2 December Friday, 2011

Ankara needs to follow firmer and more decisive line over Syria. Ethical considerations, foreign policy perspectives, and regional interests oblige Turkey to act in this direction.

In May 2009,  Turkey’s foreign minister, Mr Ahmet Davutoðlu held an in-depth meeting with the Turkish Grand National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs Commission of which I was then spokesman. During this meeting, I asked him about the role that various basic values, such as democracy and human rights would play in Turkish foreign policy during his time as minister. The reply he gave filled me with hope.  He was the representative of a tradition which had believed over the years that just as Turkish foreign policy did not intervene in the internal affairs of other countries, so matters like democracy and human rights were not things that should be taken into account while making foreign policy and what is more he had himself suffered personally from this. In the decade starting in 2000, although important steps were being taken towards normalisation and democratization, the makers of foreign policy generally analysed things on the basis of realpolitik and regarded the value-based approach as being either ‘liberal interventionism’ or, worse still, the work of western imperialism.

The Arab Spring, a process which began quite unexpectedly in Tunisia and then rapidly spread to neighbouring countries, has turned into a test in which we can see values like democracy and human rights dancing with practical foreign policy interests. After the call to quit to former Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, a man whose name was once pronounced with moral superiority, we in Turkey were swiftly confronted with the scale of values and interests by the plight of Turkish work in the construction sector in Libya and contracts worth billions of dollars.  At the start of the Libyan crisis these factors caused Ankara to employ a somewhat obscure form of words, but it quickly made the necessary adaptation to a position which was in harmony with that of our allies. Yemen and Bahrain are of course both further away and relatively small. Because of this Turkey’s fitting rebukes did not generate noteworthy difficulties. But Syria is a problem on a different scale. It is an event in our neighbourhood which will influence our fate in Turkey and which we therefore have to resolve quickly.

Turkey’s Syria Test

I am one of the people who argue that where Syria is concerned a tougher and more decisive policy has to be followed in Turkish public opinion.  The first aspect is the moral and humanitarian dimension of the problem which I think it is unnecessary even to discuss. Basically what distinguishes Turkey from our southern neighbour is that fact that we have internalised universal values such as human rights, gender equality, and minority rights. The thing that makes us in Turkey special is that we have the capacity to make a synthesis of these values and our traditional values and foster them both.  Turkey’s soft power is not composed simply of the high quality products it manufactures, TV soap operas, and the victory of its sports teams, it is also something closely connected with what it is ad the values which prevail in its lands. In this context, our identity, the degree to which we are attached to the values of freedom and democracy permits us to develop a view about the scale of moral values in Syria.

The second reason why I should like to see a tougher line on Syria is related to Turkey’s influence in the region and our claims and future strength in our neighbourhood area. The government we have today has successfully applied the concept of strategic depth ever since it took power. Thanks to this, it has successful reintegrated Turkey with its neighbour area. The writer of these lines wholeheartedly believes in, and supports, this policy. It is now widely accepted that Turkey is a regional hegemonic power. So if Ankara was to display double standards over Syria, while following policies based on morality in Gaza, Kosovo, Darfur, and Somalia, that would damage both its credibility and the way in which it is perceived by the people of the region. Thankfully, Ankara is well aware of this.

Fault Lines Appearing among Conservatives

The crisis in Syria has created a particularly fierce internal debate among conservatives. Indeed it is even the reason why fault lines have started to appear inside the Turkish conservative community. It has brought into the open, the different viewpoints that exist regarding Syria, they are a broad spectrum, ranging from Shi’a followers to supporters of Syria, from those who look at the region solely in terms of the struggle with Israel to those in favour of acting ore moderately and together with our allies. The Syrian crisis has also once more given us an opportunity to see how creatively enmity to the West is once more being manufactured in Turkey, and the pathological levels which it has reached. This is something which should cause serious unease in a country which is a member of NATO and where there is a high probability that it will in the future have to depend on NATO’s nuclear deterrence. This topic is worth studying   more closely.

The minority-based present Syrian government has lost its legitimacy. It is completely unacceptable for an ethnicity to rule a country of which makes up about 10-14% of the population and to repress its opponents with unprecedented violence. Such a regime is one which Turkey can never support. Al-Assad’s Nusayri regime is now perceived in the mind of the general public as one which deserves to be buried in history. At the same time what will happen in Syria after Al-Assad is not clear and so the present Syrian opposition rapidly needs to develop political maturity. It is essential that Ankara strives to help achieve this. No one should expect there to be some kind of romantic transition to democracy there today or tomorrow.  On the contrary it is obvious that a process will begin which is stormy and perhaps violence-filled. However the fact that there are serious risks for Syria after Al-Assad does not give us the right to deprive the Syrian people of the chance of being ruled democratically.

The Nusayri faith to which Al-Assad belongs believes in the migration of souls from body to body that is to say in reincarnation.  It holds that the souls of good people return to the world as human beings.  The souls of bad people however may come back into the world as animals. I have no qualifications for engaging in a debate about religious doctrine, but if there really is such a thing as reincarnation, after what has happened during the last five months in Syria it would appear that there are a lot of people there destined to come back into the world as animals.