Awakening from a dream

1) The more Turkey increases its bilateral relations with neighboring countries, the more it will have advantages in the world.

2) Geological and strategic situation of Turkey makes it an indispensable country.

3) The more Turkey claims the Middle East, the more it will create a powerful image in the world.

4) With the U.S. President Barack Obama, a new world order will be established and Turkey will take its place in this equation.

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Turkey took successful steps in one-on-one relations with its neighbors (1st assumption) and became a messenger between some countries, organization and the Western world to a certain degree. But I think Turkey has exaggerated this relative weight and made evaluation errors in other hypotheses. Turkey is located in an exceptional land between the Middle East, as the owner of 64 percent of the world’s energy basins and the West, as the number one suitor of these basins.

As far as the historic and cultural infrastructure of civilizations is concerned, Turkey has the qualities of both sides, though not truly. Turkey is familiar with both parties. However, the West in order to see Turkey as its ally asks Turkey to turn its face to the West even if it holds hand with the Middle East, and asks Turkey to drop an anchor to the West no matter how its foreign policy is diversified.

But recently the Western world is having serious reservations about where Turkey places itself. In the process that has begun with the Davos forum and made a peak with the Rasmussen incident, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has become to give an impression that Turkey at the same time backs the Middle East in Europe. He rolled up sleeves to represent Hamas at the United Nations as though the anchor was dropped in the Middle East.

I regretfully see that Turkey has gained nothing in the process. (See: The Rasmussen bargaining). And reservations against Turkey are increased in the West.

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On the other hand, an Obama image has been created somehow in which we all better know that he is a good Muslim. Columnists have begun to dream about a new world and a new perception of Turkey with Obama. They all announced this will be something really good. However, everyone knew that Obama made some promises regarding the Armenian issue and did everything to mellow Obama’s stance in the subject. A new initiative between Turkey and Armenia was expected to be the reunion of Turkey and U.S. But, that didn’t happen!

Although Obama didn’t utter the "genocide" word but he became the first U.S. president who used the most serious expressions against us on Apr. 24. Now we see that the government in Armenia is being collapsed due to the extreme nationalist Tashnak Party protests normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations, and that Azerbaijan turns its back to us and asks price increase in natural gas sale. I think this must have been the meaning of "go farther and fare worse"!

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And I think the merit in foreign politics is like being able to carry so many glasses in hand without dropping even one. Look at the situation: EU countries are colder towards us, Iran never asks us to be a mediator. Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah have not decided about Turkey yet, our closest ally Azerbaijan is drifting apart and we didn’t curry favor with neither Armenia nor U.S. It is time for a wake-up call!