Transcript--Comments--Q & A--Foreign Policy

Turkey's Foreign Policy Issues: Comments, Questions & Answers

Featuring

Graham Fuller, Alexander Jackson, Joost Lagendijk, Ian Lesser, Joshua Walker

Fuller: Good, Thank you very much Alex. We have covered a broad range of world geography in the course of this discussion, although not getting into as much detail as we perhaps should.  First, I solicit questions, comments or rebuttals from the floor. Yes sir.

Question: (asks about the future of various regional organizations.)
Alexander Jackson: I don’t think my fellow panelists are particularly aware of the initiative you refer to, which suggests it doesn’t have much of a role to play at the moment. Perhaps it might do in the future. Turkey definitely has the greatest capability to create something of it. But, whether it can interact with the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) or another regional organization like that at comparable level, that moment is still far ahead in the future. There is still so much rivalry between states in Central Asia, and still so many differences, even conflicts, that it would take a great deal of work to get this organization moving. Especially when there are so many other multilateral initiatives that these states belong to, notably of course the Shanghai Co-operation Organization, the Russian-sponsored Collective Security Treaty Organization, and the OSCE itself of course. Many states prefer to work on these issues in a multilateral context, so of course it is encouraging if there are more regional initiatives of this kind. But there are already a great number of these, and none of them proved very significant so far – so I think the jury is still out on that one.

Fuller: I’d like to briefly comment in a much broader sense on Turkey’s efforts to be part of multilateral organizations everywhere. I can’t imagine anything more in keeping with EU philosophy on how international relationships should be run than joining regional organizations and linking peoples in all kinds of associations—while all the while rejecting the idea of military solutions to conflicts.  But does Turkey have the clout to bring about such change in the region?  Certainly joining multiple regional organizations is a good first step.  Whether it is sufficient to really change things remains to be seen, but joining is the first critical step. Would you want to comment on that, Joost?

Lagendijk: Yes, but first, can I disagree with my co-panelist Alexander Jackson on one issue here. I don’t agree with your calculation that a deal between Turkey and Armenia would decrease the pressure on Armenia to be more flexible on Karabagh. The Turkish government has held this same position for fifteen years and it didn’t work. It simply hasn’t worked. It’s time to do something else. I think in fact that a settlement between Turkey and Armenia would make it more possible for Armenia to be sensible on Karabagh; simply to pressure Armenia into withdrawal hasn’t worked, and it won’t work. So I would welcome it if Turkey and Armenia could strike a deal. It would be beneficial to both countries, and beneficial for Azerbaijan in the long run. I think to link the two was a mistake by the Turkish Prime Minister and will cost Turkey dearly.

Ian Lesser: I would agree with that very strongly. I mean, it may well be that Alex’s judgment on what is likely to happen turns out to be correct, but in terms of Turkey’s strategic interests, I would argue that coupling these two things is not a smart idea. If you want to transform the situation I think the best way to do is open the border and have this rapprochement succeed.  Yes, there is a cost to be paid in terms of public opinion in Turkey, especially among those elements of the population with affinities for Azerbaijan. But there are big things at stake here, and you have to try to do something different. I would hope that’s what is going to happen.  

Graham Fuller: Question from the floor.

Question:  From the Embassy of Azerbaijan. As an Azeri diplomat I am very much interested to know how this point just made will benefit Azerbaijan. Just to give some background from a practical, not academic perspective: In the past whenever negotiations took place between Turkish and Armenian officials took place and there was any progress it resulted in a backtrack in the process of talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan.  I see sort of a disconnect here between what you are proposing, and what we are witnessing on the ground.

Joost Lagendijk: You explain me why your policy didn’t work over 15 years. Azerbaijan’s diplomacy is to force Armenia to do something. That has not worked. And it won’t work. You have to stimulate new ideas, make it possible to find new openings on that issue that have better prospects. If Turkey and Armenia can solve the problems, open up relations, it’s good for Armenia economically and politically and I think makes it possible for Armenia then to make a deal with Azerbaijan on Karabagh.

            That’s why I regret that the Turkish Prime backtracked on what I think was a step forward in signing the protocols with Armenia, and making it independent of a move on Karabagh. Since then you have seen all the parties start going back to their old conditions again. This has made it more difficult. I think it is also bad for Azerbaijan, for your country, to go back to the old situation of linking everything and solving nothing.

Alexander Jackson: To jump in here, it is not so much that it is necessarily a good thing to link the issues. But I think it’s inevitable. As we discussed previously to the session, what needs to be done is not necessarily a deal, a signed document saying that the protocols will be ratified, and Armenia will then withdraw. Certainly an understanding along those lines is necessary, and it would be very beneficial for the Karabagh process if Turkey and Armenia open their borders. But I think there has to be at least an implicit assumption, a kind of understanding that Armenia will have to meet Turkey and Azerbaijan half way.

 Graham Fuller: Yes, Joshua, you want to comment on this?

Joshua Walker: Look, the reason for Prime Minister Erdoğan to link the Karabagh issue with normalization of relations is directly due to the pressures he got at home from the nationalist right. It pushed him into a very untenable political position so now it has become an international problem with these two issues now linked. It is important to look at the broad context on this, and to understand the dynamics at play, and to see the pressures on the Prime Minister and the AKP.  We have to understand the domestic context of a lot of external politics.  And this is precisely a place where you require a major actor to step in and work the problem. Up to this point there has been no will to do that—not on the Middle East peace process, or whatever.  Where is that global leadership going to come from?

Graham Fuller: Ian, would you like to comment on where the question of the Armenian Genocide Resolution will go in the congress and the implications of it in Turkey?

Ian Lesser:  I hesitate even to predict. This has been a perennial issue and we know the mood in Washington. But back to the EU candidacy question, I am frankly a bit pessimistic at the moment. It is really quite stalled. There is a declining confidence in a way on both sides. The German Marshall Fund, my organization, does some polling called ‘trans-Atlantic trends’ which some of you will be familiar with, and one of the things we have been asking about in recent years has to do precisely with Turkey joining Europe. And so, in twelve different European countries, in Turkey and in the United States we have asked, “First, do you think it is a good idea that the Turkey becomes a European Union member? And second, do you think it is likely?” The results were interesting over time. When you ask Europeans, “Do you think it’s a good idea if Turkey joins Europe,” a majority said “no”, sixty percent. “Do you think it is likely that Turkey will join the European Union?” The majority said “Yes.” So, they don’t like the idea but they think it is inevitable.

            Yet in Turkey you get precisely the opposite result. People still, by and large, favor Turkey joining Europe, but if you ask whether they were confident that it will happen, they say “no.” So, this to me conveys a great deal of cynicism on both sides about the process, and I don’t take much encouragement from that.

            From the point of view of American interests, I think at the end of the day it is less about whether Turkey joins the European Union as a full member, and much more about whether Turkey continues to converge sector by sector with Europe over the coming decades. I would bet that will happen. It might well end with something like—I know Turks don’t like to use this terminology—“privileged partnership” that falls short of full membership, but that’s the way it may be, and Turkey may in the end be more comfortable with that.

            There is a NATO aspect to all of this as well. But I regret to say that I do think Turkish confidence in NATO, even as a security provider, much less an  identity club, has declined quite markedly in recent years. There is a big debate that goes on about NATO in general, but in Turkey there is a very specific concern that NATO simply hasn’t been there for them when it has counted in the past. There is a lack of confidence in the guarantee.

            A final third point about the US and Turkey. There is very much a sense in which the relationship between Turkey and the United States has been on autopilot for decades. It obviously can’t continue that way.  And it obviously has a slightly different feel to it than it did in the past. That needs to be recalibrated. Part of it is a structural problem—we’ve already referred to it—that the relationship has been dominated by security issues. We in the US define it in very geo-political terms. This is considerable contrast to the relationship between Turkey and other neighbors in Europe, Eurasia, and so on. Some of this may be inevitable, but it does leave big chunks of the US relationship largely underdeveloped. As a result,  the constituency for the relationship between Turkey and the United States is not big. That makes it quite fragile with respect to crises that do emerge in the relationship.

            Some of this can be helped by effective public diplomacy.  Clearly across Europe there has been some bounce in US prestige since Obama, but Turkey is not one of the places where that has been particularly pronounced. Clearly there is an improved view of the United States there now, but the problem is not fixed by any means, and it may never be fixed. I think we mislead ourselves if we have in mind some image of US-Turkish relations where things in the past supposedly went like clock-work, but then suddenly it all became a problem for eight years under George Bush. It is not quite like that. There never really was a golden age. There were periods even in the 1970s when Turkey was actually under sanctions from the United States. So, overall, this is a difficult relationship we have with Turkey. It’s a really tough relationship for both sides to manage, and I don’t frankly see that changing.

            Let me end by just mentioning very briefly some things that I believe will be quite problematic on the horizon. They may be dealt with successfully. But they may not be. One of course is the perennial issue of Armenia and the US Genocide Resolution, especially given the failure in particular this year to consolidate a once-promising rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia. Washington has reacted negatively to this.  

            Let me mention two more things, the Middle East peace process. If we should have another war in Gaza things might get extremely difficult between Ankara and Washington, not to mention between Ankara and Israel.  The other very important issue affecting Washington and Ankara  is Iran. It will be much harder for the administration to make this case for Turkey again in the Congress on the Genocide Resolution if Turkey abstains on a sanction vote in the UN against a nuclearizing Iran. Like it or not, this is politics.

Graham Fuller: I agree, the Iran sanctions issue will be a critical one. Yet we know too that there is little consensus of views on the need for heavy sanctions against Iran, at least across much of Eurasia:  China and Russia are cool to the issue and Europe is mixed. I am inclined to think that Turkey, in the end, may find its interests and views more in keeping with the regional powers than with the US. But what that will mean in a concrete vote on sanctions, at the moment of truth, I don’t know. I do welcome the fact that Turkey is in close contact with Iran on this on this and many other issues. It is a voice of reason. Obviously Turkey can’t work any special magic, but it’s helpful to have as many serious states engage in working with Iran as possible.

Ian Lesser: If I might add, Turkey has tried to play highly active diplomatic role with Iran, including in coming up with practical terms and steps to try to encourage a deal on nuclear enrichment and the disposition of  fuel rods.  This has not really gone anywhere yet, but from the Turkish point of view this approach is the way to get out of this dilemma, to actually play an active role in the diplomacy that helps to resolve the issue. Otherwise these multiple pressures from all sides create enormous dilemmas for Turkish policy, and it is very difficult for Turkey to come away from it with concrete results. .

 Graham Fuller: I’m afraid we have run out of time this afternoon. I think we have touched upon a large number of issues, any one of which really deserves a day of discussion in itself.  I do hope that we have achieved the goal of suggesting the complexity of issues and factors that drive Turkey’s policies, that go well beyond many of the more simplistic questions sometimes heard in Washington about “losing Turkey,” or some new “Turkish-Syrian-Iranian axis.” We can see that there are major political, economic, social, and geopolitical forces at work here that coincide with a time when the world itself is moving in new directions in a far less unipolar world and diminishing US influence over the players. And Turkey itself is now expanding into a broad regional role that existed in past centuries but that had fallen more quiescent in the growing pains of the first century of the modern Turkish republic.  Turkey is now a country of exceptional dynamism. In my personal view, for all its ups and downs, I believe it is moving towards a valuable and constructive role in an exceptionally volatile region—a role that ultimately will be to the greater benefit of all.

            I want to thank all the panelists for coming, many from long distances, and to thank again the Turquoise Council for Americans and Eurasians for helping make this rich discussion possible. Thank you.