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Why neo-Ottomanism is bad for Turkey
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During the Cold War, Turkish conservatism was anti-communist. Today it is xenophobic. The West would hate to see it, but religion as a pillar of foreign policy risks pushing Turkey into radicalism
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth." That was a line from President Barack Obama’s inaugural speech. Take out two words, Hindus and nonbelievers, it could well have been a speech by an Ottoman sultan embracing all too diverse religions and ethnicities of the empire. Today, with an increasingly sharp "neo-Ottomanism" shaping Turkey’s foreign policy, things are different. Neo-Ottomanism, or call it the Turkish-Islamic synthesis in foreign policy, is actually Ottomanism minus multiculturalism since at the heart of the "neo" version lies religion and an uncompromising quest not only for monolithic religious order, but also a monolithic practice for the same religion Ñ at times overcome by pragmatism. Hence, it was not surprising at all when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan insisted on Tuesday that "from this day on we’ll make our own foreign policy and not listen to the others." He said that in response to criticism of his "more-Arab-than-any-Arab" rhetoric on Gaza.
But what is "our own policy" that Mr Erdoğan said he will not deviate from? During the Israeli offensive on Gaza, "our own policy" was to order millions of school children to stand for a minute’s silence, or the reflections on a poor 7-year-old street vendor who was telling a TV crew how he now hated the Jews and would donate his last 5 Turkish lira-note (about $3) for the Palestinians. Religion, like others things of importance or no importance, is at the heart of Mr Erdoğan’s foreign policy calculus (could anyone honestly imagine Mr Erdogan making an inaugural speech in which he would embrace also atheists?).
But there are two problematic aspects about this experimental neo-Ottomanism.
First, religion-based politics can be particularly perilous in a country which traditionally Ñ and increasingly Ñ borders on ethnic and religious nationalism, which has Europe’s youngest population, which is poor and where education is becoming more and more religious. Add to that fine blend rapidly increasing conservatism, socially and politically engineered by the Mr Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party, or AKP, you’ll inevitably end up at various shades of intolerance coupled with a collective shift toward radicalism. My parents grew up with their non-Muslim neighbors. My generation grew up with sympathy for the last remaining members of this tiny community. Younger generations are killing non-Muslims. Next generations may simply not find any non-Muslim to target. Recently I rang my old summertime neighbors, an elderly Turkish-Armenian couple who live in Germany, to ask why they have not come for the last three seasons. "Son," he said, "Our country is too Muslim for us to come, and we have grown tired of hiding our identity. I sometimes fear not even my purely Turkish name could suffice to conceal our otherness." In Samuel Huntington’s view, culture is underpinned and defined by power. The West had once been pre-eminent and militarily dominant, and the first generation of third-world nationalists had sought to fashion their world in the image of the West. But Western dominion had cracked, Huntington argued. Demography best told the story: where more than 40 percent of the world population was "under the political control" of Western civilization in the year 1900, that share had declined to about 15 percent in 1990, and is set to come down to 10 percent by the year 2025. Conversely, Islam’s share had risen from 4 percent in 1900 to 13 percent in 1990, and could be as high as 19 percent by 2025.
A similar demographic change has occurred in Turkey. I am not going to repeat or quote hundreds of opinion polls whose results tell the same thing: Under the AKP’s governance, the Turks have become less tolerant and more conservative (often the same thing), less secular and more "Islamic." In the meantime, they have become anti-Western and anti-Semitic. Today, anti-Americanism in Turkey is nowhere to be seen in the world. If measured today, anti-Semitism, too, could be the world’s highest.
Second, neo-Ottomanism conceptually can have too little leverage on the Arab world, despite Mr Erdogan’s more-Arab-than-any-Arab rhetoric. Mr Erdoğan’s, and his Middle East policy architect, Ahmet Davutoğlu’s, ambitions for a powerful Muslim state with genuine influence over the entire region are a little bit too naive. They do not only contain several zigzags and bizarre, temporary alliances which often fail to achieve designated policy goals, but also ignores the realities of the post-Islamist Arab world. These policies often disregard the love (our Sunni Muslim brothers) and hate (our rivals) relationship with Saudi Arabia and Egypt. They, now, tend to irreparably offend Israel and Fatah. Tomorrow they may have to offend Iran and Syria (and Hezbollah and Hamas). But they almost always lack consistency.
Arab nationalism and its reflections on many minds which make policy in this part of the world are still alive. Too bad, Turks may be Muslim, but they are not Arabs. Even worse, the Arabs know that!
But what is "our own policy" that Mr Erdoğan said he will not deviate from? During the Israeli offensive on Gaza, "our own policy" was to order millions of school children to stand for a minute’s silence, or the reflections on a poor 7-year-old street vendor who was telling a TV crew how he now hated the Jews and would donate his last 5 Turkish lira-note (about $3) for the Palestinians. Religion, like others things of importance or no importance, is at the heart of Mr Erdoğan’s foreign policy calculus (could anyone honestly imagine Mr Erdogan making an inaugural speech in which he would embrace also atheists?).
But there are two problematic aspects about this experimental neo-Ottomanism.
First, religion-based politics can be particularly perilous in a country which traditionally Ñ and increasingly Ñ borders on ethnic and religious nationalism, which has Europe’s youngest population, which is poor and where education is becoming more and more religious. Add to that fine blend rapidly increasing conservatism, socially and politically engineered by the Mr Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party, or AKP, you’ll inevitably end up at various shades of intolerance coupled with a collective shift toward radicalism. My parents grew up with their non-Muslim neighbors. My generation grew up with sympathy for the last remaining members of this tiny community. Younger generations are killing non-Muslims. Next generations may simply not find any non-Muslim to target. Recently I rang my old summertime neighbors, an elderly Turkish-Armenian couple who live in Germany, to ask why they have not come for the last three seasons. "Son," he said, "Our country is too Muslim for us to come, and we have grown tired of hiding our identity. I sometimes fear not even my purely Turkish name could suffice to conceal our otherness." In Samuel Huntington’s view, culture is underpinned and defined by power. The West had once been pre-eminent and militarily dominant, and the first generation of third-world nationalists had sought to fashion their world in the image of the West. But Western dominion had cracked, Huntington argued. Demography best told the story: where more than 40 percent of the world population was "under the political control" of Western civilization in the year 1900, that share had declined to about 15 percent in 1990, and is set to come down to 10 percent by the year 2025. Conversely, Islam’s share had risen from 4 percent in 1900 to 13 percent in 1990, and could be as high as 19 percent by 2025.
A similar demographic change has occurred in Turkey. I am not going to repeat or quote hundreds of opinion polls whose results tell the same thing: Under the AKP’s governance, the Turks have become less tolerant and more conservative (often the same thing), less secular and more "Islamic." In the meantime, they have become anti-Western and anti-Semitic. Today, anti-Americanism in Turkey is nowhere to be seen in the world. If measured today, anti-Semitism, too, could be the world’s highest.
Second, neo-Ottomanism conceptually can have too little leverage on the Arab world, despite Mr Erdogan’s more-Arab-than-any-Arab rhetoric. Mr Erdoğan’s, and his Middle East policy architect, Ahmet Davutoğlu’s, ambitions for a powerful Muslim state with genuine influence over the entire region are a little bit too naive. They do not only contain several zigzags and bizarre, temporary alliances which often fail to achieve designated policy goals, but also ignores the realities of the post-Islamist Arab world. These policies often disregard the love (our Sunni Muslim brothers) and hate (our rivals) relationship with Saudi Arabia and Egypt. They, now, tend to irreparably offend Israel and Fatah. Tomorrow they may have to offend Iran and Syria (and Hezbollah and Hamas). But they almost always lack consistency.
Arab nationalism and its reflections on many minds which make policy in this part of the world are still alive. Too bad, Turks may be Muslim, but they are not Arabs. Even worse, the Arabs know that!
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