Sincere advice for Mr. Davutoğlu

The approach of taking a stance in international arena under the shadow of the United States has come to an end in the process. We have heard success stories on occasion. The government has adopted a different approach in Caucasia, reached Africa, and built close ties with organizations that are declared as terror networks yet have undeniable influence in the Middle East. These organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah have not been deterred from terror but through Turkey the West has managed to have contacts with them as well as countries like Iran and Syria supporting them.

Turkey’s foreign relations were more of a role of a postman rather than mediation. Since the West benefited from them Turkey has gained a relative advantage before the Western countries. But I think Turkey’s brokerage between Israel and Syria has been shelved after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s challenging remarks against Israeli President Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum held in Davos. Architecture of this new foreign policy period is Erdoğan’s Chief Adviser Ahmet Davutoğlu. Successes and failures of this new term will most likely be on his shoulders.

I wanted to warn him here though against a big danger waiting for Turkish foreign policy. This "multi-dimensional foreign policy" has introduced new openings but let’s not forget that such viewpoint should have to drop an anchor to something or somewhere. Turkey, as any other country, should have a point of perspective. Every country, even the United States, has such anchors in foreign politics. For instance, the United States’ anchor in Europe is Britain and in the Middle East it is Israel.

The AKP government announced Turkey’s anchor to be the European Union in 2002. In this direction, the administration clearly fought for it until late 2004 and was given support at the beginning by columnists like me. However, Turkey has lost its anchor since early 2005. And in order to keep the said relative advantage, Turkey now looks like a country trying to drop an anchor to the Middle East for resembling ideological approaches. Turkish foreign policy in this period also set an example of strangeness in organizational structure. There is an apparent foreign minister of Turkey, Ali Babacan. But no one takes him seriously and he is nicknamed abroad as "babycan." On the other hand, there are two real foreign ministers: Erdoğan with his Davutoğlu team and President Abdullah Gül with his consultants. Yet they are acting differently.

Mr. Prime Minister, being advised by the Davutoğlu team, has been doing his best to ruin the EU anchor recently. His "one minute" gesture at the Davos incident, which is being applauded in the streets of Arab countries, has ruined the confidence Europe feels for us.

Prime Minister Erdoğan’s failure to see U.S. President Barack Obama’s support for Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s candidacy as NATO secretary-general, his objections against Rasmussen, in an attempt to keep the applauds in Arab countries, but then his going silent again after being given several concessions has harmed Erdoğan’s credibility and raised doubt about his predictability, as one of the most important qualities of a government leader. Following that, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who supported us in the past, said that even he himself wouldn’t back Turkey’s EU bid as he confessed, "I am concerned that Turkey is proceeding towards a more Islamic direction and secularism is weakening." I think this is not just a remark of a politician; this is rather a critical warning against Turkey. Davutoğlu should exert efforts to drop an anchor to the EU again and should put an end to doubts that Turkey is moving toward the Middle East.