{"id":688525,"date":"2020-05-21T16:37:24","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T13:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/?p=688525"},"modified":"2020-05-21T16:37:24","modified_gmt":"2020-05-21T13:37:24","slug":"turkey-needs-flexible-foreign-policy-now-more-than-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2020\/05\/21\/turkey-needs-flexible-foreign-policy-now-more-than-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey needs flexible foreign policy now more than ever"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Turkey needs to adopt a softer foreign policy to handle the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis it’s triggered, but the government’s rhetoric makes such a shift highly unlikely.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu speaks during a joint news conference following talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, Jan. 13, 2020.\u00a0Photo by Pavel Golovkin\/REUTERS.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Cengiz Candar <\/strong>@cengizcandar<\/p>\n

Topics covered<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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covid-19, core-periphery eu relations, turkish influence in the middle east, turkish influence in syria, turkish influence in libya, uae, turkish foreign policy, turkish government<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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May 18, 2020<\/p>\n

When Ahmet Davutoglu\u00a0was Turkey\u2019s foreign minister from 2009 to 2014, he frequently\u00a0called a group of journalists\u00a0to share his vision of Turkish foreign policy. A chatterbox\u00a0who can speak for hours, he would reveal\u00a0his views on history, strategy\u00a0and international relations. He loved to talk geopolitics\u00a0and emphasize Turkey\u2019s central role in the international arena. He used to frequently refer to a compass metaphor\u00a0placing\u00a0Turkey at the heart of\u00a0every major conflict zone in the world.<\/p>\n

He argued that Turkey has to adopt a foreign policy with a 360-degree vision. The current foreign policy-makers of Turkey are following in the footsteps of Davutoglu,\u00a0who succeeded Turkish President Recep\u00a0Tayyip Erdogan as prime minister and party chairman in 2014 until he was fired by him in May 2016.<\/p>\n

Today Davutoglu\u00a0is the leader of the Future Party, breaking away from the ruling Justice and Development Party. Regardless of whether one agreed with his arguably ambitious\u00a0views regarding foreign policy, he was a high-profile figure as Turkey\u2019s foreign minister. His successor Mevlut Cavusoglu is underwhelming in comparison.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Cavusoglu inherited Davutoglu\u2019s Turkey with foreign policy issues to contend with in every direction. Promoting Erdogan as a leader with global stature means\u00a0Turkey needs to act as a global international relations\u00a0player far beyond its means,\u00a0in conflict\u00a0or friction with so many foreign governments.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s reaction to the joint declaration by the foreign ministers of Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates and France on the Eastern Mediterranean and Libya is noteworthy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The five countries\u00a0clash with Turkey regarding the Eastern Mediterranean’s gas drilling, maritime boundaries\u00a0and Libya. The Turkish Foreign Ministry accused the group of “seeking regional chaos and instability.”<\/p>\n

With the\u00a0fiery language employed so frequently in Turkey’s domestic politics, it characterized the five countries as “have fallen into a delirium\u00a0as their agendas are disrupted by Turkey.” The\u00a0statement avoided the word Cyprus\u00a0and used GCA instead, referring to the Greek Cypriot Administration. Three of the countries facing Turkey’s\u00a0wrath\u00a0are members of the European Union, with which\u00a0some observers say Turkey will need to repair relations in the wake of the pandemic crisis that has left a devastating impact on the Turkish economy.<\/p>\n

Among the three EU members, France\u00a0was singled out and accused of\u00a0seeking to establish “a state of terror in Syria” that would naturally be detrimental for Turkey’s security.<\/p>\n

“It is apparent that France, whose intentions to establish a state of terror in Syria were disrupted with a heavy blow by our Operation Peace Spring, is attempting to be the patron of this axis of malice,” the statement said.<\/p>\n

Interestingly,\u00a0the Turkish military operation conducted against the Syrian Kurds in October 2019 could be interpreted as\u00a0foiling\u00a0the intentions of France\u00a0\u2014 Turkey\u2019s NATO ally\u00a0\u2014\u00a0in northeastern Syria. Moreover, the Turkish Foreign Ministry accused France of being “the patron of this axis of malice,” a metaphor reminiscent of US President George W. Bush’s qualification of “axis of evil” including Iran, Iraq\u00a0and North Korea in a 2002 speech.<\/p>\n

On May 11, the day the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s belligerent statement was issued, Cavusoglu\u00a0accused the UAE of “bringing chaos to the Middle East,” speaking to Akit TV, a hard-line\u00a0Islamist television channel.<\/p>\n

“If you are asking who is destabilizing this region, who is bringing chaos, then we would say Abu Dhabi without any hesitation,” he said, and added, “It is a reality that they are the force that unsettled Libya and destroyed Yemen.”<\/p>\n

He also accused the Emirates\u00a0of extending support to the militants in Somalia, where Turkey has a military base to train Somalian troops.<\/p>\n

Turkey’s uneasy\u00a0foreign policy objectives seem not to be confined to\u00a0France, the UAE\u00a0and the other countries in Ankara’s “axis of malice” but spread throughout\u00a0the vastness of the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the Middle East and North Africa.\u00a0It also extends to the United States and the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, as they are involved in mediating between rival Syrian Kurdish groups.<\/p>\n

“Turkish disgruntlement was palpable in a May 11 dispatch in Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency. It characterized the effort to unite disparate Syrian Kurdish factions as more of a conspiracy aimed at creating ‘international representation space’ for the ‘terrorist organization in northern Syria,’\u201d wrote Al-Monitor’s Amberin Zaman. \u201cOminously and unusually, Turkey also fingered Nechirvan Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq\u00a0and a longtime ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Anadolu said Barzani had been \u2018commissioned\u2019 by France and the United States to implement the plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turkey\u00a0seems to be pursuing a conflict policy with everyone.<\/h4>\n

At the crossroads of an unprecedented economic and financial crisis that requires Turkey to reconcile with the United States and European Union, the trajectory of Turkish foreign policy puzzles many sober minds.<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal\u00a0reported\u00a0May 13 that against the pressures of the pandemic, Turkey’s practice of using up its foreign exchange reserves has become unsustainable and the country is headed for a crisis.<\/p>\n

Such a situation demands flexible and soft-spoken foreign policy, contrary to what Erdogan’s Turkey manifests today.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Turkey needs to adopt a softer foreign policy to handle the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis it’s triggered, but the government’s rhetoric makes such a shift highly unlikely. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu speaks during a joint news conference following talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, Jan. 13, 2020.\u00a0Photo by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4092,"featured_media":672387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-688525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688525","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\/4092"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}