nation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Syria, a country with which Turkey had recently abolished visa requirements and held small-scale military exercises, has responded with brutal violence to an ever-growing protest movement, killing \u2013 by most estimates \u2013 hundreds of people.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile he wasn\u2019t speaking directly to Syria, he made it clear that Turkey\u2019s support for al-Assad is not unconditional,\u201d said Joshua Walker, a professor at the University of Richmond and expert on Turkey.<\/p>\n
If Libya was a problem for Turkey\u2019s foreign policy, Syria is a much bigger one. In many ways, Syria is Turkey\u2019s gateway to the Arab world, and it\u2019s a place they have invested heavily in for years.<\/p>\n
Images from Syria published in Turkish newspapers paint a brutal image of security forces shooting unarmed demonstrators. About 200 members of Assad\u2019s Baath Party have resigned in protest and the violence looks unlikely to end anytime soon.<\/p>\n
Unwilling to set themselves directly against Assad, the Turks have so far used the same strategy as they had with Gaddafi \u2013 a mix of private pressure and veiled public criticism. Last month the Turkish foreign minister visited Assad and the Turkish intelligence chief was dispatched to Damascus.<\/p>\n
But with Syria so close to home \u2013 they share a border \u2013 Turkey has more to lose if things spiral out of control as they have in Libya.<\/p>\n
A deeply sectarian country in which the Alawite minority controls all the levers of power in a Sunni majority country, things there could quickly turn much more dangerous than they already are. Trade between the two countries would all but end and tens of thousands of refugees could end up at Ankara\u2019s doorstep.<\/p>\n
Turkey has for the most part continued to hedge its bets, keeping a pulse to the sea changes going on around them and cautiously, some say too cautiously, measuring their response.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve put a lot of emphasis on the zero-problem policy, at the expense of its relationship with the West,\u201d Pope said. \u201cBut, for some time, the Middle East is going to be less stable, less wealthy and less appealing.\u201d<\/p>\n
For years Erdogan championed Palestinians, confronting Israel and winning himself popularity on the Arab streets. But by ignoring the violence against civilians in cities across Libya for so long, and now in Syria as well, experts say the prime minister is at risk of losing the credibility he has so carefully crafted.<\/p>\n
Until Erdogan\u2019s decision last week to break diplomatically with Libya, Turkish flags were being burned on the streets of Benghazi, the center of the rebellion, and the country\u2019s consulate was almost overrun.<\/p>\n
\u201cTurkey\u2019s vision for the Middle East was predicated on cooperation with the status quo there,\u201d wrote Semih Idiz, a columnist for the Turkish Daily Hurriyet, adding that \u201cAnkara will have to establish new bridges now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Erdogan takes tougher stance against authoritarian\u00a0regimes Posted May 8, 2011, 12:05 pm Nichole Sobecki GlobalPost ISTANBUL \u2013 Turkey has emerged as a regional heavyweight, expanding its web of influence across the Arab world. But as the old regional order crumbles beneath the tide of revolution, the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":33427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[1018],"class_list":["post-33426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}