Neo-Ottomanism in the West Asian quagmire

PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY'S MULTI-REGIONAL ROLE IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Mujib Alam (Ed)
KW Publishers, New Delhi
344 pages; Rs 1,280

The era of Recep Tayyip Erdogan began with so much promise. Till his electoral triumph in 2002, Turkey had experienced several decades of a military-dominated political order that prioritised its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) membership and was mainly in the news for its repeated and unsuccessful attempts to join the European Union. Now, Turkey had at its helm a democratically elected Islamist government of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) that overtly challenged the political power of the armed forces by arresting and incarcerating several of them for attempted coups d'etats.

As brought out in Mujib Alam's excellent introduction to this collection of essays on Turkish politics and foreign policy, the AKP government had a new national vision and strategy, referred to as the "Strategic Depth Doctrine". Shaped largely by Ahmet Davutoglu, brilliant academic and strategic thinker, it projected Turkey as a "central country" on the basis of its geography, history and civilisation, rather than as the eastern "flank" of Nato or the "bridge" between Asia and Europe or between Islam and Christendom, its usual geopolitical identity.

Further, the government stated its foreign policy would be multi-dimensional and would have a strong "civilisational" content. It would focus on its eastern neighbourhood, the very territories that were once part of the Ottoman Empire, and it would have "zero problems" with its neighbours. Nurullah Ardic points out that the AKP vision has three aspects: National, in that it is strongly anchored in Turkish history; regional, in terms of which Turkey emphasises its West Asian and Muslim heritage; and universal, where its leaders speak of the "family of mankind" and the harmony/alliance of civilisations, and stress the central importance of justice, particularly by noting the double standards of western powers. Still, several media commentators in West Asia see in Turkey's new regional assertiveness a throwback to its glory days: They describe its policies as "neo-Ottomanism" and frequently refer to Mr Erdogan as "Sultan".

Through most of the 2000s, Turkey garnered broad support across West Asia, particularly on account of its tough posture with Israel. However, its policies were severely tested after the Arab Spring, as brought out in papers by Nitish Kumar and Anita Sengupta. With the fall of the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt, Turkey initially took a pro-democracy stance, and even offered itself as a model exemplifying the co-habitation of Islam and modernity. But, it soon found itself floundering in the face of the West-sponsored regime change in Libya and the popular uprising in Syria. Ozden Zeynep Oktav makes it clear that, from the early days of the civil conflict, the Turkish government was moving deeper into the Syrian quagmire, sacrificing every principle of the neighbourhood policy it had so grandiloquently announced on coming to power. It intervened in the Syrian conflict by backing the "Syrian National Coalition", but soon exposed its Islamist credentials by providing a home to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

Obsessed with effecting regime change in Damascus, it then went further by providing free access to jihadis to cross into Syria, thus giving the extremist militia (and later the Islamic State) a ready supply of Arab, Asian and Western recruits. It has now become an integral part of the sectarian competition that has come define West Asian politics. To complicate the scenario for Turkey, the Syrian conflict has enabled the Kurds to set up a contiguous territory, 400 km long, across the Syrian-Turkish border, so that Mr Erdogan is now desperately seeking US backing to have a "safe zone" to disrupt this nascent homeland.

Mr Erdogan's promises of a new era of moderation, conciliation and focus on regional cooperation and development now lie in ruins. Today, Turkey is truly isolated in West Asia: It is still estranged from Israel; it is hostile to the Egyptian regime for the overthrow of former president Mohamed Morsi; it is alienated from Saudi Arabia for backing Brotherhood elements in Syria; and its good political and economic ties with Iran have ended as they are on opposite sides in the Syrian conflict. With the recent shooting down of the Russian aircraft in Syria, Turkey's ties with Russia are now frosty, while western countries remain uneasy with Mr Erdogan's accommodation of jihadis and hostility to Kurds in Syria. His conciliatory approach to the Kurds at home has also been abandoned and the country is back to violence and intimidation.

This book brings together a number of papers presented by Indian and Turkish scholars at a conference in November 2013. They provide a useful understanding of the wellsprings of the AKP government, its philosophy and support base, and its regional and foreign relations. Given the fast pace of changes in West Asia, points made in a few papers may have been overtaken by recent developments, but the book remains a rich source of information about a country that is little-known in India, but which, in spite of current challenges, will continue to be an influential presence in West Asian and global affairs.

The reviewer is a former diplomat