At the time Turkey’s international
standing was truly in the doldrums.
The US presidential election was in full swing.
Trump may have turned a blind eye to
Erdogan’s anti-Kurd land grab in northern Syria, but he drew the line at
Turkey, a member of NATO, acquiring the US’s state-of-the-art
multi-purpose F-35 fighter aircraft, while already purchasing the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft
system designed specifically to destroy aircraft like the F-35. Trump ejected him
from the F-35 programme and imposed sanctions on Turkey. Biden, long opposed to
Erdogan’s power-grabbing activities in Syria, would certainly not reverse that.
Neither Trump nor Biden
favoured Erdogan’s military interventions in Libya or in the Nagorno-Karabakh
dispute, both pretty obviously designed to extend Turkish influence in the
region. These military adventures also irked France’s President Macron,
and Turco-French relations – already strained because of Erdogan’s failure
fully to condemn Islamist terror attacks in France – deteriorated to a new low,
ultimately descending to personal insults.
Erdogan had also
attracted the displeasure of the EU by continuing to explore for gas in what is
internationally recognized as Cypriot waters.
After months of acrimonious exchanges between Brussels and Ankara, in
December 2020 the EU actually imposed targeted sanctions on Turkey. The UK, now
no longer in the EU, sanctioned Turkey on the same grounds
Turkey’s relations with
Egypt had been frozen solid ever since 2013, when Muslim Brotherhood President
Mohamed Morsi was ousted by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Erdogan, a life-long adherent of the
Brotherhood, expelled Egypt’s ambassador, and Sisi reciprocated. Subsequently Erdogan, in a prime example of
the pot calling the kettle black, repeatedly referred to Sisi as a “putchist
president” responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians.
Egypt and Turkey backed
opposite sides in the war in Libya, while Turkey – historically at loggerheads
with Greece – did its best to subvert Egypt’s developing commercial and
maritime partnership with Greece. As for
Saudi Arabia, relations had been overshadowed for years by the assassination of
journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi’s consulate in Istanbul and the trial, in
absentia, of the 26 Saudis suspected of carrying out the murder.
Erdogan’s relationship
with Israel could only be characterized as frosty. It had long been obvious to the world that
Erdogan seized every opportunity to denounce Israel in the most extravagant
terms, and to act against it whenever he could.
Not the least of his hostile moves was to support Hamas and to provide a
base in Istanbul for senior Hamas officials, granting at least twelve of them
Turkish citizenship.
In
short Turkey, in pursuit of its own political priorities, had fences to mend with,
inter alia, the US, the EU, the UK, France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
It was towards the end of 2020 that its tone on the international scene began to change. When French President Emmanuel Macron got coronavirus on December 17, Erdogan wrote him a letter wishing him well, adding: "I would like to discuss...our bilateral relations and the relations between Turkey and the EU, as well as regional issues, as soon as you feel better."
It was a clear change of
tone after months of public insults and questioning Macron's mental
health. In March Erdogan videoed Macron and held out the olive branch of
dialogue and cooperation.
On
December 9, after a gap of two years, Turkey appointed a new ambassador to
Israel, albeit one with a track record of anti-Israel sentiment. Then in a press conference on Christmas Day,
December 25, Erdogan declared that Turkey’s relations with Israel had “not
stopped; they continue”, and that he’d like “to bring our ties to a better
point.”
Israel
treated the developments warily. The media reported that at a meeting held on
December 30, Israel’s foreign minister Gabi Ashkenazi decided to send
“quiet feelers” to Ankara to assess how much weight to attach to them. It is difficult also to determine whether
there is any truth in media rumours that the Turkish intelligence service has
been holding secret talks with Israel officials about normalizing relations.
These feelers toward Israel, meaningful or not, were followed by conciliatory moves by Turkey in other directions. On 18 January Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, met with German foreign minister Heiko Maas. Ahead of the meeting Maas issued a statement saying that Germany welcomes "the fact that signs of détente have been coming from Turkey.”
Three days later Cavusoglu
held a video conference with the EU's foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell and
EU commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, during which he expressed his
country's desire to get things back on track. He spoke of a “positive agenda” mentioning migration,
visa liberalization and modernization of the customs union. According to an EU
diplomat, von der Leyen later told EU ambassadors that there was clearly a
change of tone, but that she wasn't “over-enthusiastic”.
Borrell, however,
welcomed the Turkish gestures to defuse the tensions, adding: "Another
good step is the announced resumption of exploratory talks between Turkey and
Greece. We strongly wish to see a sustainable de-escalation in the Eastern
Mediterranean but also in the wider region."
On January 25, after
five years of standoff, Turkey and Greece agreed on a new round of exploratory
talks over their disputed territorial waters.
On March 12 Cavusoglu
went so far as to declare that Turkey was ready to improve relations with the
United Arab Emirates – condemned for normalizing relations with Israel – as
well as Saudi Arabia. Turkey no longer
saw the Khashoggi murder as an obstacle.
“We never accused the
government of Saudi Arabia,” he said. “We see no reason not to improve
relations…”
In pursuit of his effort
to win over the Biden administration, on March 3 Erdogan unveiled a
long-awaited action plan aimed, he said, at improving human and civil rights in
Turkey. “The ultimate aim of Turkey’s
action plan is a new civilian constitution.”
Washington has so far
received all this with wariness and scepticism.
On the Voice of America on March 3 an American official said: “There
are few signs that the leopard really has changed its spots.”
Turkey needs to be
considerably more charming, it seems, if its reversal of tactics is to convince
the world.
Published in the Eurasia Review, 19 March 2021:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/19032021-turkeys-suspicious-charm-offensive-oped/
Published in the Jewish Business News, 19 March 2021:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/03/19/turkeys-suspicious-charm-offensive/
Published in the MPC Journal, 21 March 2021:
https://mpc-journal.org/blog/2021/03/21/turkeys-suspicious-charm-offensive/
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