On June 1 Turkey’s president,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, broke off the talks he had initiated with Greece back in
January 2021, and canceled the High-Level Strategic Council that they had set
up as a forum in which to discuss their differences.
Erdogan’s approach to
Greece had been part of the policy turn-around that so puzzled political
observers in December 2020. Out of the
blue Turkey embarked on a charm offensive that had politicians and commentators
scratching their heads. Was Erdogan playing a new devious game, or was he
genuinely trying to turn over a new leaf?
There was certainly
reason enough for Turkey to mend fences.
In 2020 its international standing, on a steady downward trajectory for
some eight years, was truly in the doldrums.
The US presidential
election was in full swing. President Donald Trump, who had turned a
blind eye to Erdogan’s anti-Kurd land grab in northern Syria, had drawn the
line at Turkey, a member of NATO, acquiring the US’s state-of-the-art F-35
fighter aircraft while already purchasing the Russian S-400 – an anti-aircraft
system designed specifically to destroy aircraft like the F-35. So Trump
ejected him from the F-35 program and imposed sanctions on Turkey. Presidential
hopeful Joe Biden, long opposed to Erdogan’s power-grabbing activities in
Syria, would certainly not reverse that.
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, 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 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. Egypt
and Turkey backed opposite sides in the war in Libya, while Turkey did its best
to subvert Egypt’s developing commercial and maritime partnership with
Greece. Relations with Saudi Arabia had been overshadowed for years
by the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi’s consulate in
Istanbul.
As for Israel, it had
long been obvious 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
urgently needed to improve its relations with, inter alia, the US, the EU,
the UK, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Greece and Israel.
This was the background
to Erdogan’s change of tone on the international scene. To achieve his strategic objective of
extending and stabilizing Turkey’s power base across the Middle East, he or his
advisers must have realized that a reassessment of tactics was called
for. Out of what must have been a root and branch analysis, came a
plan to address the problem – Turkey would embark on a program of “rebooting”
relationships with unfriendly states, opponents or enemies.
A change of tone, leading to conciliatory moves, proved remarkably successful in a number of instances– not least with Israel, whose president, Isaac Herzog, visited Turkey in March 2022.
Turkey’s relations with
the EU in general, and Germany in particular, were put on a new footing. Repaired
relations with Egypt, too, seem on track – Egyptian and Turkish diplomats are about
to hold a third round of negotiations, while Turkey has decided to appoint a
new ambassador to Cairo after a gap of nearly nine years.
Elsewhere the story is
less encouraging. Turkey began wooing Iran
in November 2021, when Turkey’s Cavusoglu met the newly-elected Iranian
president, Ebrahim Raisi. Two weeks later the two presidents met for the first
time and signed up to a comprehensive improvement of bilateral relations. That
arrangement has come unstuck. Already at
odds over Iraq and control of the Iraqi region of Sinjar, in May a major row
erupted between Turkey and Iran over transboundary waters. Turkey has started
to construct dams on the Aras and Tigris rivers, and is ignoring Iran’s objections.
As for Greece,
reconciliation has apparently proved too hard a nut for Turkey to crack. A breakdown in the détente turned on the
status of certain islands in the Aegean.
On May 31 Turkey’s Cavusoglu accused Greece of violating international
agreements that guarantee the islands remain demilitarized. He claimed that
Greece was violating the agreement by flying aircraft over them. He threatened action if the violations did
not stop.
More than once during
the Syrian civil conflict Erdogan’s obsession with the threat he perceives from
the Kurdish independence PKK party has led him to actions at odds with NATO
policy. For example the defeat of
Islamic State in Syria was due in large part to the heroism of the Kurdish
Peshmerga forces fighting on behalf of the Western coalition, but Erdogan
regarded them as potential enemies and grabbed swathes of Kurdish occupied
territory south of the Turkish border.
Now Turkey is pitted against
a NATO consensus over the wish of Sweden and Finland to join the organization
to strengthen the West against the imperial ambitions of Russia’s president,
Vladimir Putin. Erdogan has used the
veto available to every NATO member to oppose their membership. Once again the perceived PKK threat to
Turkey’s integrity lies at the root of the issue. Turkey accuses Sweden and
Finland of harboring people linked to the PKK and others it deems terrorists.
“As long as Tayyip
Erdogan is at the head of the Republic of Turkey,” Erdogan told journalists on
May 28, “we cannot say ‘yes’ to countries that support terror joining NATO.”
Sweden and Finland have said they condemn terrorism and would welcome the possibility of liaising with Turkey. Erdogan remains adamant. Charm – at least as far as Greece and NATO are concerned – seems to have dissipated.
Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post on-line, 7 June 2022:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-708706
Published in Eurasia Review, 18 June 2022:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/18062022-erdogans-charm-offensive-a-limited-success-oped/
Published in Jewish Business News, 11 June, 2022:https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2022/06/17/erdogans-charm-offensive-a-limited-success/
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