Neighborhood Watch: Turkey's Changing Role

Turkey’s move to expel the Israeli ambassador followed months of tension between the two former odd-couple allies whose relations have steadily deteriorated since a deadly Israeli raid on a Turkish-flagged ship participating in an aid flotilla to Gaza. But Ankara’s stance in this public diplomatic breakdown also signals an important shift in the country’s foreign policy as it claims a new role in the region.

Turkey today is an extremely interesting country, thanks to a combination of political stability resulting from a ruling party recently reelected with fifty per cent of the vote; economic growth and membership in the G20; powerful financial, cultural, and political elites; and increasing diplomatic influence that extends beyond its narrow region coupled with ambitious plans for the future, based on projections that Turkey will rank about the globe’s top ten economies by 2023. Its energetic and successful foreign policy–which is rooted chiefly in its ‘soft’ economic power–aims at transforming Turkey into the broader region’s ‘benign’ leader and “big brother” of the Muslin world. Indeed, Tayyip Ergogan’s Turkey has all the signs of becoming one of the big players of the twenty-first century.

But are things that simple? Many analysts warn of the danger that the Turkish economy will “overheat”, thus slowing the Turkish economic miracle. They also note that the current political stability masks authoritarian tendencies and that Erdogan’s expected jump from prime minister to president and the ensuing power struggle among his would-be successors could shake the ruling AKP, or Justice and Development Party (which, in any case, is not a homogenous political organization). Turkey’s ‘Kemalist’ elite may be retreating but it has not yet surrendered and will not quietly acquiesce to the country’s transformation into a state of ‘Islam-lite’. Ankara’s foreign policy has annoyed Tel Aviv and Washington–as well as several European Union members. Meantime, the still-unresolved Kurdish issue is like a bomb with a slow-burning fuse smoldering by Turkey’s very foundations. Observing Turkey’s obviously enhanced statue in the region, it’s easy to forget how fickle moods can be; just five years ago, many Turks were seized by the “Sevres syndrome” and had serious reservations about the country’s foreign policy given the tension with the U.S. over the Kurds in Northern Iraq and the EU’s persistent unwillingness to accept Turkey into its fold. Today Turkey is trying to give its foreign policy greater strategic depth, by casting it along axes other than just the West. Therein, of course, lies the danger of becoming overextended. What does all this mean for Greece? The imbalance of power with its neighbor is continuously widening as Greece’s position weakens too. Indeed, it may not be long before the balance is completely disrupted. Of course, there are ways to restore it, mainly through alliances. The question remains, however, is whether tomorrow’s Turkey–which will probably be stronger and different from Turkey today–will be a neighbor with which Greece can coexist peacefully and more harmoniously than to date. Regardless of domestic developments in Turkey, for Greece to maintain its place in the regional and global map, then it must quickly find its way out of the current crisis and implement a “smart” foreign policy based on its potential and comparative advantages.