DİPLOMASİ

This process has both negative and positive connotations in the context of Turkish diplomatic history. Turks love and hate Westerners simultaneously. The negative experiences of the Ottoman past would assumingly be left behind if Turkey completed its Westernization process. However, whenever Westerners/Europeans questioned the credentials of Turkey’s Western identity, the dominant view on the part of the majority of Turks happened to be that Westerners did never and would never recognize Turkey as Western/European. For example, the reluctance of Europeans to admit Turkey to EU membership has generally been interpreted as the continuation of the traditional European attitude towards Turkey, according to which Turks have been among the constitutive others of Europeans.

To Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Republic, and his comrades in arms, Turkey’s number one national interest during the 1920s and 1930s was to protect the newly gained independence and sovereignty as well as successfully completing the radical transformation process at home (Hale, 2013, 31055). This required the pursuit of a pragmatic, prudent and realist foreign policy, enshrining the principle of ‘peace at home peace in the world’. Turkish rulers tried to help bring into existence a stable and cooperative regional environment so that developments outside the borders would never have negative consequences on the ongoing modernization and development processes at home. In this sense, there seems to exist a strong degree of continuity between Turkey’s efforts to support regional cooperation during the interwar years through the Balkan Entente and Saadabad Pact and the attempts of the Justice and Development Party governments at encouraging regional cooperation initiatives over the last fifteen years.

Pragmatism also suggested that Turkey would do well to construct friendly relations with former enemies. Involvement in the internal affairs of other states and pursuit of expansionist and irredentist foreign policies do not hold any place in Ataturk’s diplomatic legacy. This is the main reason why any attempt at regime change abroad is very much criticized at home. Traditional Turkish diplomacy is based on the idea that states are independent in their internal affairs and Turkey should not be involved in the business of regime change or value promotion. Trying to solve national security problems through diplomacy and international law is another legacy of Ataturk. The revision of the Lausanne regulations on the status of Turkish Straits through the Montreux Convention in 1936, the incorporation of Hatay region into Turkey in 1939, and the settlement of the Mousul question and the border dispute with Iraq in 1926 are all examples to the use of international law and diplomacy in Turkish foreign policy. Diplomacy backed by hard power capability and diplomatic initiatives conferring legitimacy on military victories constitute the backbone of Ataturk’s diplomatic legacy.

Turkey’s geographical location has always been the most important leverage in Turkey’s relations with other countries. Despite the danger of exaggerating ‘geographical determinism’, it would not be wrong to argue that Turkey’s diplomatic relations and foreign policy record during much of the Republican era have been deeply informed by Turkey’s geography (Aydin, 2003, 163-184). Turkey’s geography has been both an asset and liability. Turkey’s decision to join NATO as well as being in the crosshairs of global powers can be convincingly attributed to its geographical location. Being located at the intersection point of three continents, Turkey has continuously attracted the attention of other countries, notably the great powers which have had vital security interests in Turkey’s regional environment.

The United States defined Turkey as the unsinkable aircraft carrier during the Cold War. The Soviet Union wanted to get control of the straits and eastern part of Anatolia in the immediate aftermath of the World War II and this prompted Turkey to seek security cooperation with the United States. Turkey joined NATO in 1952 to deal with the Soviet challenge much better. Turkey’s efforts to become an energy hub during the post-Cold War era are noticeable. In its effort to convince the Europeans to the idea of Turkey’s membership in the European Union, Turkish rulers have continuously instrumentalized Turkey’s geographical location as a bargaining chip. Turkey’s geography has recently come to the agenda in the context of the migration crisis engulfing European countries. The migration deal that Turkey signed with the European Union in the spring of 2016 is very much the function of Turkey’s peculiar geography in the context of European efforts to stem the refugee flow emanating from the Greater Middle Eastern region. The main reason why the island of Cyprus occupies a very important place in Turkish foreign policy is Cyprus’s geographical proximity to Anatolian peninsula as well as the recent discovery of rich natural gas resources in Eastern Mediterranean.

The reason why Europeans could not easily give up on Turkey can also be boiled down to Turkey’s potential contribution to European security. Hence, Turkey is mainly characterized as a buffer-zone and insulator country by Europeans. Underlining Turkey’s potential contribution to the protection of the Kantian security environment inside the EU against the security challenges emanating from the Hobbesian security environment in the Middle East has decisively colored Turkey’s discourse with Western/European countries. Depiction of Turkey as a ‘bridge’ and ‘role model’ by Westerners does also relate to Turkey’s geographical location.

Turkey’s geography does also suggest that Turkey should always be alerted to potential threats posed to its security as well as maintaining strong and credible armed forces. Of all the reasons of military’s key role in Turkish diplomacy, the need to have a powerful army in this fragile and delicate geographical location proves to be decisive.

The time period between 1945 and 1960 corresponds to a bipolar international structure and a high level confrontation between the US-led Western liberal democratic countries and the communist countries of the Soviet block. Turkey felt itself under Soviet threat and wanted to join the Western international community in such a way to counterbalance the existential threat to the north. Following its admission to NATO and given the increasing tension between the two power blocks, Turkey had to pursue a predominantly pro-Western foreign policy course. The rigid atmosphere of the early Cold War years did not offer Turkey the ability to adopt neutrality and pursue an independent/non-aligned foreign policy course. Turkey’s maneuvering capability was extremely limited during this era.

For about twenty years between 1960 and 1980, Turkey shifted to a more multi-directional and multi-dimensional foreign policy stance as the so-called détente caused a softening of the bipolar confrontation between Western and eastern blocks (Hale, 2013, 104-134). Turkish rulers came to the conclusion that the pursuit of extremely pro- Western foreign policy stance of the previous era did not yield expected benefits. As the United States and the Soviet Union began to search for ways to live in peaceful co-existence, Turkey felt more capable of charting its own ways through regional activism.

During the 1980s, Turkey had to discover the importance of the strategic relations with the Western world once again as the change of regime Iran and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan increased the tension between the two blocks. The second arrival of the Cold War era confrontation helped increase Turkey’s geopolitical significance in Western eyes. During the 1980s, Turkey predominantly followed a pro-Western foreign policy stance despite the emergence of some problems in relations with Western countries. Turkey’s maneuvering capability in its foreign policy radically improved with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. No longer feeling the pressure to the north, Turkey could pursue active and assertive policies in the Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asia and Middle East. Even though the evaporation of the Soviet threat contributed to the erosion of the strategic bond between Turkey and its Western allies, membership in NATO and the prospective membership in European Union preserved their primacy in Turkey’s strategic thinking. The pro-Western stance in Turkish foreign policy was also enabled by the US-led unipolar structure of the international system, the growing appeal of the constitutive norms of the Western international community as well as the perception of Turkey in the West as a successful role model for the countries that regained their independence in the post-Soviet geography. The 1990s could be seen as a period in which Turkey tried to strike a balance between pursuing a more independent/multidirectional foreign policy stance on the one hand and increasing its efforts to solidify its presence in the Western international community on the other. While the end of the Cold War seems to have increased Turkey’s maneuvering capability, the gradual erosion of Turkey’s strategic value in the eyes of Western/European allies absent the common communism threat pushed Turkish leaders to help reassert Turkey’s Western/European identity through NATO and the European Union.

The shift to a more multipolar system over the last decade, particularly following the global financial crisis in 2008, and the spectacular increase in Turkey’s material power capabilities seem to have encouraged Turkish rulers to follow a more multi-directional and multi-dimensional foreign policy stance. During this era, Turkey has been in search for more strategic autonomy (Öniş and Yılmaz, 2009, 7-24). The relative decline of Western powers, the questioning of the Western model across the globe, the concomitant rise of non-Western powers in global politics and the onset of the Arab Spring seem to have all caused a shift of axis in Turkish foreign policy away from the West to the East. Turkey acting as a ‘central country’ and pursuing a ‘Eurasianist’ foreign policy stance became quite visible during this era.