Davutoğlu doctrine elicits new responses

The Turkish prime minister’s emotional speech to the nation last Friday about the achievements of his government during October at home and abroad must have impressed his followers.

At home there was that impressive move for peace with the Kurds. But the triumphal entry of the PKK fighters through the Habur Gate showed that a solution to the Kurdish issue needs a more careful consideration of the political, domestic and diplomatic balances in order for such a project to succeed

But October was an impressive month, mainly in terms of the number of diplomatic overtures extended by Turkish foreign policy in the area. Syria, Armenia, Russia, Iraq, Macedonia, Bosnia, Iran – they were all included in the long list of the old or new friends of Turkey with whom Ankara has tied its relations with protocols, memoranda and agreements. This marks an impressive new map of Turkey’s strategic friends, which has started showing a startling resemblance to the map of Ottoman Turkey a couple of hundred years ago.

The appointment of Prof. Ahmet Davutoğlu as the Foreign Minister of Turkey seemed to be a turning point in the way Ankara has been conducting its foreign policy. He is a theoretician of a “Neo-Ottoman,” zero-problem approach, which so far has put many irons in the fire. Turkey is turning to its imperial past, behaving like a powerful regional power and an honest broker for festering regional conflicts, a kind of benevolent ruler equipped with old wisdom and new ideas to be applied to a troublesome neighborhood.

To what extent this powerful new diplomatic show by Ankara has the backing of the new Obama government will be determined in a few weeks with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s visit to the US and his meeting with president Obama. It will be particularly interesting to see whether the latest role of Ankara as a “close friend” of Tehran is included in the neo-Ottomanist diplomatic strategy of Dr. Davutoğlu –after all, Turkey and Iran claim to have the longest peaceful relations in a turbulent region with a border that remains unchanged since 1639 – or whether it serves some new Western strategy in the region.

But October was also the month which raised most eyebrows in Greece and Cyprus about the new diplomatic vision in Ankara. When this vision appeared to include Bosnia, Macedonia and Albania – old provinces of the Ottoman Empire – then Davutoğlu became a cause for many headaches among Greek strategists. In particular, his recent lecture in Sarajevo, where he said that Turkey wants a new Balkans based on the political values, economic interdependence, cooperation and cultural harmony experienced in the region under the Ottomans, acted as a wakeup call for many in Greece who had designed their diplomatic moves based on the assumption that the “EU card” would be enough to “straighten up” Turkey.

The visit of Mehmet Ali Talat to Ankara last week and the insistence of Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots to involve the EU in the Cyprus negotiation process – something that the Greek Cypriots do not want as they are playing all their cards in Brussels – shows that the new diplomatic doctrine under Davutoğlu may not necessarily include an obsessive dedication to the “national target” of full membership. It may even imply that Ankara could settle for less as long as it retains its close connections with the EU and its strong role in the region, including the Balkans.

Last week, Mehmet Ali Talat said that a solution in Cyprus may be easier now that George Papandreou is in charge of the new government in Athens. Let’s see what he really meant.