Mehmet OZKAN
Published in Turkish Review of Middle East Studies 17, 2006, pp.157-185.
Published in Turkish Review of Middle East Studies 17, 2006, pp.157-185.
INTRODUCTION
The end of the Cold War led to fundamental changes in Turkey’s foreign policy in general. Ankara began to exert influence in Central Asia, the Black Sea region, the Caucasus, the Middle East and the Balkans. This was a major shift from Ankara’s previous policies of non-involvement. Contrary to the Cold War period, during which Turkey’s foreign and security policy was relatively circumscribed because of its role in the containment of the Soviet power, in the post-Cold War era, Turkey has experienced a sweeping enlargement of its external horizons. After the
Cold War, Turkey began to pay particular attention to regional cooperative security and multilateralism in foreign affairs.2 In this regard, Turkey initiated the establishment of Black Sea Economic Cooperation, and began to expand its political and economic ties with the newly established Turkic republics.
Although Turkey’s western orientation remained its first foreign policy priority objective, the end of the Cold War opened new opportunities to Turkey in further fields, and its relations with the countries in Balkans, Middle East and Caucasus developed. But policymakers in Ankara argued that the relations with these countries would not supersede Turkey’s relations with the West. An important shift occurred in Turkish foreign policy towards the Middle East in this period. During the Cold War years, Turkey generally preferred non-intervention in Middle Eastern affairs, but this policy changed dramatically when Turkey assumed a central role in the Gulf War. The Gulf War, coupled with the collapse of, the Soviet Union, brought key changes in Turkey’s understanding of the Middle East. Turkey started to be more assertive than before in dealing with the region.
However, the last decade of Turkey’s active involvement in Middle East has been contradictory, if not sometimes confusing. While Turkey supported the Coalition powers in the Gulf crisis, during the Iraqi War Turkey was one of the countries that had tried to stop the war. Turkey’s unexpectedly fast-growing close relations with the Israel at the end of the 1990s, however, seems to had been ignored after 2002, given the fact that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not visit Israel until May 2005, and did not give the Israeli Foreign Minister an appointment when he visited Turkey. More to the point, although Turkey openly threatened to go to war with Syria in 1998, Syrian President Bashar Asad visited Turkey in 2004, the first of its kind in 65 years and Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer reciprocated this visit in April 2005.
How can we explain all these confusing or contradictory approaches of Turkey to the Middle East? Or does Turkey indeed have a coherent Middle East policy? Or does Turkey act according to circumstances that occur from time to time?
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