The Impact of AKP Geopolitical Visions on Turkey's Foreign Relations And

The impact of AKP geopolitical visions on Turkey’s foreign relations and role as a regional power.

______

MA Thesis

June 2015

European Studies: Identity & Integration

Faculty of Humanities

Ross McQueen

10848355

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. L. A. Bialasiewicz

Second Reader: Dr. M. E. Spiering

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

Table of Contents

List of Figures 3

Notes on Turkish Spelling 4

Abbreviations of Turkish Political Parties 5

Profiles 6

Introduction 7 The era of single-party government 7 Political change and the end of an era? 8

Chapter One – Historical Overview 10 The origins of geopolitics 10 Geopolitical tropes and critical geopolitics 12 A brief history of geopolitics in Turkey: the Ottoman era 14 The sick man of Europe 16 ‘Three types of politics’ 17 The early Republican era 18 WWII and the Cold War period 19 The 1990s 20

Chapter 2 – Geopolitics in 21st century Turkey 21 Introduction: The AKP and the 2002 election victory 21 Ahmet Davutoğlu and the doctrine of Strategic Depth 22 The question of Neo-Ottomanism 28 Recalcitrant Kemalism 30 Eurasianism 33

Chapter 3 – Conflicting world views and major events 35 Introduction: Turkey in the 21st century 35 1. The Iraq War (2003) 36 2. War in Gaza (2008-2009) 39 3. The Mavi Marmara incident (2010) 42 4. Gezi Park protests (2013) 44 5. The Syria crisis (2011 – ongoing) 47

Chapter 4 – Geopolitical repercussions 52 Introduction: thirteen years of zero problems? 52 The Middle East 53 The EU 55 Conclusion 56

Bibliography 60

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

List of Figures

Figure Page

0.1 Atatürk teaches villagers the new alphabet in Kayseri, 1928. 4 0.2 Turkish general election results by province, 2015. 5 0.3 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, current President of Turkey 6 0.4 Ahmet Davutoğlu, current Prime Minister of Turkey 6 0.5 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder and first President of Turkey 6 0.6 Davutoğlu rouses AKP supporters after the election results on 7th June 2015 8

1.1 The Geographical Pivot of History 11 1.2 Map of the Sykes-Picot agreement, drawn up in 1916. 13 1.3 Map of the Ottoman Empire. 15

2.1 Strategic Depth: the untranslated academic bestseller. 23 2.2 Atatürk marks Central Asia on a map in a geography lesson at Samsun, 1930. 33

3.1 Map showing Davutoğlu’s vision of Turkey’s ‘Near Land Basin’ in orange and ‘Near Continental Basin’ in green. 41 3.2 Erdoğan on Facebook: ‘The death sentence given to Morsi today is a death sentence for democracy.’ 46

4.1 A vision for the future: Erdoğan’s target years. 57 4.2 Can Davutoğlu come out fighting? 58

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

Notes on Turkish Spelling

Fig. 0.1 Atatürk teaches villagers the new alphabet in Kayseri, 1928. Source: Presidency of the Republic of Turkey (1928).

Turkish Letter Pronunciation

C c ‘j’ as in ‘jam’

Ç ç ‘ch’ as in ‘cheese’

Ğ ğ silent; lengthens the preceding vowel

I ı a schwa sound; like the ‘u’ in ‘supply’ or the ‘e’ in ‘taken’

J j French ‘j’ as in ‘Jacques’

Ö ö French ‘eu’ as in ‘seul’, or German ‘ö’ as in ‘öffnen’

Ş ş ‘sh’ as in ‘shoe’

Ü ü French ‘u’ as in ‘tu’, or German ‘ü’ as in ‘über’

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

Abbreviations of Turkish Political Parties

Abbreviation Turkish Meaning English Meaning

AKP Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi Justice and Development Party

CHP Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi Republican People’s Party

HDP Halkların Demokratik Partisi People’s Democratic Party

MHP Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi Nationalist Movement Party

Fig. 0.2 Turkish general election results by province, 2015. Source: TRT (2015b).

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

Profiles

Profile: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Erdoğan is the current President of the Republic of Turkey. Though controversial, he has been described as ‘Turkey’s most effective leader, public speaker and political operator since the death of Atatürk’ (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.322). He previously served as Mayor of Istanbul, and then Prime Minister of Turkey from March 2003 to August 2014. Critics have accused him of becoming increasingly authoritarian throughout his time in power (Çandar, 2014; The Guardian, 2015b; The Independent, 2014). Fig. 0.3 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, current President of Turkey

Source: Gobierno de Chile (2012).

Profile: Ahmet Davutoğlu

Formerly a professor of international relations, Ahmet Davutoğlu became chief foreign policy advisor to the AKP government following its election victory in 2002 (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.181). He is widely regarded as the architect of AKP foreign policy (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.323; Laçiner, 2009, p.154). He became Foreign Minister in 2009, and has been Prime Minister since August 2014.

Fig. 0.4 Ahmet Davutoğ lu, current Prime Minister of Turkey Source: Foreign and Commonwealth Office (2010).

Profile: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

The founder and first President of the Republic of Turkey, Atatürk singlehandedly dictated Turkish foreign policy until his death in 1938 (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.174). His distinct ideology and world view, known as ‘Kemalism’, called for an isolationist-Westernist foreign policy, a secular state and a strictly Turkish nationalism, and is an important yet problematic legacy of the Republic’s early years which still deeply influences Turkish politics today (Taşpınar, 2008, p.4). Fig. 0.5 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder and first President of Turkey

Source: Presidency of the Republic of Turkey (1931).

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

Introduction

Turkey in the 21st century

The era of single-party government

The 21st century so far has been a significant era in the history of Turkish politics. Between November 2002 and June 2015 it has been a period of single-party government by the Justice and Development Party – Turkish: Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, (AKP). This is a departure from the unstable coalition governments which characterised the immediate post-Cold War period, and which led some observers to refer to the 1990s as Turkey’s ‘lost decade’ (Taşpınar, 2008, p.11).

As such, the AKP has remained relatively unimpeded by domestic opposition in its efforts to enact its distinct ideological vision. The AKP has had unrivalled scope to dictate the direction of Turkish foreign policy, largely because Turkey’s other political parties have not succeeded in providing viable policy alternatives (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.177). Indeed, the Republican People’s Party – Turkish: Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, (CHP) – which constitutes Turkey’s main opposition party, has been accused of being ‘ineffectual’, and of doing little more than contributing to the polarisation of Turkish politics, with secularists on one side and AKP supporters on the other (Yardımcı-Geyikçi, 2014, pp.446-7).

The AKP brought with it a distinct new foreign policy outlook. Whereas previously Turkish foreign policy had been isolationist while nominally pro-Western (Murinson, 2006, p.945; Erşen, 2013, p.27; Stein, 2014, p.3), the AKP initially brought a new vigour to Turkey’s EU membership aspirations, and also showed an interest in deepening Turkey’s diplomatic influence in the Middle East (Larrabee, 2010, p.157; Stein, 2014, p.1). Since much of the Middle East was once a part of the Ottoman Empire, some observers have described the AKP’s renewed interest in these countries as ‘Neo-Ottomanism’ (Taşpınar, 2008; Murinson, 2006; Kınıklıoğlu, 2007b; Tüysüzoğlu, 2014).

The politician widely acknowledged as the architect of the AKP’s foreign policy is current Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.181; Pope & Pope, 2011, p.323; Laçiner, 2009, p.154). Davutoğlu’s views on foreign policy are based on his understanding of Turkey’s geopolitics, as outlined in his 2001 book Strategic Depth: Turkey’s International Position. Despite selling a reported 100,000 copies prior to 2014, this book has never been translated into English (Özkan, 2014, p.120). Thus a unique insight into the geopolitical theory that underlies many of the AKP’s foreign policy initiatives of the past thirteen years is denied to those observers who do not possess a knowledge of Turkish. This thesis will therefore seek to analyse the geopolitical motivations behind Turkish foreign policy under the AKP from a Turkish geopolitical perspective, which is not always

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam considered by non-Turkish analysts of Turkey’s external relations. The aim will be to investigate the impacts of AKP geopolitics on Turkey’s foreign relations and role as an aspiring regional power.

Political change and the end of an era?

The writing of this thesis has coincided with what may prove to be the end of the period of single- party rule. On 7th June 2015 Turkey held a general election in which no one party achieved an absolute majority. Despite polling just over 40%, the AKP was denied a majority by the People’s Democratic Party – Turkish: Halkların Demokratik Partisi (HDP) – which exceeded the 10% poll threshold to enter Turkey’s Grand National Assembly (Öktem, 2015; Letsch, 2015; Radikal, 2015b). The vote was largely seen as a popular rejection of President Erdoğan’s plans to grant himself greater executive powers by rewriting the constitution, something he is unable to do without an AKP majority (Letsch, 2015; Lowen, 2015; Öktem, 2015). The BBC’s Mark Lowen described the result as ‘a new political era in Turkey’ (Lowen, 2015), while the Turkish daily Radikal suggested that ‘a new paradigm has appeared’ in Turkish politics (Turkish: yeni bir paradigma oluştu) (Radikal, 2015b).

Fig. 0.6 Davutoğlu rouses AKP supporters after the election results on 7th June 2015 Source: TRT (2015a).

While the AKP was first elected in 2002 mostly on the basis of its domestic agenda (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.177), foreign policy subsequently proceeded to become the ‘linchpin’ of the AKP’s domestic legitimacy (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.91). It appears, however, that domestic politics – that is to say, Erdoğan’s designs for a new Presidential system – ultimately brought it down (Öktem, 2015). At the same time, the AKP’s loss of majority coincides with a calamitous period in Turkish foreign relations.

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

Prime Minister Davutoğlu’s once-vaunted foreign policy initiatives have been blamed for ruining Turkey’s relations with its neighbours, with the result that Turkey currently has no ambassador in several formerly-friendly capitals (Al-Monitor, 2014a; Lowen, 2014). Erdoğan’s domestic ambitions might have found more support if Turkey’s external relations had not been in such a poor state.

The June 2015 election will require either a coalition government, minority rule by the AKP, or fresh elections (Lowen, 2015). At the present time, it looks unlikely that the AKP will be able to exercise the same monopoly over the country’s foreign policy that it previously enjoyed. It may be unable to continue in its efforts to implement Davutoğlu’s geopolitical doctrine of Strategic Depth in the region. As such, the election arguably marks the endpoint of a singular era in Turkish politics and therefore allows this thesis to offer a retrospective analysis of a Turkish geopolitical scene which might well be about to disappear, or at least decline. The anticipated conclusion of this thesis was that the AKP’s foreign policy initiatives have largely failed, and that the geopolitical theories underlying this foreign policy were ultimately the reason for the AKP’s failure; the events of this month are perhaps an indication that the Turkish public is in agreement.

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

Chapter 1

Historical Overview

The origins of geopolitics

Geopolitics emerged as a branch of the academic discipline of political geography in the last years of the 19th century, when a loose group of European intellectuals began developing theories to aid in the understanding and exploitation of geography as a tool for political gain (Ó Tuathail, 1996, p.21). Of these intellectuals, the earliest and most significant was perhaps the British geographer Halford Mackinder. Mackinder’s geopolitical theories were concerned with preserving the dominance of the British Empire through the development of a new mode of geographical observation (Heffernan, 2000, p.32; Ó Tuathail, 1996, p.86). Later theorists such as Ratzel and Haushofer in Germany, and Spykman and Mahan in the United States, were also concerned primarily with strengthening or safeguarding the international influence of their respective nations based on geographical analysis (Özkan, 2014, p.122). Though largely discredited, many of the theories developed by these early geopoliticians are still used by policymakers in Europe and North America today, as well as elsewhere. In Turkey the theories of Mackinder, Haushofer, Spykman and others can be seen as newly influential, having been imported by current Prime Minister – and self-styled geopolitical theorist – Ahmet Davutoğlu, as a basis for his own strategic foreign policy programmes (Stein, 2014, p.6; Özkan, 2014, p.122).

Geopolitical theories are often employed to support the formulation of foreign policy, as they claim to identify the underlying narratives that dictate the course of international politics (Ó Tuathail, 1996, p.30; Agnew, 1998, p.2). By 1904, Mackinder believed he had identified the key geographical factors that governed world history, making it possible to suggest ‘a correlation between the larger geographical and the larger historical generalizations’ (Mackinder, 1904, p.34). He identified a number of essentialised zones which he deemed crucial to the course of historical developments: these consisted of the ‘Pivot Area’ or ‘Heartland’ encompassing much of Russia and Central Asia, encircled by an ‘Inner or Marginal Crescent’ that covered Europe, the Arabian peninsula, and Southeast Asia, and finally an ‘Outer or Insular Crescent’ covering everything else, including the Americas, Great Britain and Ireland (ibid., p.38). He believed that whichever power controlled the Russian ‘Heartland’ could make a viable attempt at world domination, and that whoever controlled Eastern Europe therefore had access to, and was able to exert control over, the Heartland (Mackinder, 1919, p.106). Based on this ‘Heartland Theory’, Mackinder warned against permitting an alliance between Germany and Russia, who together, he believed, would be able to launch an attempt to control the entire world (Mackinder, 1904, p.37).

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

The Heartland Theory therefore constituted an attempt to dictate foreign policy based on a subjective and strategic reading of geography. Mackinder applied his faculties of geopolitical reasoning to the world map, and extracted what he perceived to be its underlying meanings: a method which he likened to reading a musical score (Ó Tuathail, 1996, p.105). However, rather than strengthening the British Empire, Mackinder’s geopolitical theories ultimately made the calamity of WWI possible by providing an intellectual justification for the apparatus of muscular imperialism (ibid., p.110). Despite the devastating repercussions of Mackinder’s geopolitics, however, both his system of ‘reading’ geography for strategic gain, and indeed the ‘Heartland Theory’ that he invented for this purpose, are, in various forms, still in use today. In the case of Turkey, Ahmet Davutoğlu’s geopolitical theories have been concerned primarily with enhancing Turkey’s international position based on a reading of Turkish history and geography: in his own words, this involves exploiting Turkey’s ‘geographical depth’ (Turkish: coğrafî derinlik) and ‘historical depth’ (Turkish: tarihî derinlik), and transforming it into ‘strategic depth’ (Turkish: stratejik derinlik) (Davutoğlu, 2011, p.260). Such claims could be seen as merely another theory in the academic realm; however, Davutoğlu’s position as what Ó Tuathail refers to as an ‘intellectual of statecraft’ and key figure in the Justice and Development Party have allowed his geopolitical theories to become the primary force behind Turkey’s foreign policy (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.181; Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, pp.91-2). Elsewhere, the Heartland Theory finds resonance today among Russian Eurasianists such as Aleksandr Dugin (Bassin & Aksenov, 2006, p.101), who have in turn influenced Turkey’s own modern-day cadre of Eurasianist thinkers (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.558).

Fig. 1.1 The Geographical Pivot of History Source: Mackinder (1904).

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

The fallacy at the heart of geopolitical discourse is the refusal to recognise its own subjective nature, and what geopolitical theorists fail to reflect on is their own agency in ‘reading’ the underlying narratives that they seek to exploit in the interests of foreign policy. Mackinder saw his methods as scientific and objective, but, as with a musical score, any reading is inevitably subject to the reader’s own interpretations, and what this leads to is therefore an active ‘writing’ of the geography that the observer believes him or herself to be objectively reading (Ó Tuathail, 1996, p.52). Despite aiming explicitly to expand Turkey’s influence as a regional power, Davutoğlu claims to be nothing other than ‘an ordinary and morally disinterested observer’ (Turkish: ahlâkî kayıtsızlık içindeki sıradan bir gözlemci) (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.vi). As such, Davutoğlu has been criticised by analysts before for his refusal to recognise his own agency in his ‘readings’ of Turkey’s geographical and historical position (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.182). Thus, despite clearly being used by policymakers in the interests of their own individual nations, geopolitical theories are consistently defended by their proponents as ‘objective’ (Agnew, 1998, p.125). This misconception must therefore be highlighted and challenged in any reading of Davutoğlu’s – or indeed anyone else’s – use of ‘geopolitical reasoning’.

Geopolitical tropes and critical geopolitics

The essence of geopolitical discourse goes beyond a mere reliance on Mackinder’s specific theories or methods of observation, however. His form of ‘classical geopolitics’, as it has come to be known, is arguably in force whenever a geographer or politician draws a line or marks a name on a map based upon his or her own interpretation of geographic or strategic ‘realities’, and then attempts to reify these interpretations on the ground. The Sykes-Picot line and the linear borders of some African nations, which are partial legacies of the collapsed Ottoman Empire, are perhaps the most visible scars of 19th and 20th-century geopolitical meddling on the political map of the world today (Osman, 2013). Indeed, some Turkish scholars have identified such meddling as the primary cause of ‘decreased democracy, tolerance, co-operation, stability and economic development’ in the Middle East region today (Laçiner, 2009, p.153). Certainly the ease with which the fighters of so-called Islamic State have erased the borders of the Sykes-Picot agreement goes some way towards highlighting the artificial nature of these borders.

Geopolitics is also in play whenever politicians bracket whole regions of the world together with ‘trite earth-labelling metaphors’ (Ó Tuathail, 2008, p.672). These include such tropes as the ‘Heartland’ and ‘Rimland’, but also more modern examples such as the ‘axis of evil’, the ‘arc of prosperity’, or merely concepts such as a nation’s ‘spheres of influence’. Geopolitical discourse is in force whenever local crises are explained through recourse to global power-struggles such as ‘the Great Game’, or whenever countries or regions are essentialised, exoticised, ‘othered’ and demonised by politicians and strategists (ibid.). Edward Said has pointed out the concerted effort by the Bush administration to

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam make Saddam Hussein’s Iraq a geopolitical ‘other’ in the lead-up to the invasion of 2003, for instance, by demonising Saddam and dehumanising Iraq (Said, 2003, p.xx). Crude labelling and otherising tactics ignore the intricacies and local motivations that are so often discounted in classical geopolitical discourse (Ó Tuathail, 2008, p.672). What is lost, as Said puts it, ‘is a sense of the density and interdependence of human life, which can neither be reduced to a formula nor be brushed aside as irrelevant’ (Said, 2003, p.xx).

Fig. 1.2 Map of the Sykes-Picot agreement, drawn up in 1916. Source: Royal Geographical Society (1916).

In approaching the geopolitical discourse of modern-day policymakers, it is thus necessary to make recourse to the field of ‘critical geopolitics’. Critical geopolitics, as described by the geographer Gearóid Ó Tuathail, aims to deconstruct and expose the fallacies and dangers of unchecked geopolitical discourse. Critical geopolitics approaches geography as a complex and ‘messy’ affair which is not bound by the often arbitrary lines of human-made borders and divisions (Ó Tuathail, 2008, p.672). Critical geopolitics places importance on localised context at the expense of Great Power narratives, and avoids crude labelling practices (ibid.). And these practices are unfortunately still rife: Davutoğlu for example has been known to use the heavily loaded geopolitical term ‘Lebensraum’, coined by Friedrich Ratzel and later appropriated by the Nazis, with regards to Turkey’s own geographical context (Al-Monitor, 2014). Any attempt to reify such theories of Lebensraum, ‘hinterland’, or ‘spheres of influence’ on the ground should therefore be approached with caution. The aim of critical geopolitics is thus primarily to serve as a tool for resisting ‘the exercise of geo-power by those centres of modern authority who wish only to make the world in the image of their maps’ (Ó Tuathail, 1996, p.20). The ensuing chapters of this thesis will therefore utilise the theoretical and conceptual framework provided by the critical geopolitics literature to examine and

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam challenge the narratives and labels envisioned by Davutoğlu and the AKP, and to evaluate the effects of these on modern Turkish foreign policy.

A brief history of geopolitics in Turkey: the Ottoman era

Ahmet Davutoğlu is by no means the first intellectual to examine Turkey’s international position from a geopolitical perspective. Questions over Turkey’s place in the geopolitical ‘theatre of politics’ have existed both within Turkey and without since the declining decades of the Ottoman Empire. Many of the geopolitical problems faced by Turkey today, such as hostile neighbours, meddling foreign powers, and the differences in domestic world views between religious conservatives and Western- inspired reformers, can all find their counterparts in the latter days of the Ottoman Empire (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.29).

At its greatest extent the Ottoman Empire covered territories across three continents, spanning Europe, Asia and North Africa. The Empire had seen its greatest period of expansion in the 15th and 16th centuries (Finkel, 2005). However, in the 19th century, during what Mackinder termed the ‘Columbian epoch’ of European colonial expansion (Mackinder, 1904, p.34), the Ottoman Empire was in a state of decline. This in itself fuelled European justification for the expansion of their own empires: the German geopolitician Friedrich Ratzel cited the Ottoman Empire as proof that a state which does not keep expanding will ultimately become vulnerable, regardless of the territory in its possession (Heffernan, 2000, p.48). In order to avoid the fate of the Ottoman Empire, it was thus deemed necessary for European states to keep expanding their colonies. In contrast to Ratzel’s ‘organic’ need for a state to expand, the Ottomans supposedly considered their Empire to be a ‘self- sufficient universe’ (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.38); encircled by the colonial European Powers, the Empire had in any case few options for expansion. Unable to keep pace with Europe’s expanding Christian powers, the most urgent geopolitical aim for the Ottomans at the time was to defend the Empire’s internal integrity and prevent the loss of any more territory (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.52). This geopolitical strategy was to be achieved by exploiting the ‘balance of power’ in Europe, by playing the European Powers against each other in order to deflect attention away from the crumbling Empire for as long as possible (Murinson, 2006, p.945).

For as long as the Ottoman Empire remained in place, the European states of the 19th century competed for influence within its territories, in a state of affairs that became known in Europe as ‘the Eastern Question’ (Said, 1978, p.76; Pope & Pope, 2011, p.32). As the geopolitical scholar John Agnew has argued, this expansionist interest in the Empire’s territories was partially due to the concept of ‘civilizational geopolitics’ (Agnew, 1998, p.94). The civilizational discourse at the time asserted that the states of Europe existed in a finely-tuned geopolitical balance, outside of which there

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam existed only ‘primitive’ and ‘decadent’ political entities which were ‘candidates for conquest rather than recognition’ (ibid.). Historically, the Ottomans had indeed served as the barbaric external ‘other’ against which Christian states established their own sense of European identity (Burke, 1980, p.24; Larrabee, 2010, p.173). Key to justifying European interest in the Empire’s territories, however, were the substantial Christian minorities that existed within the Empire, and which were used as a pretext for intervening in the Empire’s internal affairs (Finkel, 2005, p.323). As Putin’s annexation of Crimea demonstrates, ‘defending’ minorities in a foreign state as a pretext for geo-strategic meddling is a practice that survives to the present day (Easton, 2014).

Fig. 1.3 Map of the Ottoman Empire. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica (1997).

As if proof of the Crimean Peninsula’s supposed geopolitical importance, indeed, Davutoğlu cites the Crimean War of 1853-56 as a prime example of the Ottoman Empire’s ‘balance of power’ tactics. He argues that the Empire’s astute tactical manoeuvring throughout the conflict, from which it emerged on the victorious side, enabled it to become an internal element in the European system by operating in a way which balanced out the strategic interests of the Great Powers (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.67). Following the War, the Empire was admitted to the Concert of Europe in 1856 (Agnew, 1998, p.94), bringing de facto recognition as a European state; however, other scholars have argued that this ‘Europeanisation’ of the Empire was nothing more than ‘brief and superficial’ (Pope & Pope, 2011,

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam p.32) and did nothing to combat European conceptions of the fundamental ‘otherness’ of the Turks (Agnew, 1998, p.94). For their part, the Ottomans typically glossed Europeans of all nations together as ‘Franks’, who inhabited the hostile un-Islamic world of ‘Frangistan’ (Lewis, 1961, p.43).

The sick man of Europe

The question of the Ottoman Empire’s European credentials was continuously wrangled over throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. The ambiguity of the Empire’s geopolitical ‘role’ is epitomised by debate over a remark made by Tsar Nicholas I in 1844 that the Empire was the ‘sick man of Europe’ (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.32; Economist, 2005). The use of the term arguably served to write the Ottoman Empire as simultaneously European and ‘other’: the Empire was of Europe, but at the same time it was not a healthy or functioning part of Europe, signifying a conundrum which continues to attract both Turkish and international media attention up to this day. Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan used it to emphasise Turkey’s European credentials when he addressed EU leaders in 2004 with the words ‘Already in Ottoman times you called us the sick man of Europe, not Asia’ (Gülten, 2004). Inside Turkey, the ‘sick man of Europe’ epithet is also used for comparative purposes, to demonstrate how successful Turkey has become in the 21st century in contrast to the declining days of the Ottoman Empire. In 2009, the journalist Cengiz Çandar wrote in the Turkish daily liberal Radikal that Turkey had gone from being the 19th century’s sick man of Europe to become a rising power (Çandar, 2009). Similarly, when Erdoğan wrote an article for Newsweek in 2011 titled ‘The healthy man of Europe’ (Turkish: Avrupa’nın gürbüz adamı), he was declaring that Turkey was now not only European but ‘viably’ and ‘powerfully’ European, and that the days of sickness were now finally consigned to the past (Radikal, 2011).

Since the 2008 economic crisis, however, some commentators in Turkey have seemed keen to apply the term ‘sick man of Europe’ to other European countries as well. Writing in the Turkish daily Milliyet, Kıvanç Özvardar identified Greece as Europe’s new sick man in 2010, along with Portugal and Spain, next to whom Turkey was shown to be in much better condition (Özvardar, 2010). Similarly, columnist Mahfi Eğilmez wrote in Radikal that ‘On entering the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire was the sick man of Europe. In the 21st century the sick man of Europe is Greece’ (Eğilmez, 2010). There might indeed be a sense of gleeful retribution in shifting the ‘sick man’ epithet onto Greece, Turkey’s perennial geopolitical foe. However, at the same time, reusing the same epithet necessarily implies a certain ‘equal footing’ between Turkey and the new ‘sick men’. If Greece can be the ‘sick man of Europe’ and still be an EU member,1 then, by extension, so can Turkey. The Tsar’s trite remark about the Ottoman Empire has thus spurred a vibrant debate on Turkey’s geopolitical

1 As of June 2015.

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam situatedness that continues to inform the media discourse both inside and outside Turkey even today. What this also demonstrates is that the geopolitical ambiguity which burdened the Ottoman Empire has been inherited by the modern Turkish state.

‘Three types of politics’

Alongside the geopolitical ambiguity of being both ‘European’ and ‘non-European’, modern Turkey has also inherited a number of factional and ideological fault-lines from the Ottoman Empire’s final decades, which continue to shape the Republic’s modern-day geopolitical outlook. These can be found articulated in the 1904 work ‘Three Types of Politics’ (Ottoman Turkish: Üç tarz-ı Siyaset) by the Tatar émigré scholar Yusuf Akçura (1876-1935), who was influential in setting out what he saw as the three options for providing stability to the Ottoman state. These also correspond closely to later articulations of Turkey’s geopolitical positioning vis-à-vis its neighbouring region. These three types of politics were: Ottomanism, Pan-Islamism, and Turkism (Lewis, 1961, p.326). Davutoğlu also adds Westernism to the list of world views current in the late Ottoman decades (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.84). The idea of Pan-Islamism was raised by European orientalist thinkers in the 1870s, who saw it as a potential threat to Europe’s hold on its Muslim colonies; in the Ottoman Empire, however, it was never deemed to be a viable geopolitical option by the governing elite, who rather saw Pan-Islamism in terms of strengthening the unity of the Empire itself, rather than integrating it with Muslim communities in India and elsewhere (Özkan, 2014, pp.125-6). Likewise Yusuf Akçura saw Pan- Islamism as a romantic but unrealizable ideal (Lewis, 1961, p.326). Ottomanism, on the other hand, meant loyalty to the Ottoman state, which Yusuf Akçura argued was meaningless without the existence of a genuine Ottoman ‘nation’ of people; neither Ottomanism or Pan-Islamism were deemed to be viable geopolitical aims (ibid.). Akçura deduced therefore that the only course left was to adopt a policy of Turkism, basing loyalty to the state upon the Turkish race (ibid., p.327).

In varying forms, these three geopolitical outlooks – a preoccupation either with the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, the unity of Islam, or the Turkish race and Turkic peoples – each have ideological proponents in modern Turkey today. The foreign relations of the AKP have been characterised by some scholars as a form of ‘Neo-Ottomanism’ due to their focus on the former territories of the Ottoman Empire (Taşpınar, 2008; Murinson, 2006). Others see a Pan-Islamist agenda behind the AKP’s foreign policy initiatives, based on uniting the Muslim peoples of the Middle East under Turkish hegemony (Özkan, 2014; Stein, 2014). Others have noted that Turkism, or Pan-Turkism, survives among ultra-nationalist groups, and has influenced the development of a ‘Eurasianist’ geopolitical discourse among some Nationalist and Kemalist factions in Turkey today (Erşen, 2013). However, neither Ottomanism, Pan Islamism or Pan-Turkism were to become the official policy of

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam the new Turkish Republic, and when the Republic was founded in 1923 a radical new ideological world view known as ‘Kemalism’ was instead to become the new state ideology (Taşpınar, 2008, p.4).

The early Republican era

Turkey was founded by Mustafa Kemal, later known as ‘Atatürk’, following a War of Liberation against the European Powers who occupied the remnants of the Ottoman Empire following its defeat in WWI (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.553). Atatürk believed that the new Republic needed to be viewed as an equal to the Western Powers as a deterrent to Western intervention, and as such aimed to portray Turkey as having ‘joined the ranks of the civilised’ (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, pp.181-3). The early Kemalists took on a ‘civilising mission’, based on the principles of the French Revolution, and aimed to cut ties with the decrepit Ottoman past in order to bring Turkish society to the level of European society (Taşpınar, 2008, p.4). As such, Atatürk framed his policies within the discourse of ‘civilizational geopolitics’, rather than on the emerging discourse of ‘naturalised geopolitics’, which saw international relations as dependent on the natural ‘character’ of individual states (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.183; Agnew, 1998, p.95). The aim, then, of Atatürk’s reformist agenda was to abandon the unprofitable legacy of empire, escape the ‘tyranny’ of recalcitrant clericalism, and ‘embrace the modern world’ (Finkel, 2005, p.1). To this end, Atatürk abolished the Sultanate in 1922, and abolished the Caliphate in 1924. For him, the Sultan was too much a symbol of the traditionalist past, while the Caliphate left Turkey open to pressure from Muslim nations outside its borders (Lewis, 1961, p.263). Atatürk also rejected all forms of irredentism in the Caucasus and Middle East, and thus ties with those Turkic peoples living outside the Republic were also effectively cut (Erşen, 2013, p.25). From its foundation until the 1990s, Turkey was thus to become a secularist and Western- oriented Republic, suppressing all links with the Ottoman Empire and neglecting relations with the newly-independent states of the Empire’s former territories in the Middle East (Murinson, 2006, p.950). This Westernist orientation and rejection of all things Islamic and Middle Eastern was to become the official state ideology known as ‘Kemalism’, and remains one of the most controversial aspects of Atatürk’s legacy in Turkey today (Taşpınar, 2008, p.4).

The early days of the Turkish Republic saw the beginnings of a geopolitical policy of Westernisation and isolationism (Murinson, 2006, p.946). This was followed consistently due to the single-handed governing of foreign policy by President Kemal Atatürk (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.174). The appearance of Kurdish-Islamic rebellions in the Republic’s early years also served to confirm Atatürk and his followers in their view that the new Turkish Republic remained vulnerable to breakup at the hands of ethnic and religious factionalism; consequently Kemalism adopted a policy of assimilationist nationalism which was hostile towards minority ethnic demands (Taşpınar, 2008, p.6). Turkey’s new inward-looking geopolitical agenda was best expressed in Atatürk’s famous mantra of ‘peace at home,

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam peace abroad’, which articulated a prioritisation of internal reform over foreign policy adventurism (Stein, 2014, p.3; Murinson, 2006, p.946).

WWII and the Cold War period

It was during WWII that a clearly-defined concept of ‘geopolitics’ as a foreign policy tool first began to gain traction in Turkey, where it was initially understood to be ‘the science of explaining the effects of nature on international behaviour’ (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.179). Though Turkey managed to remain neutral throughout the Second World War, the ensuing polarisation of world politics during the Cold War era made the Republic’s policy of isolationism untenable, and Turkey joined the US-led Western bloc, largely due to security concerns about Stalin’s aggressive policies and the encroachment of the Soviet Union (Stein, 2014, p.3; Larrabee, 2010, p.167). In this new era of ‘ideological geopolitics’, Turkey’s policymakers continued to represent their policy choices within the framework of civilizational politics (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.184). The staunchly Kemalist Turkish military, which saw itself as the ‘custodian’ of Atatürk’s secular Kemalist ideology (Taşpınar, 2008, p.6), viewed geopolitics as a means of justifying the central role it aimed to play in the shaping of both Turkey’s domestic and foreign policies (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.184). The military coups of 1960, 1971 and 1980, and the ‘postmodern coup’ of 1997, were arguably carried out in defence of the ‘civilizational’ tenets of Kemalist ideology, in the face of the growing threat from Marxist or non- secular civilizational models (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.555). Generally speaking, since the beginning of the Cold War, both Kemalists and Islamists in Turkey have found geopolitics a useful tool for presenting their particular foreign policy preferences as geographical faits accomplis rather than based along ideological lines (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.180).

During the Cold War Turkey became indispensable to the West as its ‘southern bastion’ against the Soviet Union (Taşpınar, 2008, p.7). As such, the former civilizational divide that separated the Islamic empire of the Ottomans from the Christian empires of Europe largely ceased to matter, as Cold War realpolitik dictated Turkey’s status as a Western country (ibid.). Turkish foreign policy during the Cold War therefore focused on promoting Turkey’s strategic location as a NATO member on the borders of the Soviet Union (Erşen, 2013, p.26), while at the same time aiming to prevent the expansion of Soviet military power into the Mediterranean and the Middle East (Larrabee, 2010, p.157). Indeed, during the 1950s Turkey exerted efforts to limit the spread of Egyptian-inspired Pan- Arabism into Syria and Iraq (Stein, 2014, p.3). However, aside from this ‘buffering’ role, Turkey largely kept itself aloof from the politics of its Middle Eastern neighbours, and shaped its foreign policy largely in line with NATO preferences well into the 1980s (Sözen, 2010, p.116; Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.556; Stein, 2014, p.4; Falk, 2004).

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

The 1990s

After the Cold War ended in 1989 there were initial signs that Turkey might break free from its Westernist-isolationist foreign policy stance due to the opening of new areas of opportunity in former Soviet zones (Taşpınar, 2008, p.2). President Turgut Özal, who served as Prime Minister from 1983- 1989, and then as President from 1989-1993, was one of the first policymakers to promote the idea of ‘Neo-Ottomanism’ as an answer to these new horizons: to him this meant increased contacts with the Turkic peoples of Central Asia (Larrabee, 2010, p.158), combined with a policy of domestic modernisation and European integration, and the adoption of a ‘supranational identity’ that went beyond ‘ethnic allegiance’ (Özkan, 2014, p.128). Under Özal, Turkey aimed to become the ‘unofficial leader of the Turkic states in Central Asia and the Caucasus’, though this did not prove universally popular among the newly independent states (Sözen, 2010, p.113). Ahmet Davutoğlu, whose foreign policies have also been characterised as ‘Neo-Ottoman’, is however critical of Özal, whose efforts he likens to the failed attempts of 19th-century Ottoman politicians who aimed unsuccessfully to stall the decline of the Ottoman Empire (Özkan, 2014, pp.128-9). Generally, though, Özal is credited with opening Turkey up once more to the Middle East region which it had for so long neglected, and reaping substantial economic rewards as a result (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.184).

The progress Özal initially made in broadening Turkey’s foreign policy outlook until his death in 1993, was taken further by İsmail Cem, who served as Foreign Minister between 1997 and 2002, just prior to the election of the AKP. Turkey notably gained full EU candidate status during his time in office, which it gained at the Helsinki summit in December 1999 (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.318). Turkey also pursued improved relations with Russia, and showed symbolic signs of a willingness towards reconciliation with the Republic of Armenia (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, pp.186-7). The 1990s were however an era marred by unstable coalition governments and tarnished by an image of corruption, and the foreign policy of this decade has been characterised as little more than ‘muddling through’ without a coherent foreign policy orientation (Sözen, 2010, p.112). Instability and economic hardship ultimately prevented Özal’s Neo-Ottoman designs from reaching fruition (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.92). Nonetheless, it is possible to detect the seeds of the AKP’s future foreign policy strategy, and its favoured geopolitical models, in the era of Özal and Cem during the 1980s and 1990s (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.187). When the government which Cem served was voted out in November 2002 and the AKP gained power, Turkey was set to continue its independent new foreign policy orientation, albeit with a more religiously conservative flavour, into the 21st century. This was to be the era of AKP foreign policy under Erdoğan and Davutoğlu.

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

Chapter 2

Geopolitics in 21st century Turkey

Introduction: The AKP and the 2002 election victory

In November 2002 the Justice and Development Party – Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, (AKP) – won Turkey’s general election and came to power with over 34% of the vote. The only other party to pass the 10% threshold for representation in the Turkish parliament was the Republican People’s Party – Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, (CHP) – with 19% of the vote. This provided the AKP with a parliamentary majority and allowed the AKP to form a government. The AKP maintained a parliamentary majority until the general election of June 2015 (Lowen, 2015).

The AKP has its roots in the Islamist conservative Refah Partisi, or Welfare Party, which ruled Turkey as part of a two-party coalition from 1996-1997, before being removed in the so-called ‘postmodern coup’ of 1997 (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.176). The Refah Partisi, in turn, had its roots in the various successors of the National Order Party – Milli Nizam Partisi, (MNP) – of Necmettin Erbakan, which was founded in 1970 as Republican Turkey’s first ever Islamist political party (Özkan, 2014, p.119). The closure of the Refah Partisi prompted a split between the leadership of the party and some of its younger elements, who realigned themselves away from the strict Islamist traditions of the party and positioned themselves towards the centre-right of the Turkish political spectrum (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.174; Sözen, 2010, pp.110-1). This group was to become the AKP (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.177). Maintaining its religious identity, this new movement styled itself as a ‘Muslim democrat’ movement on the model of Europe’s Christian Democrat parties, and campaigned on a platform of increased individual liberties, welfare, a market economy, and enhanced democracy (Sözen, 2010, p.111). Unlike the avowedly anti-European Refah Partisi, the AKP was actively pro- EU, and believed that increased EU-integration would enable greater religious freedoms in Turkey (Larrabee, 2010, p.174; Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.177). As such, this constituted a significant departure from the traditional religious-conservative attitudes towards Europe as espoused by the earlier Refah Partisi (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.175).

The renewed focus on EU accession signifies one of the new dimensions that the AKP brought to Turkish foreign policy. However, the AKP’s foreign agenda encompassed a much broader range of local and regional goals than merely EU integration, and included renewed involvement both in the Middle East (Taşpınar, 2008, p.2) and in the countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.97; Larrabee, 2010, p.158). Some scholars have termed the AKP’s foreign policy agenda a ‘paradigm shift’ (Sözen, 2010; Tüysüzoğlu, 2014), while others have rightly pointed out that many

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam supposedly innovative changes in the AKP’s foreign policy were in fact set in motion by Özal and Cem in previous regimes (Larrabee, 2010, p.158; Murinson, 2006, p.945; Pope & Pope, 2011, p.344). Sedat Laçiner, a pro-AKP academic, has acknowledged a ‘continuation’ in the formulation and implementation of Turkish foreign policy, which he argues has nonetheless evolved to keep pace with a changing world (Laçiner, 2009, p.154). Ahmet Davutoğlu, Turkey’s current Prime Minister, himself wrote of the need to develop an ‘alternative viewpoint’ on Turkey’s future, which he has aimed to provide in his 2001 book Strategic Depth: Turkey’s International Position (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.v).

It is largely agreed, however, that ‘alternative viewpoints’ on foreign policy were most likely not the pivotal factor in the AKP’s 2002 election success, and indeed foreign policy did not play a large part in the AKP’s election manifesto (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.91; Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.177). While the AKP’s pro-European stance capitalised on many voters’ EU aspirations, a principle factor in the AKP’s victory was a general disillusionment with the country’s existing political parties (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.177). Ahmet Sözen identifies three important reasons for voters’ disillusionment, these being political instability, financial mismanagement, and a lack of progress on the Kurdish issue (Sözen, 2010, p.112). Pope and Pope have argued that the religious credentials of the party also had less to do with the AKP’s success than party leader Erdoğan’s personal charisma (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.322). In any case, after 2002 the AKP was in a position to attempt putting its new foreign policy visions into practice; Göktürk Tüysüzoğlu has argued that while foreign policy was a relatively marginal factor in the 2002 election victory, it later developed to become ‘the linchpin of [the] AKP’s social and political legitimacy’ (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.91). As such, the ‘alternative’ geopolitical imaginings outlined in Ahmet Davutoğlu’s book were to come under intense domestic and international scrutiny as he swiftly gained more influence over Turkey’s foreign policy agenda.

Ahmet Davutoğlu and the doctrine of Strategic Depth

When Professor Ahmet Davutoğlu, Chairman of the International Relations Faculty at Istanbul’s Beykent University, published his book Strategic Depth: Turkey’s International Position (Turkish: Stratejik Derinlik: Türkiye’nin Uluslararası Konumu) in 2001, it was viewed as ‘little more than the musings of an obscure Turkish academic with a pro-Islamic background’ (Larrabee, 2010, p.159). However, following the AKP’s 2002 general election victory and Davutoğlu’s promotion to chief foreign policy advisor to the government, the book became an academic bestseller (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.181). Davutoğlu subsequently became Foreign Minister in 2009, and Prime Minister in 2014, after former Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vacated the position to assume the office of Presidency. As such, Davutoğlu’s books and articles on geopolitics and foreign policy have generated a lot of attention in the media and in academia. He is rare among geopolitical theorists in that he has had the opportunity to make a direct attempt at implementing his theories, as is reflected in the title of

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam his most recent book, From Theory to Practice (Turkish: Teoriden Pratiğe). By 2014, Strategic Depth had reportedly sold 100,000 copies, but has so far never been translated into English (Özkan, 2014, p.120).

A reading of both the scholarly literature and media commentary on Strategic Depth, both Turkish and international, reveals that the book’s analysts generally fall into two camps: either (1) those aiming to reassure Western policymakers and secular Turks that Turkey is not undergoing Islamisation or abandoning the West (e.g. Taşpınar, 2008; Tüysüzoğlu, 2014; Larrabee, 2010; Laçiner, 2009; Falk, 2004); or conversely (2) those wishing to highlight and warn against the radical Islamist leanings that purportedly underlie Davutoğlu and the AKP’s foreign policy agenda (e.g. Stein, 2014; Murinson, 2006; Özkan, 2014). Those in the first camp tend to concentrate on what the AKP has done in reality since coming to power, while those in the second camp pay more attention to the theoretical background that lies behind AKP foreign policy. It is true that many of the theoretical arguments made by Davutoğlu in Strategic Depth and elsewhere are of dubious validity. Behlül Özkan, a former – and now disillusioned – student of Davutoğlu, is indeed highly critical of the current Turkish Prime Minister’s understanding of geopolitics, based on his reading of Strategic Depth and Davutoğlu’s other 300-odd articles on foreign policy and geopolitical thought. However, it is best to provide an initial overview of what the concept of Strategic Depth entails before deconstructing the rationale behind it.

An understanding of the concept of Strategic Depth is important, since it arguably forms the entire theoretical basis for the AKP’s foreign policy agenda (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, pp.91-2; Taşpınar, 2008, p.14). Davutoğlu in particular is widely seen as the AKP’s principal foreign policy architect (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.181; Pope & Pope, 2011, p.323; Laçiner, 2009, p.154). The far-reaching scope of Davutoğlu’s book makes it hard to pinpoint with exactitude what Strategic Depth precisely means, however, and indeed a number of the sources used in this thesis cite each other rather than the book itself when trying to define what Strategic Depth actually entails. When Davutoğlu was asked by the journalist Taha Akyol in 2005 what Strategic Depth actually meant, he replied

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam that it was concerned with ‘transforming the geographical and historical depth which Turkey has within its near surroundings into strategic depth’ (Davutoğlu, 2011, p.206; author’s translation). That is to say, Strategic Depth involves formulating a foreign policy that is based primarily on an understanding of Turkey’s history and geography.

In a 2004 article for the Turkish daily Radikal, Davutoğlu explained how the aims of Strategic Depth were to be implemented. Strategic Depth was to be realised through the application of five principles. These were: (1) a balance of security and freedom; (2) a policy of ‘zero problems with neighbours’; (3) multi-dimensional and multi-lane diplomacy; (4) a new form of diplomacy aimed at making Turkey into a ‘centre’ rather than a ‘bridge’; and (5) a principle of ‘rhythmic diplomacy’, or diplomacy which is constantly moving and adapting (Davutoğlu, 2004). As of June 2015, it is arguably the policy of ‘zero problems with neighbours’ (Turkish: komşularla sıfır sorun) that has failed most visibly. Turkey, indeed, no longer has ambassadors in many formerly friendly capitals (Lowen, 2014). Yet while the ‘zero problems’ policy may now be largely defunct, it was much praised at the time (Al-Monitor, 2014a), and was hailed as ‘a big improvement on previous governments’ (Economist, 2011). However, while many scholars characterise ‘zero problems’ as political pragmatism (e.g. Tüysüzoğlu, 2014; Taşpınar, 2008; Laçiner, 2009), Özkan argues that it is in fact based on a policy of pan-Islamism – a view which he supports with reference to Davutoğlu’s many early writings which were published in print-only Islamist journals (Özkan, 2014, p.119; Al- Monitor, 2014a). Stein (2014) comes to a similar conclusion. There is, consequently, disagreement over the AKP’s precise motivations behind the foreign policy that it has pursued.

A key aspect of the Strategic Depth doctrine is Davutoğlu’s understanding of Turkey’s geography. Due to the historical ‘depth’ that Turkey has inherited from Ottoman times, Turkey is supposedly able to expand its influence into neighbouring geographical zones, with which it shares a historical and cultural legacy (Stein, 2014, p.7). In this regard, Özkan has noted the jarring use of terms such as ‘Lebensraum’ (Turkish: hayat alanı) and ‘hinterland’ which Davutoğlu uses to refer to Turkey’s Middle Eastern neighbours (Özkan, 2014, p.123). Davutoğlu believes that a shared history will allow Turkey to ‘penetrate’ the former territories of the Ottoman Empire, which he sees as forming Turkey’s ‘natural hinterland’, and in which he believes Turkey has its ‘natural Lebensraum’ (Stein, 2014, p.7). Similar to Ratzel’s concept of a state’s ‘organic’ requirements, Davutoğlu states that ‘central countries’ will either ‘shrink’ or they will ‘gain penetration’ (Davutoğlu, 2011, p.342). It is of course Davutoğlu’s stated goal to transform Turkey into a so-called ‘central country’ (Davutoğlu, 2004). However, he stresses that he does not use these geopolitically-loaded terms in an expansionist sense (Davutoğlu, 2011, p.342); nonetheless, they are problematic.

This Lebensraum mentality consequently has an impact on Davutoğlu’s understanding of borders. He appears to see borders as temporary constructs which can be overcome by transforming foreign

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam countries into ‘hinterland’ via political ‘penetration’ – Laçiner rather bluntly describes this process as ‘taming’ one’s neighbours and ‘changing their nature’ in order to make them cooperate (Laçiner, 2009, pp.159-60). Seemingly in Davutoğlu’s view the unity of an Islamic heritage makes borders between Muslim states irrelevant, and it is perhaps for this reason that Davutoğlu was keen to reify his borderless geopolitical vision by introducing visa-free travel between Turkey and several Muslim neighbours in the Middle East (Özkan, 2014, p.132). Davutoğlu likewise told Turkey’s national airline, Türk Hava Yolları, that ‘there will be no place in Turkey’s hinterland to which you do not fly’ (Turkish: Türkiye’nin hinterlandında uçmayacağınız nokta kalmayacak) (Davutoğlu, 2011, pp.279- 80). AKP policymakers have in fact likened this project to the early days of the European Union (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.345). However, unlike the EU, the desired borderless supranational zone which Davutoğlu envisages appears to be one in which neighbours are brought under Turkish cultural and political hegemony.

As Özkan points out, Davutoğlu’s imagined sphere of Turkish influence thus extends far beyond Turkey’s current political borders (Özkan, 2014, p.124). He cites Davutoğlu’s claim that ‘the defence of Eastern Thrace and Istanbul now begins at the Adriatic and Sarajevo, and the defence of Eastern Anatolia and Erzurum begins in the North Caucasus and Grozny’ (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.56). Not content with the former Ottoman territories, Davutoğlu has also been keen to point out the potential influence that Turkey has in the world’s important waterways or ‘chokepoints’ due to its Islamic ‘historical depth’. He notes that ‘eight of the world’s nine most important naval passageways’ are all under the control of Muslim states (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.255). Drawing upon the geopolitical theories of Mahan and Spykman, Davutoğlu goes on to emphasise the potentially powerful role held by Muslim nations that occupy these trade junctions in the ‘Rimland’ (Murinson, 2006, p.949). He appears to believe that Turkey’s religious affinity with these states therefore gives Turkey an increased influence in these supposedly vital geopolitical sites (Stein, 2014, p.6).

The influence of ‘classical’ geopolitical discourse on Davutoğlu’s justification of AKP foreign policy is thus clear (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.180). Davutoğlu has written passionately about how geopolitics is becoming ‘more important’ in the post-Cold War era (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.115). However, as discussed in the previous chapter, there are a number of innate problems regarding perspective, agency and objectivity that emerge when using geopolitics to dictate foreign policy, and many of these problems are present in Davutoğlu’s concept of Strategic Depth. One particularly problematic theoretical issue, which is also raised in Özkan’s article, is Davutoğlu’s sense of geopolitical perspective. Just as Mackinder used the metaphor of the geographical ‘musical score’ to describe his methods of observation, Davutoğlu has in turn used the metaphor of a ‘fast-flowing river’ to describe his supposedly unique view of the world, which he outlines in the preface to Strategic Depth:

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

As an individual in a society which is experiencing a dynamic process, formulating strategic analyses regarding that society is akin to being in fast river with a high flow rate, while giving an opinion about the riverbed, the speed of flow, the river’s direction, and its relationship with other rivers. You are both in the river that you are analysing, and you carry the responsibility for understanding the particulars of this flow, for formulating a description of these particulars, for devising a framework for explanation, interpretation and guidance. When you look, upon going outside the river, you become estranged to the spirit and fate of the grains which were flowing along with you and you become an ordinary and morally disinterested observer; when you submit yourself to the river’s current and are washed away, however, you can understand neither the present reality correctly, nor place emphasis on the history that formulated your own will towards this reality. (Davutoğlu, 2011, p.vi; author’s translation).

The first problem in the above passage is the idea of ‘going outside the river’ (Turkish: nehrin dışına çıkmak). This recalls Mackinder’s supposedly ‘disembodied’ geopolitical gaze: ‘going outside the river’ in order to analyse the river amounts to what Ó Tuathail has described as the attempted ‘detached’ understanding of ‘the drama of the world’ – something which Mackinder aimed to achieve through his cultivation of the geopolitical faculty of ‘sight’ (Ó Tuathail, 1996, p.87). This is the misconception that the observer can somehow ‘remove’ him or herself from the world of which he or she is undeniably a part, simply by dint of the observer’s more finely-honed powers of perspective. Davutoğlu, like Mackinder, Haushofer and Spykman before him, however, is not impartial. As Bilgin and Bilgiç have noted, the AKP in general has failed to reflect on ‘the constitutive role played by the individual analyst when interpreting the world’ (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.182). And this lack of critical reflection has led supporters of Davutoğlu to become convinced of his infallibility as a strategic analyst, despite events which point to the contrary (Özkan, 2014, p.137). The result is an inflexible foreign policy position which believes in the invincibility of its own objective reasoning, and which does not react to the changing dynamics of the local region, despite Davutoğlu’s vague claims about ‘rhythmic diplomacy’.

The second problem in the passage is the idea of objectivity. After leaving the so-called river, Davutoğlu argues that the individual then undergoes an ‘estrangement’ (Turkish: yabancılaşma) from the other ‘grains’ (Turkish: zerrecikler) that are flowing in the river, which thus allows the individual to assume the role of a ‘morally disinterested observer’ (Turkish: ahlâkî kayıtsızlık içindeki gözlemci). This state of estrangement or alienation allows the observer to make objective judgements about the river, and its relations with other rivers. This proposition is deeply flawed. As with Mackinder, Davutoğlu is not an impartial reader of natural geopolitical narratives, but rather an active writer of these narratives. However, in his pseudoscientific method of observation, Davutoğlu ‘does not recognise his own agency in (re)inscribing Turkey’s identity’ (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.182). Davutoğlu is determined to inscribe Turkey as the ‘leader’ of an ‘Islamic civilization’ (ibid., p.191), and hence any geopolitical ‘readings’ he provides are inevitably coloured by his own personal

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam ideological goals. This is significant because, as Ó Tuathail notes, geopolitical observation ‘is inseparable from the desire to use the displayed scene for one’s own purposes’ (Ó Tuathail, 1996, p.34). Davutoğlu is thus unable to observe the river from outside, because he is a part of the river; just as Mackinder’s disembodied mind which ‘flits easily over the globe’ was inextricably bound to that same globe (ibid., p.87). Scholars have argued that any application of Mackinder’s theories to modern-day politics makes ‘a mockery of the actual state of affairs’ (Bassin & Aksenov, 2006, p.111). The outcome is thus that Davutoğlu’s geopolitical readings/writings should be treated with great caution.

A further problematic feature of Strategic Depth is its seeming reliance on ‘civilizational’ geopolitics in particular. ‘Classical’ civilizational geopolitics, as understood by the critical geopolitician John Agnew, was an 18th and 19th century discourse which predicated international relations upon the basis of the superiority of European civilization (Agnew, 1998, pp.87-9). According to this discourse, European civilization existed in opposition to the exoticised Muslim ‘other’ (ibid., p.89). As discussed in the previous chapter, the Ottoman Turks in particular were marked out as fundamentally non- European, with no prospect of entry into the European civilizational sphere (Agnew, 1998, p.94; Burke, 1980, p.24). The strikingly anti-Muslim nature of this discourse has not dissuaded Davutoğlu from making use of it for his own purposes, however. Indeed, Özkan has highlighted the inherent contradiction of Davutoğlu’s recourse to Western geopolitical models in an attempt to direct Turkish foreign policy away from the West (Özkan, 2014, p.122). Bilgin and Bilgiç likewise highlight Davutoğlu’s practice of criticising the Western exceptionalism inherent in civilizational geopolitics while at the same time replacing it with Turkish/Islamic/Ottoman exceptionalism in his own writings (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.181).

Davutoğlu argues that Turkey has its own ‘civilizational basin’ (Turkish: medeniyet havzası) which it mistakenly abandoned in the 20th century in order to join the Western civilizational sphere after the founding of the Republic by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.70). Davutoğlu’s geopolitical visions are predicated on the idea, similar to Samuel Huntington’s, that human geography is divided into a number of civilizations but, as opposed to Huntington, he does not believe in the inevitability of a civilizational clash (Murinson, 2006, p.949; Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.101; Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.181). However, civilizational discourse does inevitably place foreign states into the categories of those that are ‘like us’ and ‘not like us’, with concomitant effects on how foreign policy is formulated towards those states. Whereas İsmail Cem preferred to inscribe Turkey as an entity ‘straddling civilizational divides’ (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.191), Davutoğlu has argued the need to remove Turkey from this ‘bridging’ role in order to become a geopolitical ‘central country’ (Davutoğlu, 2004). The motivation behind this appears to be to transform Turkey from a ‘marginal’ state within the Western ‘civilizational sphere’ into the central state of the ‘Islamic’ or ‘Middle Eastern civilizational sphere’. Through an analysis of Davutoğlu’s civilizational geopolitics, Özkan,

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

Murinson and Stein have all argued that Davutoğlu’s – and hence the AKP’s – foreign policy preferences are therefore based on hegemonic aspirations over its Muslim neighbours (Özkan, 2014, p.119; Murinson, 2006, p.949; Stein, 2014, p.9). Pro-AKP academics such as Laçiner have refuted arguments that this constitutes a shift away from the West, however, arguing that Turkey’s renewed focus on the Middle East is dictated purely by pragmatism and Realpolitik (Laçiner, 2009, p.160).

The question of Neo-Ottomanism

For the past thirteen years AKP foreign policy has emphasised a more vigorous engagement with the former Ottoman territories of the Middle East (Taşpınar, 2008; Stein, 2014; Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011; Larrabee, 2010). As Ahmet Sözen (2010) and Göktürk Tüysüzoğlu (2014) have pointed out, this has led many analysts to characterise AKP foreign policy as ‘Neo-Ottomanism’ (e.g. Taşpınar, 2008; Murinson, 2006; Kınıklıoğlu, 2007), while others such as Laçiner (2009) have argued against the ‘Neo-Ottoman’ label. The widespread application of this term may be due to its flexibility. Due to the various incarnations of Neo-Ottomanism throughout Turkish history, its precise meaning has become blurred. Indeed, Sözen points to the loose nature of the term, and while accepting that Davutoğlu’s policies can be seen as Neo-Ottoman according to some definitions, he argues that this does not provide the full picture (Sözen, 2010, p.112). Tüysüzoğlu is similarly circumspect, opting to concede that the AKP’s foreign policy doctrine ‘sits easily alongside the neo-Ottomanist approach’ (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.93).

As discussed previously, the beginnings of the first movement named Neo-Ottomanism lie in the latter half of the 19th century. As a cultural and political movement, it ‘loosely gathered intellectuals from different branches of literature, journalism, arts, and politics, where the main drive of the members of the movement was to implement reforms in the Ottoman Empire through internal dynamics’ (Sözen, 2010, p.106). This group called themselves the ‘New Ottomans’ (Turkish: Yeni Osmanlılar), and it was to their unsuccessful efforts that the Tatar scholar Yusuf Akçura was referring when he discussed Ottomanism in his 1904 work ‘Three Types of Politics’ (Lewis, 1961, p.326). Perhaps part of the Neo-Ottoman label’s looseness comes from the fact that yeni in Turkish appears able to serve both as ‘new’ and ‘neo’, thus drawing parallels between Neo-Ottoman foreign policy under the AKP, and the New or Young Ottoman reformers of the 19th century, when in reality the movements have little in common. In any case, as argued before, the Turgut Özal regime of 1983- 1993 is widely seen as the first modern iteration of a foreign policy that can be described as ‘Neo- Ottoman’ (Taşpınar, 2008, p.11; Özkan, 2014, p.128; Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.192). Özal is credited with opening Turkey up to its non-European neighbourhood, and also for laying the groundwork for much of the AKP’s initial foreign policy initiatives in the Middle East and Central Asia (Larrabee, 2010, p.158; Sözen, 2010, p.119; Murinson, 2006, pp.945-6).

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

The late 20th and early 21st centuries have seen a general renewal of interest in the Ottoman past in Turkey, which arguably has fed into the AKP’s interest in former Ottoman geopolitical space (Kınıklıoğlu, 2007b). Analysts have highlighted Turkey’s earlier role as mediator between Syria and Israel, as well as its warm relations with Iran (which was never an Ottoman territory) as evidence of a more prominent role for Turkey in the Middle East (Larrabee, 2010, p.164; Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.95; Murinson, 2006, p.954). Since the Middle East is comprised of many countries which were formerly under Ottoman rule, it is perhaps inevitable that comparisons will be made with the Ottoman era. For reasons of pragmatism, scholars with a pro-AKP agenda tend to deny that the AKP’s policies constitute Neo-Ottomanism, however. Sedat Laçiner, for instance, writes that Neo-Ottomanism is not possible, since any project which called itself such would be vigorously resisted by the former subject nations of the Empire (Laçiner, 2009, p.161). AKP officials themselves reject the term ‘Neo- Ottomansim’ (Larrabee, 2010, p.160). While acknowledging the importance of the Ottoman past in modern Turkish geopolitics, Davutoğlu himself is wary of labelling his Strategic Depth doctrine a Neo-Ottoman project (Davutoğlu, 2011, p.94). Reacting to the widespread use of the term in association with his work, Davutoğlu has publicly made clear that he does not consider himself to be a ‘Neo-Ottoman’ (Today’s Zaman, 2009). Nonetheless, Strategic Depth is fundamentally based on Davutoğlu’s understanding of Turkey’s Ottoman legacy, and as the architect of AKP foreign policy there is thus undeniably a Neo-Ottoman ‘flavour’ at the very least to Turkey’s foreign policy approaches. As such, aware of the good reasons for avoiding the term ‘Neo-Ottoman’, Göktürk Tüysüzoğlu describes Davutoğlu’s rejection of the term as ‘straightforward political pragmatism’ (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.92). Neo-Ottomanism contains inevitable connotations of imperialism, which thus renders Davutoğlu’s predilection for classical geopolitical theory yet more problematic. The earliest proponents of classical geopolitics – e.g. Mackinder, Haushofer and others – were, after all, primarily concerned with expanding their countries’ respective empires (Heffernan, 2000, p.32; Ó Tuathail, 1996; Özkan, 2014, p.122).

Analysis of the AKP’s Neo-Ottomanist approach once more divides scholars into those who laud its pragmatism and those who warn against its expansionist and/or pan-Islamist agenda. Larrabee, for instance, sees Turkish Neo-Ottomanism merely as a natural adjustment to the changed conditions of the post-Cold War world (Larrabee, 2010, p.160). Özkan, however, argues that the AKP’s initial rapprochement with Assad was part of a longer-term plan to turn Syria into Turkey’s ‘hinterland’ (Özkan, 2014, p.133). And while trade with the countries of the Middle East has increased dramatically under the AKP, there is disagreement over the extent to which the Neo-Ottomanist approach excludes countries which were not traditionally part of the Ottoman world. Nicole and Hugh Pope note that the AKP has tried harder than any of its predecessors to solve the Cyprus issue, for instance, and has also broadened Turkey’s diplomatic footprint in Africa (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.344). And as mentioned before, the AKP initially turned out to be one of Turkey’s most pro-EU

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam governments. Indeed, some scholars have pointed out that Turkey’s renewed interest in the Middle East and Central Asia coincided with Turkish frustration at the EU over the slow progress of accession (Erşen, 2013, p.32). Whatever the reasons for it, the AKP’s engagement with the Middle East will inevitably displease some factions both inside and outside Turkey. Perhaps some of the most vociferous critics of AKP foreign policy are Turkey’s Kemalists, who decry AKP policy as a mockery of everything that Atatürk stood for, and who view any engagement with the Islamic world with suspicion (Taşpınar, 2008, p.3).

Recalcitrant Kemalism

Prior to the alternative geopolitical visions of post-Cold War and AKP foreign policy, Kemalism had been the principal driver behind Turkish foreign affairs (Murinson, 2006, p.945). As discussed in the previous chapter, Kemalism is the legacy of the Republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and became the official ideology of the state after its founding in the early 1920s (Taşpınar, 2008, p.4). This ideology is based upon the six ‘arrows’ of Kemalism, these being republicanism, secularism, statism, revolutionism, populism and nationalism (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.551). These are also listed as the six fundamental principles of Atatürk’s party the Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP) on their official website, and the CHP’s party symbol is also the six arrows of Kemalism (CHP, 2015). In terms of foreign affairs, Kemalists initially followed a policy of isolationism while Atatürk was still alive (Murinson, 2006, p.945; Erşen, 2013, p.27). This policy was articulated in Atatürk’s mantra of ‘Peace at home, peace in the world’ (Turkish: Yurtta sulh, cihanda sulh), which informed the practice of turning inward and ignoring the affairs of the Middle East, Caucasus and Asia (Erşen, 2013, p.25; Davutoğlu, 2001, p.69; Stein, 2014, p.3). Initially, as such, Kemalism was not a pro-Western ideology, despite finding its inspiration among Western sources and events such as the French Revolution (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, pp.554-5). Turkey, after all, had only been founded after a bitter war of liberation against occupying Western powers (ibid., p.553). Akçalı and Perinçek argue that Westernisation has indeed never formally constituted a part of Kemalism’s integral ideological principles, despite a general assumption that the two are synonymous (ibid.). This point is not uncontested, however. Stephen Larrabee, for instance, argues that Westernisation has been the cornerstone of Turkish official foreign policy since the founding of the Republic (Larrabee, 2010, p.169). Likewise, Ömer Taşpınar argues that Atatürk’s ultimate aim was for Turkey to become a part of Europe as a fully Westernised country (Taşpınar, 2008, p.13). On balance, it appears to be the case that Atatürk’s early Republicans were generally pro-Western in their ideology, while attempting at the same time to concentrate first and foremost on internal reform, at the expense of foreign relations.

Nonetheless, the advent of the Second World War and the bipolar nature of Cold War geopolitics meant that a policy of isolationism became untenable. Turkey was forced into the Western alliance

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam due to the security threat from the Soviet Union (Larrabee, 2010, p.167; Davutoğlu, 2001, p.71), and the principles of international neutrality and isolationism were dropped from official Kemalist ideology, to be replaced with a policy of ‘unconditional Western alliance’ (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, pp.554-5). Since then, Turkey’s ‘Kemalist leadership’ has made pro-Western orientation a priority, thereby establishing the perceived link between Kemalism and a westward-looking foreign policy (Murinson, 2006, p.950). Especially since the 1980s, the status of Kemalism as the sole articulation of Turkish state identity has been gradually undermined, however. This has been attributed to the associative effects of IMF prescriptions, mass privatisation, and the rising influence of political Islam and Kurdish separatism on Turkish domestic affairs (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.551). Turkey’s succession of military coups – all of which were carried out in supposed defence of Atatük’s Kemalist legacy – has also helped associate Kemalism with brutal and unwarranted military intervention (ibid., p.555). Certain elements within the Kemalist establishment have also blamed the policy of Westernisation for Kemalism’s decline (ibid.). While still a powerful ideological force in modern Turkey, Kemalism’s status has been eroded by a series of ideological competitors, such as Neo- Ottomanism, since the time of Turgut Özal’s regime (Murinson, 2006, p.950). Traditional Kemalism thus no longer holds a monopoly on foreign and domestic policy, and no longer commands an unquestioning consensus among the state elite.

Criticism of Kemalist world visions does not however spill over into criticism of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who is still venerated in Turkey almost 80 years after his death (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.50). Indeed Davutoğlu, whose geopolitical visions Kemalists would argue run counter to everything Atatürk stood for in Turkey’s foreign policy orientation, does not criticise the foreign policy of the Republic’s founder, and indeed praises his initial policy choices as ‘realist’ (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.69). In a 2006 interview on Turkish foreign policy, Davutoğlu asserts furthermore that Atatürk was not in favour of ‘turning one’s back on the Middle East’, which he rather describes as a policy of the early Republicans who misappropriated Atatürk’s legacy:

The approach of turning one’s back and not getting involved in the Middle East is adopted widely in our diplomatic channels: this approach can be expressed as “Let’s not get involved in Arab affairs, let’s not get mixed up in their disputes” and is wrongly said to be a Kemalist policy. This false perception derives from the one-party era; however, Atatürk tried to integrate with his environment whenever he had the opportunity (Davutoğlu, 2011, p.298; author’s translation).

As such it is implied that Atatürk would also have done what the AKP is doing if global conditions had only allowed him to.

With its now-established policy of Westernisation and its ‘suspicion of all things Islamic’ (Taşpınar, 2008, p.3), Kemalism in the 21st century, as far as it survives, is clearly at odds with the AKP’s ‘Muslim democrat’ character, ‘Neo-Ottoman’ foreign policy, and the doctrine of Strategic Depth.

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

Kemalism’s Western credentials have also been undermined by the fact that the AKP has ostensibly become ‘the most pro-European Union political party on the Turkish scene’ (ibid., p.2). Despite being nominally pro-EU, the Kemalist elite has not displayed the same energy and enthusiasm towards bringing Turkey’s accession forward (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.556). Indeed, it was not until the AKP came to power that accession negotiations officially began in 2005. Meanwhile the Kemalist military has had to reiterate its own support for EU membership as a ‘geopolitical and geostrategic obligation’ (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.335), while the CHP, which describes itself as the ‘representative of Kemalist power in Turkey’ (Turkish: Türkiye’deki Kemalist iktidarı temsil eden CHP), cites EU relations as a matter of honouring the ideological principles of the Republic’s founders (CHP, 2015).

With so much of its ideological basis eroded, it is hard to say what Kemalism really represents in terms of 21st century geopolitics in Turkey. As initial AKP enthusiasm for the EU has shown, Kemalism is no longer the sole pro-Western voice in Turkey. The CHP has failed to present a credible alternative to the AKP’s policies or geopolitical visions (Sözen, 2010, p.113), thereby seeing the AKP’s share of the vote increasing in the general elections of 2007 and 2011, and the military has seen its political influence vastly diminished, in part due to AKP reforms aimed at EU-integration (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.325; Larrabee, 2010, pp.160-1). In the June 2015 election the CHP also failed to increase its share of the vote, though it remained the second-largest party in parliament. Rather than articulating an effective alternative vision, the CHP’s energies have arguably been spent on ‘zero- sum’ obstructionism which is disinclined to see the AKP succeed in anything at all (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.341).

The Kemalist establishment has also differed with the AKP’s relatively progressive approach to Kurdish rights. This too has brought Kemalism into conflict with the West. Since the founding of the Republic, Kemalism has been concerned with maintaining the integrity and unity of the Turkish state, which leaves it ideologically opposed to ethnic nationalism (Taşpınar, 2008, p.6). Both the AKP and the Kemalist military were opposed to the 2003 war in Iraq due to the possibility that it would lead to an independent Kurdish state (Murinson, 2006, p.954). Nonetheless, with the establishment of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Northern Iraq, the AKP has shown a willingness to engage more constructively on the issue (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.95; Larrabee, 2010, p.162). This can arguably be seen as a natural extension of the ‘zero problems with neighbours’ policy (Larrabee, 2010, p.162). However, the AKP’s supposedly ‘soft’ attitude towards Kurdish nationalism has alarmed the Kemalist military: the support of some EU countries for increased Kurdish minority rights in Turkey is similarly anathema to the Kemalist military (Taşpınar, 2008, p.4). The US’s willingness to cooperate with Iraq’s Kurds during and after the Iraq War has further brought Kemalism into conflict with the US as well (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.559). All of this has equated to a deep Kemalist disillusionment towards the West (Taşpınar, 2008, p.4). Akçalı and Perinçek conclude that Kemalism today has simply come to mean ‘those who support a strong secular and social Turkish unitary state’

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam and who are ‘generally hostile to pro-Western politics and globalisation’ (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.557). Taşpınar’s conclusion is that this cleavage between pro-Western Muslim democrats and anti- Western secularist Kemalists represents Turkey’s foreign policy conventions being turned ‘upside down’ (Taşpınar, 2008, p.4). Disillusioned with the West, some Kemalists have begun searching for alternative geopolitical visions elsewhere.

Eurasianism

The question of Eurasianist geopolitics in Turkey has attracted increased scholarly attention recently. Tüysüzoğlu (2014) has investigated Turkish Eurasianism as an expression of Neo-Ottomanism, while Akçalı and Perinçek (2009) have explored the phenomenon of Kemalist Eurasianism. However, Eurasianist discourse has thus far remained something of a fringe interest, informing AKP foreign policy in only minor ways, while Kemalist Eurasianism has shown no signs of becoming an official party foreign policy (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.563). Nonetheless, its subtle influence on the two opposing geopolitical doctrines of modern-day Turkey – namely Kemalism and Neo-Ottomanism – mean that it is worthy of attention.

Fig. 2.2 Atatürk marks Central Asia on a map in a geography lesson at Samsun, 1930.

Source: Anıtkabir (1930).

Taşpınar argues that Kemalists have been pushed towards Eurasianism as a result of disillusionment with the West’s support for the AKP and Kurdish rights (Taşpınar, 2008, p.4). He writes that, in the eyes of the Kemalist old guard, the West has crossed two red lines – support for the Kurds and acceptance of political Islam – and that some Kemalists have as a result become anti-US and anti-EU

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam in their outlook (ibid.). Eurasianism, as espoused by Kemalists, thus tends to be an articulation of anti- Western feeling, and constitutes a geopolitical alternative to Turkey’s previous Western orientation (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.550). Kemalist Eurasianism has in part been inspired by the rise of Neo- Eurasianism in Russia thanks to controversial writers such as Dugin (ibid., p.558). As such, it has drawn accusations of radicalism, and the respectability of anti-Western Eurasianism as a geopolitical discourse has been tarnished through its purported association with the so-called Ergenekon coup plot that has cast suspicion on a large number of military figures (ibid., p.565). Generally, the prevailing Kemalist rationale behind placing Turkey into a Eurasian geopolitical space is that Turkey’s culture, traditions and history will be better respected by the Central Asian republics, Russia and China, since these are not currently being respected in the West (ibid., p.563). Akçalı and Perinçek point out that an overarching discourse of anti-Western-imperialism is the principle reason why certain Kemalist elements have felt pressed to explore the Eurasianist option (ibid., p.566).

AKP engagement with Russia and Central Asia has been rather different (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014). Again, the AKP approach has been informed by recourse to civilizational geopolitics, which sees the Muslim Turkic peoples of Eurasia as part of Turkey’s cultural sphere (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.187; Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.103). Neo-Ottomanist overtures towards Eurasia again began under Özal and former Foreign Minister İsmail Cem, who aimed in part to ‘refresh’ Turkey’s strategic importance to the West by recasting Turkey as a bridge between Europe and the newly-independent Turkic states of Central Asia (Erşen, 2013, p.26). However, while Cem’s diplomatic engagement with the countries of Eurasia was characterised by a sense of impartiality, the AKP has self-confidently cast itself as the leader of the Turkic/Islamic civilizational basin (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.191). Others disagree, however: Akçalı and Perinçek are less inclined to attribute an expansionist geopolitical agenda to the AKP’s affairs in Eurasia, arguing instead that AKP Eurasianist discourse ‘has primarily been about enabling geo-economic opportunities’ such as gas pipelines (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.551).

Economics, security and other issues of Realpolitik inevitably play an important part in the implementation of the AKP’s foreign policy, and it is worth examining how often Davutoğlu’s geopolitical visions have become side-lined by the necessities of foreign policy pragmatism. Indeed, Stein argues that before Davutoğlu become Foreign Minister, pragmatism often meant that AKP foreign policy in practice went against some of Davutoğlu’s theoretical principles (Stein, 2014, p.9). Any geopolitical vision inevitably has to contend with political events that seem to run contrary to its own preferred narrative – as Ó Tuathail has noted, the validity of Mackinder’s own theories were challenged by the horrors of WWI (Ó Tuathail, 1996, p.110). While this chapter has outlined the main strands of geopolitical thought in Turkey today, the following section will aim to examine the repercussions unleashed when Turkey’s conflicting geopolitical viewpoints came into contact with, and attempted to shape, the tumultuous events of 21st-century Middle Eastern politics.

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

Chapter 3

Conflicting world views and major events

Introduction: Turkey in the 21st century

Since the AKP came to power in November 2002 Turkey has felt the impact of a number of turbulent events which have impacted on the geopolitical discourses outlined in the previous chapter. The contrasting geopolitical visions of Turkey’s two main ideological camps – the AKP/Neo-Ottoman camp and the CHP/military/secular-Kemalist camp – have resulted in conflicting interpretations being placed on these events. An analysis of AKP and Kemalist reactions to the vicissitudes of the 21st century provides insight into the methods used by both sides to make political events fit their geopolitical views. That is to say, both camps aim to inscribe their own narrative onto these events, while purporting merely to ‘read’ an underlying narrative. The result is thus a geopolitically inflected discourse, with local and regional episodes being given a partisan ‘spin’ and forced into ill-fitting ‘prisons of meaning’ (Ó Tuathail, 1996, p.34).

Five events have been used here to illustrate this point. In each case both the AKP and Kemalist interpretations are outlined, based both on statements given in the media and on journalistic commentary from pro-government or pro-Kemalist sources. For events up to 2009, it will also be possible to refer to Ahmet Davutoğlu’s From Theory to Practice, which is a compilation of interviews given between 2002 and 2009 in which he defends AKP foreign policy on certain important events. As a semi-official example of AKP geopolitical imaginings, it is illustrative of the manner in which an official narrative is imposed onto recent events. Unsurprisingly, Turkey and the AKP unfailingly emerge as the wisest and most morally-upstanding actors in Davutoğlu’s account, while any extant views to the contrary are roundly excoriated.

The five events which will be examined here are (1) the 2003 Iraq War; (2) the 2008-2009 Gaza War; (3) the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident; (4) the 2013 Gezi Park protests; and (5) the ongoing Syrian crisis. These events have each generated a significant volume of political and journalistic commentary in Turkey and abroad. AKP and Kemalist reactions to these events will be analysed vis-à-vis their respective geopolitical outlooks, and any reassessments or re-imaginings of Turkey’s place and space that these events have produced will be examined. For example, reactions to the Syrian crisis will be examined in the context of AKP visions of Turkish ‘grandeur’ in the Middle Eastern ‘civilizational basin’, and in the context of Kemalist visions of an aloof, Western-oriented and non-interventionist Turkey. For the purposes of this analysis, views representative of Kemalism will be taken as CHP statements, military statements, and articles or commentaries by Kemalist-leaning media outlets and

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam journalists. Views representative of the AKP/Neo-Ottoman camp will be taken as AKP official statements, Davutoğlu’s writings (especially From Theory to Practice), and articles from pro-AKP media sources.

1. The Iraq War (2003)

The 2003 war in Iraq has been cited as the first major international challenge faced by Erdoğan’s AKP government (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.325). Iraq posed numerous problems for Turkey, the most immediate of which was Iraq’s close intertwinement with the so-called Kurdish problem: the emergence of an independent Kurdish state in Northern Iraq was perceived as a possible outcome of the war, and was an outcome which both the AKP and the Kemalist military were eager to prevent (Taşpınar, 2008, p.20; Pope & Pope, 2011, p.325; Murinson, 2006, p.954; Kazan, 2005, p.594). Davutoğlu himself skirted around this issue in a January 2003 interview in From Theory to Practice, when he was asked to outline the government’s concerns about a possible US invasion. He listed the emergence of ‘non-state entities’ in Northern Iraq as a major concern, alongside the repercussions for regional peace and stability, and the damaging effects of any national partition (Davutoğlu, 2011, pp.89-90).

In the AKP narrative, Turkey’s security concerns were couched in the rhetoric of Strategic Depth, which has been discussed in detail in the previous chapter. Davutoğlu was quick to bring up the issue of Turkey’s imperial legacy. Developments in Iraq, he argued, would directly affect Turkey’s borders because of Turkey’s ‘geographical depth’ in the region (ibid., p.89). That is to say, Iraq’s status as a former Ottoman province was considered a prime factor in the crisis, which would inevitably draw Turkey into developments. Hence, in this view, Turkey would become embroiled in events primarily because of its inherited grandeur, rather than through a lack of its own agency. Davutoğlu observed that ‘Turkey cannot behave like any old country’ (ibid.), because in his view Turkey is far more than just any old country in the region.

In January 2003 Davutoğlu was pushing for a peaceful solution, which he claimed was still possible (ibid., p.92). He saw this as an opportunity to display Turkey’s regional grandeur: Turkey, he said, must come to the fore as ‘the leader who solves the crisis’ (ibid., p.91). Indeed, the AKP did go to some lengths to gather regional support for a peaceful outcome to avert the war. Prior to the invasion, the AKP organised a series of conferences between Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria, leading to the Istanbul Declaration which aimed to prevent the war by calling for a peaceful solution (Taşpınar, 2008, p.18). In a 2004 article for Radikal, Davutoğlu cites this as an example of Turkey’s enhanced diplomatic influence in the region. He argued that persuading five different countries to meet five times in the same year was ‘a first’ and brought a new understanding of

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam diplomacy to the Middle East (Davutoğlu, 2004). Turkey’s fast-paced diplomatic involvement with these countries drew accusations of an Islamist agenda from some quarters, however. Taşpınar argues that the Istanbul Declaration was based ‘not so much on Muslim solidarity as on a Turkish self- perception as a regional leader’, and fitted into Turkey’s new ‘neo-Ottoman framework’ (Taşpınar, 2008, p.18). Despite saying that peace was still possible in 2003, in 2004 Davutoğlu nonetheless claimed that Turkey took these steps in the knowledge that it could not prevent the war (Turkish: Türkiye bu adımları atarken savaşı durduramayacağının bilincindeydi) (Davutoğlu, 2004).

It is clear that the AKP did not want another war in Iraq. The government was torn between opposition to the invasion, and a will to maintain good relations with the US (Taşpınar, 2008, pp.17- 8). Polls showed that 94% of Turks were against both the war and US troop deployments on Turkish territory (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.325). As Davutoğlu said in January 2003, how can one give permission to the amassing of American troops when 90% of the population is against it (Davutoğlu, 2011, p.93). However, wary of deteriorating relations with the US, Prime Minister Erdoğan reached a deal with Washington, which guaranteed billions of dollars of aid for Turkey, and put the matter before the Turkish parliament. All the same, on 1st March 2003 parliament voted against it, and the motion was defeated (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.325). Analysts differ over the reasons for this. Pope & Pope see this as an embarrassing result for the AKP leadership, who lost face in Washington as a result (ibid.); on the other hand, Murinson attributes the vote result directly to Davutoğlu’s supposed behind-the-scenes meddling, thereby implying that the AKP leadership wanted the vote to fail (Murinson, 2006, p.954). It seems hard to argue that the vote was not an embarrassment for the AKP, however. As Davutoğlu implied, the AKP knew that the war was inevitable (Davutoğlu, 2004). As such, the AKP wanted to have a say in the post-war makeup of Iraq (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.325). In 2003 Davutoğlu himself admitted that ‘If Iraq is to be redesigned, Turkey must also be in that process’ (Davutoğlu, 2011, p.91). The failure of the vote was therefore a setback in this regard.

The attitude of the Kemalist military was also an important factor in negotiations. Taşpınar notes that, despite reservations about the nature of the regime, Turkey’s national security establishment saw Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as ‘an effective bulwark against Kurdish separatism’ (Taşpınar, 2008, p.17), while other observers have noted that Turkey regularly bombed Kurdish positions in Northern Iraq throughout the 1990s with the tacit permission of Baghdad (Cockburn, 2008). Thus, while having no particular affection for the Ba’athists, the Turkish military found Saddam useful from a security perspective. As such, the military was not in favour of the US’s plans for regime change, and declined to give public backing to the war (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.326). By not doing so, they hoped to avoid political repercussions from the Turkish public if Turkey did come out in support of US troop deployments (ibid.). The military also hoped that remaining generally positive in negotiations with Washington would leave the full blame on the AKP if Turkish support was ultimately not forthcoming (ibid.). Another major matter of concern to the Kemalist military was the burgeoning cooperation

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam between Iraq’s Kurds and the US military (Taşpınar, 2008, p.18). Indeed, the Kurds were the only party in Iraq to fully back the US-led invasion (Cockburn, 2008).

Evidently another war in Iraq was ‘the last thing the AKP, the Turkish military, and the Turkish people at large wanted’ (Taşpınar, 2008, p.17). However, the AKP aimed to turn the turbulence which followed the war into an opportunity. Despite the security he provided on Turkey’s southern border, Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime did not neatly fit into the AKP’s religiously-inflected visions of a unified civilizational basin among the former Ottoman territories. Turkey had been aware that it was not powerful enough to effect regime transformation among the largely secular Arab dictators of the region on its own, but Stein argues that the AKP did attempt to engage vigorously with those countries that were already undergoing a transition (Stein, 2014, p.9). In Iraq’s post-war mire of sectarian divisions, the AKP followed a ‘very active diplomacy’ with Iraq’s Sunni minority (Taşpınar, 2008, p.20). Efforts were made towards strengthening ties with the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) which had roots in the Muslim Brotherhood (Stein, 2014, p.9). Faced with the rising influence of Iran, the AKP appeared willing to shore up ‘Sunni solidarity’ against what it viewed as an emergent ‘Shia crescent’ (Taşpınar, 2008, p.20). Turkey’s actions therefore took on a sectarian dimension.

A major change in foreign policy that occurred as a result of the war, however, was Turkey’s relationship with the Iraqi Kurds. Since the war there has been growing cooperation between Ankara and the Kurdistan Regional Government (Larrabee, 2010, p.161). Especially since 2010, Iraq’s Kurds, who control much of Iraq’s oil wealth, have been perceived as valuable economic partners (Taşpınar, 2014). This preference for trade over conflict further corresponds to the AKP’s greater willingness to ‘co-opt’ the Kurds in an effort to allay the security situation, as opposed to the Kemalist military’s zero-sum attitudes towards the Kurdish question (Taşpınar, 2008, p.20). This appears consistent with Davutoğlu’s ‘zero problems with neighbours’ strategy, and is an acknowledgement that the threat of Kurdish separatism cannot be countered by military means alone (Larrabee, 2010, p.162).

In any case, writing for Radikal in 2004, Davutoğlu was keen to stress that, perhaps uniquely among all the involved parties, Turkey’s actions before and after the invasion were impeccable. He wrote that Turkey had been caught in a balancing act between the demands of the US and the expectations of the EU, and that whether Turkey chose to support the invasion or not, it would have to mend relations with one or other party (Davutoğlu, 2004). While skilfully balancing these concerns, he maintains that Turkey meanwhile kept up contact with relevant groups in Iraq (ibid.). He refers to Turkey’s approach to the matter as ‘like a game of chess’ (Turkish: bir satranç oyunu gibi) (ibid.) in which every move was expertly considered. Thus, while Turkey’s prevarications and conflicting messages to the US in the lead-up to the war may have looked like ‘a state of not knowing what to do’, in actual fact, he argues, Turkey was making a ‘highly conscious’ effort to ‘hold all alternatives in balance in order to

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam make the most correct decision at the most correct time’ (ibid.). The narrative is thus that Turkey knew precisely what it was doing all along, despite appearances to the contrary.2

The AKP and Kemalist sides of the ideological divide therefore have two different narratives regarding Turkey’s involvement in the Iraq War. The AKP was conscious of the need to preserve its pro-Western and pro-European credentials while balancing out the perceived security threat posed by instability in its near abroad. Wherever possible, the AKP used divisions over the Iraq War as an opportunity to assume a role of regional grandeur. The diplomatic networking behind the Istanbul Declaration is an example of this attempted leadership. Later rapprochements with the Kurdistan Regional Government are an example of the Neo-Ottoman pragmatism that drove the AKP to place commerce over conflict. The principal narrative, however, as voiced by Davutoğlu, is one of Turkey’s unassailable wisdom. According to Davutoğlu’s 2004 article, Turkey was always in a position to know what was going on, and to react to it accordingly. His approach is thus one of hindsight and revisionism, disguised as diplomatic shrewdness.

The Kemalist narrative by contrast has aimed primarily to inscribe an Islamist agenda onto the AKP’s activities. The army saw AKP attempts at regional solidarity, as represented by the Istanbul Declaration, as a clear sign of Islamist tendencies (Taşpınar, 2008, p.18). In line with Kemalism’s largely isolationist geopolitical world view, the military was suspicious of AKP attempts to court Sunni solidarity in post-war Iraq, believing that a secular Turkey should remain aloof from sectarian divides, and should refrain from involving itself in conflicts in the Middle East (ibid., p.20). Perhaps the most radical consequence of the Iraq War on the Kemalist world view has been its disillusionment with the West. The military was particularly alarmed by the US’s willingness to cooperate with the Kurds, which constitutes one of Kemalism’s so-called ‘red lines’ (ibid., p.4). The perceived American betrayal on the Kurdish issue during the Iraq War is what has led some within the Kemalist camp to seek alternative geopolitical viewpoints, such as Eurasianism (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.560). Thus while the AKP imposed a narrative of regional grandeur onto its own handling of the war, the Kemalists could do little more than rail against the perceived Islamism of the government and bristle at the duplicity of their traditional allies in the West.

2. War in Gaza (2008-2009)

The AKP’s time in power has seen a general cooling of relations between Turkey and Israel (Murinson, 2006, p.954). Erdoğan has displayed a markedly more pro-Palestinian stance than previous administrations, and has been more sharply critical of Israel: alarmingly from a US

2 It is also worth remarking on how often the ‘game of chess’ metaphor appears in geopolitical discourse, perhaps most notably in Brzezinski’s 1997 book on geo-strategy, The Grand Chessboard.

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam perspective, he has spent more time criticising Israel’s nuclear programme than Iran’s (Larrabee, 2010, p.165). The deterioration in relations is exemplified by repercussions that followed the 2008- 2009 Gaza War, known in Israel as ‘Operation Cast Lead’ (ibid., p.166). The conflict attracted intense media coverage in Turkey and led to anti-war demonstrations in Istanbul (witnessed by the author).

The AKP’s increasingly critical stance towards Israel hints at an underlying geopolitical reimagining of the region during the AKP’s time in power. Scholars have linked Turkey’s increasing criticism of Israel to Davutoğlu’s understanding of civilizational geopolitics (Erşen, 2013, p.38; Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.192). This is based on the Strategic Depth doctrine of making Turkey ‘the leader of its own civilisation’ in the Islamic Middle East, into which Israel, in this view, fundamentally does not fit (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.192). Initially, as Murinson notes, these leadership aspirations had found expression in Turkey’s efforts to act as mediator in the region’s conflicts (Murinson, 2006, p.953), a tendency which some critics have dubbed ‘mediation mania’ (Inbar, 2011, p.142). For instance, in 2008 the AKP hosted talks between Israel and Syria in the hope of easing tensions (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.347). However, it has been argued that increasingly the discourse of civilizational geopolitics has led to a more active exclusion of those countries which are not deemed to be a part of Davutoğlu’s perceived Muslim civilizational basin. Scholars such as Erşen and Bilgin & Bilgiç have identified a growing ‘us versus them’ mentality with regards to the Middle East’s non-Muslim states, as well as towards the West. Turkey, it is argued, feels a sense of responsibility towards the states and peoples of its own civilisation, which in turn causes strains on Turkey’s relations with nearby non-Muslim states such as Israel and Armenia (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.192). Indeed, Davutoğlu explained the AKP’s criticism of Israeli actions in the 2008-2009 war as both a humanitarian and a ‘historic’ responsibility (Davutoğlu, 2011, p.397), thereby implying that Turkey’s ‘depth’ in the region – that is to say, the legacy of Ottoman ‘civilisation’ – is necessarily a factor in Turkish-Israeli relations.

Official Turkish reactions to Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip were indeed vehement. Erdoğan described Israeli actions as a ‘serious crime against humanity’ and ‘state terror’ (Radikal, 2008; Rainsford, 2009). Tensions culminated in Erdoğan’s confrontation with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Davos in January 2009, after which Erdoğan stormed off the platform, remarking ‘you [plural] know well how to kill people’ (Turkish: Siz öldürmeye iyi bilirsiniz) (Radikal, 2009c). Pope and Pope argue that some of this tension was due to Erdoğan feeling personally betrayed by Israel: days prior to the opening of hostilities in Gaza, Erdoğan and Israeli PM Ehud Olmert had dined together in an atmosphere of improving Israeli-Syrian relations, which Turkey had helped to broker (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.347). Turkish-Israeli relations were to sour in the months that followed, with Turkish TV shows depicting Israeli soldiers as murderers, and Israel publicly insulting the Turkish ambassador (ibid.). Analysts have noted that official criticism of Israel is nonetheless popular amongst some sections of the electorate, and has especially raised Turkey’s profile among the Middle East’s Arab states (Larrabee, 2010, p.167).

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

Fig. 3.1 Map showing Davutoğlu’s vision of Turkey’s ‘Near Land Basin’ in orange and ‘Near Continental Basin’ in green. Source: Milliyet.com (2014). Alongside civilizational geopolitics and regional posturing however, some analysts have alleged that the AKP’s hardening attitude towards Israel is indicative of an anti-Semitic discourse at the heart of AKP ideology. Erdoğan is alleged to have made anti-Semitic remarks to Turkish university students, for example (Inbar, 2011, p.142). Sedat Laçiner, a pro-AKP scholar, denies that there is any enmity towards Israel however. In his 2009 article he maintains that Turkey and Israel are still friends, and that ‘friends need to criticize each other at times to maintain both parties’ interests’ (Laçiner, 2009, p.162). This aside though, there are worrying signs of anti-Semitism in Laçiner’s own article. He regularly speaks of ‘dirty games’ (ibid., p.166), ‘dirty campaigns’ (ibid., p.162) and ‘dirty tricks’ (ibid.) in reference to Israeli actions, where the frequent use of ‘dirty’ in conjunction with Israel sounds distinctly unsavoury, and hints more towards a personal dislike than a balanced academic analysis. Nonetheless, Laçiner is not writing officially on behalf of the AKP. However, Behlül Özkan has also found anti-Israeli references in Davutoğlu’s own writings, where he allegedly refers to Israel as a ‘geopolitical tumour’ in some of his earlier more Islamist-inflected articles (Özkan, 2014, p.128).

In light of these events it would appear that the ‘zero problems’ policy is not applied equally to all states in the region. Trouble with Israel is only ever portrayed by the AKP as Israel’s fault. But in spite of diplomatic strains it is clear that behind the scenes business has nonetheless continued to flourish between Turkey and Israel. The Turkish daily newspaper Today’s Zaman reported a 50% increase in bilateral trade between 2009 and 2014, sourced from the Turkish Statistical Institute TurkStat (Avcı, 2015). Thus, despite the AKP and Davutoğlu’s alleged ideological opposition to Israeli policy, economic relations between the two countries may run too deep to allow Turkish criticism to go beyond rhetoric and grandstanding. And Pope & Pope are quick to point out that there is often a gap between ‘rhetoric for domestic consumption’ and ‘the reality’ of what Turkey actually

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam does, which, it should be pointed out, is by no means a phenomenon unique to Turkey (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.343).

The Kemalist narrative has likewise been sharply critical of Israel’s actions in the Gaza conflict. As Pope & Pope have noted, Turkish politicians of all sides have to reflect the electorate’s general opposition to Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians (ibid., p.347). However, Kemalists have also sought to portray the AKP’s handling of Turkish-Israeli relations as unproductive and damaging to Turkey. Deniz Baykal, who was leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) at the time of the conflict, described Israeli actions in Gaza as ‘savagery’ (Turkish: vahşet), but also suggested the AKP had mishandled affairs. In particular, he questioned just what exactly Erdoğan and Olmert had been talking about when they dined together days before the hostilities broke out (Radikal, 2009a). With regards to Erdoğan storming off the panel at Davos, Baykal said that Erdoğan’s reaction was ‘natural’, but that he should not make international affairs a matter of domestic politics (Radikal, 2009b).

Kemalism’s more inward-looking geopolitical world view has traditionally placed importance on Turkey’s strategic partnership with Israel, which has been in place since 1996 (Kazan, 2005, p.592). To an extent, a preoccupation with pro-Western relations and an assessment of regional threats largely dictated the need for good relations between Kemalist Turkey and Israel, both during and since the Cold War (Inbar, 2011, p.133). Thus, in line with Kemalist policy, the CHP has been swift to criticise any AKP actions which damage Turkey’s relations with Israel or which risk Turkey’s interests, through what current CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has described as ‘petty actions’ (Magnezi, 2011). The AKP’s geopolitical vision of Turkish hegemony over the Islamic ‘civilizational basin’ and ideological exclusion of non-Muslim states therefore stands deeply at odds with the Kemalist vision of Western alignment and Israeli military alliance.

3. The Mavi Marmara incident (2010)

As a continuation of the downward trend in Turkish-Israeli relations, the Gaza Flotilla raid of 31st May 2010 precipitated what was perhaps to be the coldest period in relations between the two states. A flotilla of six civilian ships had sailed from Cyprus in an attempt to break the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, governed by Hamas (Inbar, 2011, p.133). Israeli commandos launched a night-time raid on the ships in international waters, and came under attack on board the lead ship Mavi Marmara from individuals armed with iron bars and knives. In the ensuing fight, eight Turks and one Turkish- American were killed by the commandos (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.347). Relations between the two states reached ‘a new nadir’, and the vehemence of the ensuing recriminations lost Turkey its ability to act as a neutral interlocutor between Israel and its Arab neighbours (ibid.). The Turkish public was outraged, and Ankara recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv (Sherwood, 2010).

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

In general the AKP had shown itself willing to engage diplomatically with Hamas, and was highly critical of the Israeli blockade. Turkish-Israeli relations had already suffered when the AKP leadership invited Hamas’s Khaled Mishal to Ankara in 2006. The Israelis, as well as the EU and the US, felt that this provided Hamas with undue legitimacy (Murinson, 2006, p.959). However, the AKP presented their position as morally sound, by arguing that their meeting with the Hamas leadership was aimed at getting the party to soften its views on Israel (Stein, 2014, p.9). In a 2006 interview, Davutoğlu was asked why the AKP had met with Khaled Mishal despite Hamas being labelled a terrorist group by the EU and the US. Davutoğlu responded that other countries were displaying double standards towards Hamas. Why, out of all the elections carried out in 2005 in Egypt, Iraq and Palestine, was it only the Palestinian result that was deemed illegitimate, he asked (Davutoğlu, 2011, p.297). Turkey, he argued, was engaging with Hamas in order to prevent another war (ibid.). He claimed that Turkey was the only country in the region that was seeking good relations with all the actors in its vicinity, thereby casting Turkey’s stance as both noble and pragmatic. Bilgin & Bilgiç suggest that the real reason is the AKP’s attempt to characterise Turkey as the ‘protector’ of the Palestinian people (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.191). If this is indeed the case, then relations with Hamas could therefore be seen as corresponding to a Neo-Ottoman policy of regional grandeur. Stein, too, argues that the AKP’s willingness to engage with Hamas is ideological rather than ‘altruistic’, writing that Hamas’s elevation of religion over nationalism makes it a more attractive partner for the AKP than Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party (Stein, 2014, p.9).

Regional grandeur was indeed at the heart of the AKP’s version of events. The AKP narrative following the flotilla raid underlined Turkey’s status as the moral actor in the region. Erdoğan stated in 2011 that the attack on the Mavi Marmara could have been a reason to go to war, but that Turks had reacted with ‘patience’ because of ‘Turkey’s greatness’ (Turkish: Türkiye’nin büyüklüğü) (CNN Türk, 2011). He described those killed aboard the ship as ‘our brothers’ who had become ‘martyrs’ (Turkish: kardeşimiz şehit olmuştu) (Hürriyet, 2014a). And while the Turkish and international press emphasised that the ships were carrying ‘humanitarian aid’ (Turkish: insani yardım) (Radikal, 2015a; Cumhuriyet, 2014; Guardian, 2010), the Tel Aviv-based scholar Efraim Inbar has asserted that the activists on board were ‘Islamists’ (Inbar, 2011, p.133). One placard at an Israeli protest outside Turkey’s embassy at the time read, in English, ‘Atatürk is crying from his grave; my beloved Turkey is captive of Islamic fanatics’ (CNN Türk, 2010).

There were differing reactions to the incident from Turkey’s two main parties. In March 2013, while responding to Israel’s official apology for the deaths aboard the Mavi Marmara, Erdoğan took the opportunity to criticise the CHP leadership over the incident. He noted that the leader of the CHP, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, whose name he could not bring himself to mention, had said at the time that the CHP would not have sent the Mavi Marmara to Gaza (Vatan, 2013). In Erdoğan’s speech, the CHP was cast as a treacherous actor, siding with Israel against its own country. Indeed, Erdoğan noted in

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

2013 that while Israel had now apologised, the CHP would not apologise for its stance on the incident (ibid.). The conservative Islamist paper Yeni Akit was also highly critical of CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s comments regarding the Mavi Marmara, which he had supposedly referred to as a ‘pirate ship’ (Turkish: korsan gemisi) (Yeni Akit, 2015). The pro-AKP Yeni Şafak paper also described Kılıçdaroğlu’s position as ‘preposterous’ (Turkish: akıl almaz) when he said at the Brookings Institute that the Mavi Marmara incident would not have happened under a CHP government (Yeni Şafak, 2013). AKP and Kemalist narratives therefore followed the traditional pattern of each side vehemently condemning the other. While the AKP and Erdoğan emphasised Turkey’s position as a value-based actor willing to act in contravention of Turkey’s traditionally peaceful relations with Israel, the CHP accused the AKP of damaging Turkey’s own interests. Kılıçdaroğlu in particular questioned why the AKP had acted on the matter without the slightest thought for Turkey’s trade relations with Israel (Sabah, 2011). As mentioned previously, however, Turkey’s trade with Israel actually increased since 2010 (Avcı, 2015). Despite apologies over the incident from both Israel and Erdoğan, diplomatic relations still remain strained.

4. Gezi Park protests (2013)

The Gezi Park protests which broke out in Istanbul in May 2013 were the ‘biggest example of mass civil movement in the republic’s history’ (Yardımcı-Geyikçi, 2014, p.445). International media appeared initially gleeful at the prospect that Erdoğan’s days in power might be numbered. Der Spiegel suggested that the seeds of a genuine uprising might have been sewn (Köhler & Steinvorth, 2013). The Economist speculated that Erdoğan may lose out to incumbent President Abdullah Gül in the upcoming presidential elections (Economist, 2013). An article on Open Democracy pronounced that bitterness over the protests remained ‘the single most salient reference point for politics’ (Kadercan, 2013). However, all of this proved to be wishful thinking, as the AKP went on to come first in local elections in March 2014, and Erdoğan was overwhelmingly elected President in August 2014 with just over 51% of the vote. By the time of the June 2015 elections, however, opposition towards Erdoğan’s plans to rewrite the Turkish constitution appeared to have overtaken grievances over Gezi Park as a factor in the AKP’s reduced majority (Lowen, 2015; Öktem, 2015).

The protests effectively exposed the fault-lines in Turkish society, both between AKP supporters and secular Kemalists, as well as between the ruling establishment and those who felt represented by none of the available political parties (Yardımcı-Geyikçi, 2014, p.445). While the protests may have started for local environmental reasons – namely opposition to a shopping centre being built on Istanbul’s Gezi Park – the ensuing anti and pro-government demonstrations inevitably took on a geopolitical dimension. As Tüysüzoğlu has pointed out, the AKP’s ‘Neo-Ottomanist’ foreign policy has ultimately become ‘the linchpin’ of its political legitimacy at home (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.91). The protests can

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam therefore be seen partly as an expression of opposition not only to AKP authoritarianism, but also to a particular vision of what Turkey’s place in the world should be. As such, many protesters probably did not share the AKP’s vision of Turkey as an Islamic superpower; at the same time, this is not to say that they automatically subscribed to the Kemalist worldview of a secular and Westernised Turkey. Erdoğan was however quick to accuse the protesters of un-Islamic behaviour such as entering a mosque without removing their shoes, and then drinking alcohol while inside (Hürriyet, 2013). He alleged that the protesters’ camp was littered with condoms, and that the protesters were all terrorists (Gezer, 2013). One AKP politician even suggested that the demonstrators were laying the grounds for a coup (Milliyet, 2013). In one speech which Erdoğan gave at the time of the protests, he seemed to link the protesters to the military junta which seized power in 1980, and tried to liken the protesters to the coup-era ban on headscarves in public universities (Daloğlu, 2013). The AKP and Turkey’s religious class were therefore presented as the victims rather than the oppressors. The AKP leadership thus did much to connect the protesters to ‘godless’ secularism and past Kemalist authoritarianism, thereby implying that the primary point of difference between AKP supporters and the protesters was to do with religion (ibid.).

One geopolitical reason for Erdoğan’s severe reaction to the protests was particularly due to the events of the Arab Spring. The AKP was watching the situation in Egypt very closely at the time of the Gezi Park protests. Liberal journalist Mustafa Akyol has written recently about the close connections between Gezi Park and the fate of Egypt’s former President Morsi. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood had close ideological similarities to the AKP’s Muslim Democrats (Akyol, 2015). Consequently, when new protests in Tahrir Square by secular liberals led to the toppling of Morsi’s pro-Islamist regime by the Egyptian military, Erdoğan saw a worrying blueprint for a possible outcome of Gezi Park, and moved quickly to crush the uprisings (ibid.). Thus the possibility that the Gezi Park protests might be paving the way for an intervention by Turkey’s secular-Kemalist Armed Forces was very real in the minds of the AKP leadership. Erdoğan has also been one of the most vociferous critics of the death sentence handed down to Morsi in May 2015 by judges loyal to the new military regime, likening it to a death sentence on democracy (Presidency of the Republic of Turkey, 2015). Morsi, like Erdoğan, was elected President with just over 50% of the vote (Akyol, 2015). Erdoğan’s strategy at the time of Gezi Park was therefore to draw on the religious sentiments of the 50% who voted AKP at the expense of those who did not, and organised pro-government rallies of his own in order to draw attention to his own support base and demonstrate his continued legitimacy (Today’s Zaman, 2013).

The AKP has used religious sensitivity to gain votes in the past, through references to the suppression of religious expression in Turkey under previous secularist regimes (Daloğlu, 2013). This therefore ties in with the government’s controversial emphasis on Turkey’s Muslim identity, and with its broader geopolitical agenda of closer ‘civilizational’ ties with the Muslim nations of Turkey’s near

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam abroad. The implication behind Erdoğan’s accusations is therefore that the protestors are one and the same with the country’s former (Westernist) secular oppressors (ibid.). Consequently the AKP believes the secularists should be made to ‘suffer’ now that a more ‘pious’ government is in power (Özdil, 2013). Erdoğan’s intentional polarisation of the political landscape has led to what Yardımcı- Geyikçi terms a ‘crisis of representation’ for the many Turks who are caught in the vast gap between the two perspectives (Yardımcı-Geyikçi, 2014, p.445). Indeed, surveys conducted among the protesters showed that their political views conformed neither to those of staunch Kemalism nor to those of the AKP (ibid., p.451). However, Erdoğan’s conspiracy theories about moral debasement and coup plots also raised the spectre of an anti-Westernist discourse. Allegations of meddling by ‘foreign powers’ were reminiscent of the so-called ‘Sevres complex’ which has occasionally coloured Turkish relations with Europe, and which is based on the fear that Turkey is under constant threat of division at the hands of the West (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.553). The protests were re-inscribed by Erdoğan as ‘part of a global conspiracy’, which was purportedly aimed at stifling Turkey’s economy (Economist, 2013; Daloğlu, 2013). There were signs of anti-Semitism at work too, with Erdoğan accusing an ‘international Jewish lobby’ of being behind the protests (Canikligil, 2014). In illustration of the geopolitical divide, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) sought recourse to the West for help, and called directly on the European Union to condemn the AKP’s actions (CHP EU Representation, 2013). However, whether this was due to pro-Western geopolitical inclinations, or merely political opportunism, is unclear. In any event, on the matter of Gezi Park the CHP has been criticised for being ‘relatively ineffectual’ (Yardımcı-Geyikçi, 2014, p.446).

Fig. 3.2 Erdoğan on Facebook: ‘The death sentence given to Morsi today is a death sentence for democracy.’ Source: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Official Facebook Page (2015).

Thus, while the Gezi Park protests were not explicitly about Turkey’s international geopolitical position, the AKP leadership’s reaction to them helped to emphasise the polarisation of Turkish society between the two geopolitical camps, and further marginalised those sections of society which subscribe neither to the AKP nor the Kemalist vision. Scholars, the international media and the CHP have all highlighted the point that Erdoğan’s government feels no obligation to represent the 50% of the population that has never voted AKP (Yardımcı-Geyikçi, 2014, p.445; Economist, 2013; CHP EU Representation, 2013). Expressions of dissent are consistently characterised as terrorism or conspiracy (Today’s Zaman, 2013). The West and Israel are seen as jealous meddlers in Turkey’s affairs

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

(Economist, 2013). Erdoğan perceives a web of sinister forces arrayed against him, comprising ‘a vague combination of the West, Zionists, the “interest rate lobby” and secular and treacherous Turks’ (Akyol, 2015). His increasing authoritarianism has led Turkey’s Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk, as well as some Western media outlets, to liken him to an Ottoman Sultan (Radikal, 2013). Thus, while this is not necessarily an explicit comment on the AKP ‘Neo-Ottomanist’ geopolitical visions, the two are nonetheless linked.

In the minds of Erdoğan, Davutoğlu and the AKP leadership, Turkey’s innate ‘grandeur’ is unquestionable, and any rival understandings of Turkey’s national character are ‘treasonous’. Although the Gezi Park protests were based on a concern for individual freedoms (Yardımcı-Geyikçi, 2014, p.452), Erdoğan’s reaction to them illustrated that any alternative views on how Turkish politics, society and geopolitics should be defined would not be tolerated by the regime. At the same time it was a statement that the AKP would not be toppled by the same forces that brought down its ideological ally in Egypt. When this same intolerance and unwavering belief in the innate rectitude of AKP policy is applied to the party’s geopolitical visions, however, then the regional repercussions are grave. As has been seen with regards to the Arab Spring, the AKP’s determination to ruthlessly push through its own geopolitical imaginings with little regard for the realities of the situation has not only damaged Turkey’s foreign relations with its neighbours, but has arguably contributed to worsening conditions in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. As Özkan observes in his critique of Davutoğlu’s articles, a belief in one’s own infallibility is a dangerous trait among politicians (Özkan, 2014, p.137).

5. The Syria crisis (2011 – ongoing)

The outbreak of the Arab Spring brought about a dramatic change in Turkish foreign policy towards its Middle Eastern and Mediterranean neighbours. Prior to 2011, Turkey’s relations with Syria had grown warmer (Murinson, 2006, p.955). This was made possible by Syria’s decision to expel PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan from its territory in 1998 and disband PKK training camps (Larrabee, 2010, pp.165-6; Murinson, 2006, p.955; Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.185). Thus, while Davutoğlu and the AKP initially took credit for these improved relationships, they were in fact grounded in the foreign policy of the previous regime and ex-Foreign Minister İsmail Cem (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.185). Economic ties have also improved, though again due to post-Cold War conditions rather than Turkish foreign policy alone (Özkan, 2014, p.132). Nonetheless, Turkish-Syria relations were often held up as the prime example of the success of the ‘zero problems with neighbours’ strategy (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.95; Demirtaş-Bagdonas, 2014, p.141). Davutoğlu himself wrote in 2008 that Turkey’s new relations with Syria stood ‘as a model of progress for the rest of the region’ (Davutoğlu, 2008, p.80).

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

In practice, the AKP had no attachment to the Assad regime, which like Saddam’s Iraq did not comfortably fit into Davutoğlu’s designs for a Turkish-dominated Muslim civilizational basin: as long as Turkey was unable to topple the Assad regime, efforts were to be directed towards normalisation, with the goal of turning Syria into Turkey’s ‘hinterland’ (Özkan, 2014, p.133). In any case, Davutoğlu believed that Assad and other dictators would fall sooner rather than later, and that the Middle East was on the brink of great change (ibid., p.130). Therefore it seemed like his opportunity had arrived when the Arab Spring broke out in Tunisia in December 2010 and began to spread across the former territories of the Ottoman Empire. Similar to Turkey’s policy towards the Iraqi Islamic Party after the Iraq War, and towards Hamas in 2006, the AKP supported those religiously conservative parties in the uprisings that were linked to the Muslim Brotherhood (Stein, 2014, p.10). Indeed, they were instrumental in encouraging the Muslim Brotherhood to stand for election in post-Mubarak Egypt (Akyol, 2015). When it became clear in 2011-12 that the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad was incapable of compromise, the AKP threw its weight behind the Free Syrian Army and the Muslim Brotherhood elements within the Syrian National Council (Demirtaş-Bagdonas, 2014, p.142). Davutoğlu and others perceived a genuine change in Middle Eastern geopolitics which they were eager to facilitate. He saw an opportunity to empower religiously conservative parties and believed that this heralded the end of nationalism and a shift towards establishing political legitimacy based on the unity of Islam (Stein, 2014, p.10). Though the AKP strenuously denied it, Turkey has been accused of consciously allowing fundamentalist groups to pass through its territory and into Syria (Özkan, 2014, p.134). The projected outcome had been increased influence for Turkey, allowing it to attain the status of a global power (Stein, 2014, p.10). However, the result has been a worsening of the situation in Syria.

Demirtaş-Bagdonas has argued that it is not possible to determine whether Turkey’s policy is driven ‘exclusively by rational calculations’ or by ‘ideological considerations’ (Demirtaş-Bagdonas, 2014, p.143). Indeed, there is scholarly disagreement over the extent to which AKP involvement in Syria is motivated by Sunni sectarianism. Özkan is adamant that Turkey has adopted a sectarian strategy based upon a ‘Sunni axis’ of alliances with Qatar and Saudi Arabia, in an effort to oppose the non- Sunni regimes of Syria, Iraq and Iran, and the forces of Hezbollah (Özkan, 2014, p.134). Tüysüzoğlu, however, argues that Turkey’s involvement is non-sectarian, but that the Syrian opposition’s Sunnism versus the Assad regime’s Alawism has unintentionally given it a sectarian appearance (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.95). However, both Özkan and Tüysüzoğlu agree that it is the sectarian appearance of Turkey’s involvement that has ultimately made the ‘zero problems’ policy untenable (Özkan, 2014, p.134; Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.95).

The result is that Davutoğlu’s grand plans for a reordering of the Middle East currently lie more or less in tatters. Unqualified support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has made normal relations with the current al-Sisi government impossible. For the first time in its history, Turkey has an

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam ambassador in neither Cairo nor Tel Aviv (Al-Monitor, 2014a; Lowen, 2014). Turkey’s support for the Syrian opposition has made it enemies in Iran, with whom it had previously enjoyed warmer relations, and its blind eye towards the movement of fundamentalist groups through its territories, which has ultimately facilitated the rise of Islamic State, is diplomatically embarrassing to say the least. Blinded by grand plans for Islamic civilizational unity and the re-establishment of an Ottomanist sphere of control, Davutoğlu and his adherents overlooked the abiding strength of Arab nationalism, secularism and socialism in the region (Özkan, 2014, p.136). Through attempting to force ideological strategies onto the developments of the Arab Spring, Davutoğlu and the AKP’s geopolitical visions have made Turkey’s relations with its neighbours worse, not better.

Consequently the debacle of the Syrian crisis has challenged the AKP’s usual narrative of Turkey’s wisdom and grandeur. The AKP’s narrative concerning Syria has therefore instead been one of Turkey’s humanitarian aims and unquestionable moral standards (Demirtaş-Bagdonas, 2014, p.140). Erdoğan has drawn attention to the fact that Turkey has taken in the largest share of Syrian refugees, while Europe has ‘closed its doors’ to them after taking only a few thousand (Hürriyet, 2014b). His most frequent criticism is to ask ‘where is the West?’ (Haberler.com, 2013; Kanalahaber, 2015). No doubt there are indeed moral dimensions to Turkey’s opposition to the Assad regime. However, as the scholar and journalist Soli Özel notes in Hürriyet Daily News, the Syrian President now described by Ankara as a ‘bloody dictator’ is the same man that AKP officials used to dine with privately to discuss business (Hürriyet Daily News, 2012). The United States and other members of the anti-Assad coalition have never viewed the collapse of the Syrian government as a productive outcome, preferring instead to see a negotiated transfer of power to a more palatable regime (BBC, 2015). Yet when Turkey came down on the side of the Syrian rebels, Erdoğan declared that Turkey would only permit the use of its bases for airstrikes if the Syrian regime were also targeted (Lowen, 2014). In effect, conscious of its pivotal role in the conflict, Turkey has held its support for US military measures as ‘ransom’ for following the policy that it wants to see enacted in Syria (Al-Monitor, 2014b). The AKP has justified its position by claiming the moral high ground (Lowen, 2014). And as Turkey’s isolation has increased, so has the AKP’s moralist rhetoric (ibid.). A number of scholars see this as disingenuous. Özel argues that moral arguments are trotted out because the AKP has been unable to clearly define Turkey’s national interest in the Syrian conflict (Hürriyet Daily News, 2012), hence the AKP’s insistence that Turkey is the only country ‘courageous enough’ to adopt a value- based policy on Syria (Lowen, 2014). According to Behlül Özkan, however, ‘instead of defending human rights or individual liberties, Turkey has pursued an expansionist foreign policy for ideological reasons’ (Özkan, 2014, p.136). The current stalemate in Syria suggests that, whatever the AKP was trying to achieve in Syria, it has not worked.

The Kemalist narrative of the conflict is equally questionable. At the start of the crisis the CHP rather dubiously came out in support of the Assad regime, a fact which the pro-AKP press quickly seized

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam upon (Today’s Zaman, 2011). The liberal journalist Mustafa Akyol has outlined on Al-Monitor some of the reasons for this position, one being that the CHP can consistently be relied upon to give a knee- jerk reaction to anything and everything that the AKP supports (Akyol, 2013). Furthermore, the majority of Turkey’s Alevis, who bear some cultural affinities to Assad’s Alawite clan, are CHP voters (Gürsel, 2013). But the principal affinity between the CHP and the Syrian regime is, Akyol argues, ideology: Kemalism and Ba’athism supposedly both have a number of aspects in common, such as belief in a ‘secular and nationalist single-party-state’ (Akyol, 2013). Akyol claims that some in the CHP view Turkey’s transition to democracy in 1950 as a mistake, and hence have some sympathy with the Assad regime’s predicament. Indeed, writers for Today’s Zaman have argued that the CHP would openly support Assad today were it not for the fact that his regime had attacked Turkish diplomatic missions (Today’s Zaman, 2011). CHP parliamentarians have also visited Assad in Damascus during the conflict (Gürsel, 2013). Turkey’s Kemalists are therefore courting controversy on the Syrian issue. Allowing the Assad regime to continue its activities unchallenged is a dubious position indeed. However, it might be seen to correspond to a strict interpretation of the Kemalist mantra of non-involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts.

In May 2015, speculation as to a Turkish ground invasion of Syria in order to establish a buffer zone was circulating, with the CHP arguing that the AKP would be going against the will of the Turkish people by entering Syria militarily (Taştekin, 2015). According to one CHP politician, the Turkish military is unhappy with the AKP’s policy towards Syria (ibid.). The secularist military reportedly has grave tactical concerns about any operation in Syria, and balks at the idea of working with the radical religious groups in the Syrian opposition (Gurcan, 2015). At the same time, they are juggling their reluctance towards interference with the fear of an Iraqi-style Kurdish autonomous government emerging in Northern Syria. It is thus possible that the non-interventionist Kemalist establishment may be forced to intervene in a Middle Eastern conflict for the sake of its own ideological convictions.

Syria therefore represents a fundamental crisis for the geopolitical visions of Turkey’s two established ideological camps. The failure to topple Assad early on and encourage an ideologically friendly Muslim Democrat-style regime in Syria has left Davutoğlu’s visions of Neo-Ottoman civilizational unity across the region in tatters, and has wrecked Turkey’s improved relations with neighbours such as Iran due to the increasingly sectarian dimension of the conflict. For the Kemalists, the crisis has sucked Turkey into the quagmire of a Middle Eastern conflict, while raising the possibility of further Kurdish political gains in the region. Turkey is in an immensely difficult situation. Swamped with refugees, unable to enter Syria militarily for fear of the consequences, and at odds with its Western allies over the best solution to the conflict, the geopolitical aspirations of both the AKP and the Kemalists have been shaken, with the result that all parties are left flailing at each other and at the West. Neither side wants to end up ‘on the wrong side of history’ in terms of the Syrian crisis;

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam however, Davutoğlu has had to look on as his geopolitical designs and ‘zero problems’ policies are nullified, while remaining ideologically incapable of adjusting his policies to a tempestuous environment (Özkan, 2014, p.136; Hürriyet Daily News, 2012). Similarly the CHP and Kemalist military are fearful of being dragged into a Middle Eastern war they do not want, on the side of extremists whom they do not support, and against a regime with which they allegedly share a number of ideological similarities. At this point of political rupture it is difficult to foresee whether the two camps’ geopolitical visions can survive the conflict, or whether new visions will emerge to replace them. It will be interesting to discover what effects the June 2015 general election results might now have on the future of Turkish foreign policy towards Syria and the Middle East.

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

Chapter 4

Geopolitical repercussions

Introduction: thirteen years of zero problems?

The AKP has held power in Turkey for close to thirteen years. Building on the trends initiated by previous governments, they have more visibly brought new dimensions to Turkish foreign policy, and followed a geopolitical vision that is distinct from the Westernist and isolationist Kemalism that is traditionally associated with the opposition CHP and the military. As argued in the previous chapters, AKP policymakers have followed a Neo-Ottomanist discourse of regional grandeur, predicated upon theories of civilizational geopolitics (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011; Özkan, 2014, Taşpınar, 2008). The goal, in Davutoğlu’s words, has been to make Turkey ‘a central country’ (Turkish: merkez ülke) rather than a ‘bridge’ or marginal country, by exploiting Turkey’s historical and geographical ‘strategic depth’ (Davutoğlu, 2004).

It is debatable how successful this has been. As chief foreign policy advisor in 2004, Davutoğlu envisioned that success would be achieved through a programme of policies including ‘rhythmic diplomacy’, ‘multi-lane politics’ and ‘zero problems with neighbours’ (ibid.). His goals had both geographical and political dimensions: Turkey was intended to become the ‘centre’ of its geographical region, which Davutoğlu saw as extending as far as Sarajevo in the West and Grozny in the East (Davutoğlu, 2001, p.56). Hence, just as Istanbul once lay at the centre of the Ottoman Empire, so Davutoğlu believed Turkey would one day be at the geographical centre of an integrated regional and civilizational basin (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.191). Turkey was also intended to become the political centre of the region, assuming the role of a grand diplomatic authority tasked with negotiating regional peace and stability between fractious neighbours (Murinson, 2006, p.953). Following the Arab Spring, these neighbours were furthermore encouraged to elect parties who shared a similar ideological vision to the AKP’s own, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and An-Nahda in Tunisia, with the aim of reshaping the region in line with the AKP’s geopolitical ideas (Özkan, 2014, p.134).

As such, during his time in government, Ahmet Davutoğlu has had the opportunity both to formulate and attempt to implement his doctrine of Strategic Depth, and steer Turkish foreign policy according to his own Neo-Ottomanist geopolitical vision. In terms of whether this geopolitical vision has had a positive, negative, or ambivalent effect on Turkey’s relations with neighbouring countries, many sources believe that the effect has ultimately been negative. Due to the increasingly – and perhaps unintentionally – sectarian nature of Turkey’s involvement in the Syrian crisis, observers have

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam pronounced the ‘zero problems’ mantra a moribund policy (Al-Monitor, 2014; Özkan, 2014, p.134; Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.95). Relations with Israel, Egypt and Iran have been damaged, and the EU accession process has failed to progress positively since negotiations began in 2005. Indeed, Tüysüzoğlu has argued that ‘zero problems with neighbours’ may never have been feasible as anything other than an ideal (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.95).

Perhaps it is the case that the AKP geopolitical vision was inevitably doomed to failure from the start. Arguably it did not fit the circumstances of the day, and was not successfully adapted to the events of the 21st century. However, the tumultuous events that have affected the Middle East during the AKP’s time in power may well have damaged Turkey’s local diplomatic relations regardless of which geopolitical vision the ruling party had adopted. Chapter 4 will thus seek to investigate whether a worsening of relations with Turkey’s neighbours is the direct responsibility of the AKP’s geopolitical visions and ideological inflexibility, or whether the events of the 21st century inexorably conspired to make Turkey’s diplomatic isolation unavoidable.

The Middle East

Turkish foreign policy under the AKP has been most identifiably characterised by a renewed interest in the Middle East and the former Ottoman territories (Taşpınar, 2008; Murinson, 2006; Larrabee, 2010). The AKP’s first goal in the region was to establish an atmosphere of ‘zero problems with neighbours’ (Davutoğlu, 2004). As an end in itself, ‘zero problems’ is undoubtedly pragmatic. However, as some commentators have observed, ‘zero problems’ was not an end in itself, but rather a means to an end, with that end allegedly being civilizational unity and a reestablishment of Turkish dominance in the Middle East (Özkan, 2014; Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011; Stein, 2014). The AKP managed to argue that its policies of regional peace and mobility – for example the establishment of visa-free travel between Turkey and Syria – were in fact based on the model of the early days of the European Union (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.345). However, this supposed pragmatism left the ‘zero problems’ policy open to the criticism that it effectively amounted to a practice of ‘zero challenge’ to the region’s dictators (Özkan, 2014, p.132). The result is that the AKP’s current moralist rhetoric regarding the Syrian crisis sounds hollow, since Turkey previously enjoyed warmer relations with the Assad regime. However, it might also be pointed out that the EU has also been willing to tolerate dictators along its external borders in the interests of peace and stability, including the Assad regime in Syria (Browning & Joenniemi, 2008, p.33). Thus, Turkey is by no means alone in its formerly pragmatic approach towards dictatorial neighbours.

Nonetheless, to an extent the ‘zero problems’ policy did work to begin with, especially with regards to easing tensions between Syria and Israel (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.347). However, it appears evident

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam that the AKP overestimated its own diplomatic reach, and chose a number of confrontations which it could not win. Davutoğlu’s civilizational prejudices brought about diplomatic clashes with Israel, due to the AKP casting itself as the ‘protector’ of the Palestinian people (Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.191). Though justifying its stance on moral grounds, the AKP lost its ability to act as a neutral mediator in Middle Eastern conflicts involving Israel, thus isolating Turkey and reducing its regional influence (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.347). There has also been no marked improvement in conditions in the Palestinian territories, thereby implying that the AKP’s numerous ‘showdowns’ with Israel have brought no tangible political or humanitarian gain. The AKP’s civilizational geopolitics thus had a negative effect in this instance.

When the Arab Spring broke out, the AKP saw an opportunity to dispense with its ‘zero problems’ agenda and enact Davutoğlu’s geopolitical vision of a religiously conservative and united civilizational basin (Özkan, 2014, pp.133-4). According to the Hürriyet and Al-Monitor columnist Mustafa Akyol, the AKP enthusiastically encouraged Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood faction to enter Egypt’s presidential elections, something which the Brotherhood itself had been hesitant to do (Akyol, 2015). Similarly, in Syria, the AKP threw itself behind the opposition and allegedly allowed arms and fighters to pass unhindered through its territory (Özkan, 2014, p.134). As such, Turkey’s stance on the conflict has appeared sectarian, which has put it at odds with non-Sunni governments such as Tehran and Baghdad, and with Hezbollah in Lebanon (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.95). Given the stagnant nature of the current crisis in Syria, it is again difficult to argue that the AKP’s stance has been of benefit to any party, whether to Turkey, the factions it supports in Syria, or the Syrian people. Of course, Turkey also had relatively poor relations with Syria, Iraq and Iran before the AKP came to power; however, despite initial positive steps, Turkey now has poor relations not only with these countries, but also with Egypt and Israel as well (Özkan, 2014, p.135). That is to say, the AKP’s attempts to implement Davutoğlu’s geopolitical visions have made Turkey more internationally isolated than it was under the Kemalists, for whom isolationism was an active policy pursuit. While Özkan sees this as a direct, if undesired, consequence of the Strategic Depth doctrine, Soli Özel is slightly more generous to the AKP: he states that the fault was not with the ‘zero problems’ principle but rather with Davutoğlu’s inability to adapt it to ‘a tempestuous environment’ (Hürriyet Daily News, 2012). However, a degree of ideological recklessness in response to the Arab Spring does appear to have been a prime factor in the degradation of Turkey’s regional relationships.

It ultimately seems to be the case that Davutoğlu and the AKP’s geopolitical visions have done more harm than good, both to the Middle East region and to Turkey’s relations with its neighbours. In an attempt to reshape the region in the wake of the Arab Spring, Turkey ‘placed the wrong bets’ in terms of the factions it supported (Lowen, 2014). As such, it has not ended up on the winning side of the region’s conflicts, whether in support of the Muslim Brotherhood against the Egyptian military, the Sunni militias against Assad, or the Palestinians against Israel. Turkey no longer has strong allies in

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam the region, and is also no closer to achieving Davutoğlu’s Neo-Ottomanist vision of civilizational unity. Civilizational geopolitics has made enemies out of former friends such as Israel. On balance, the inflexibility of the AKP’s geopolitical vision has substantially contributed to the failure of that geopolitical vision.

The EU

A closer relationship with the EU officially remains a principal ambition of the AKP – the party website currently lists EU membership as a ‘strategic goal’ (AK Parti, 2015). In its initial years in power, the AKP did make some important steps towards EU integration, and began full accession negotiations in 2005, making it the most pro-EU party on the Turkish political scene (Taşpınar, 2008, p.2). Pope & Pope argue that this was done partly to defend against political intervention by the Turkish military (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.325). The AKP also hoped that EU integration would lead to greater religious freedoms in Turkey (Larrabee, 2010, p.174; Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2011, p.177).

However, the process has lost momentum. In 2004 the European Court of Human Rights upheld the headscarf ban in Turkish schools and universities (BBC, 2005), which weakened support for EU accession among the AKP, and seemed to demonstrate that European integration did not necessarily equate to greater freedom of religious expression (Larrabee, 2010, p.174). Furthermore, an increased parliamentary majority in the 2007 general election, and the erosion of the influence of the military, meant that the AKP felt less need to comply with EU demands for reform, leading to a concern that Europe had ‘outlived its usefulness’ for Erdoğan and the party (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.339-42).

There was also opposition to Turkish membership from a number of EU states, which may have further contributed to a decrease in AKP enthusiasm for accession. Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy in particular were opposed to full membership for Turkey (Laçiner, 2009, p.158). Furthermore, when Cyprus joined the EU on 1st May 2004, Turkey was left in the awkward position of occupying the territory of an EU member state (Pope & Pope, 2011, p.330). Although Turkish-EU accession negotiations began in 2005, Cyprus has been able to hold Turkey’s EU accession to ransom over a deal on the future governance of the island (ibid., p.331). It appears unlikely that EU membership will be possible for Turkey without a resolution of the Cyprus issue. Again, the blame does not lie solely with Turkey in this matter. It was of course the Greek Cypriots who voted down the Annan Plan for a federal solution in April 2004, only days before Cyprus acceded to the EU (Guardian, 2015a).

On the other hand, some scholars have claimed that the AKP is ideologically at odds with Europe due to its belief in the ‘immutable differences’ between the Turkish and European ‘civilisations’ (Bilgin &

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

Bilgiç, 2011, p.192). The AKP’s initial push towards EU integration in its first term would seem to refute this, however, even if the AKP’s reasons for speeding up the process were ultimately self- serving, i.e. protection against the military and support for religious freedoms. Indeed, the AKP has shown itself willing to work productively with countries with whom it does not feel a civilizational affinity (ibid.). As shown in the previous chapter, Turkey has enjoyed an increase in trade with Israel under the AKP, despite ideological and ‘civilizational’ differences (Avcı, 2015). It is therefore unlikely that the AKP would block European integration for ideological reasons, and Turkey’s slow EU accession progress cannot be blamed entirely on the AKP’s geopolitical visions.

There has undoubtedly been a large degree of obstructionism on the part of EU member states such as France, Germany and Cyprus. Davutoğlu’s geopolitical visions cannot be seen as the only obstacle to closer Turkish-EU integration. The long history of Turkey’s EU accession suggests it is unlikely that a Kemalist government would have made more progress. On the other hand, the sense of disappointment surrounding the lack of progress on Turkish-EU negotiations is perhaps greater due to what seemed like an initial acceleration of the process in the first few years of the AKP government. Perhaps if certain EU states had shown less opposition to Turkish EU membership, the geopolitical situation in Turkey might be different today.

Conclusion

Despite the international setbacks that Turkey has experienced under the AKP, up until the June 2015 general election there was little sign that the AKP’s geopolitical agenda had changed. The disappointments of the Syrian crisis have not led to a readjustment of the AKP’s Neo-Ottomanist aspirations (Demirtaş-Bagdonas, 2014, p.141; Stein, 2014, p.10). Indeed, it has been argued that the AKP is now playing ‘the long game’ with regards to regional pre-eminence, and believes its current setbacks to be merely temporary (Stein, 2014, p.10). Foreign policy has supposedly become the ‘linchpin’ of the AKP’s domestic legitimacy (Tüysüzoğlu, 2014, p.91), and the AKP has attempted to mitigate its defeats by successfully claiming the moral high ground (Lowen, 2014). The more diplomatically isolated Turkey has become, the more the AKP’s moralist rhetoric has increased (Hürriyet Daily News, 2012). And yet, the AKP’s prevarications over supporting Kurdish forces in Syria may well have lost them the support of Kurdish voters in the 2015 election, as disaffected Kurds in Turkey’s south-eastern border regions switched their support to the HDP (Al-Monitor, 2015).

In other areas, however, the AKP’s foreign policy defeats may perversely have served to increase its domestic support. The overthrow of Morsi has allowed the AKP to cast itself as a ‘victim’ of ideological persecution by pointing to the fate of its ideological ally at the hands of an interventionist military (Akyol, 2015). Despite being in government for almost thirteen years and amassing

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam unprecedented domestic power, the AKP is thus still able to characterise its secularist opponents as the real ‘oppressors’ (ibid.). The poor record of previous secular-Kemalist governments means that, even after thirteen years, the AKP is still essentially a protest party against the wrongs of the past (Özdil, 2012). And although the ‘secularist oppressors’ have largely been marginalised in Turkey, failed geopolitical overtures towards Morsi’s Egypt mean that the AKP is still able to point to supposed secular oppression abroad.

Fig. 4.1 A vision for the future: Erdoğan’s target years. Source: Ak Gençlik (2014).

As such, the fact that this thesis has examined AKP foreign policy at this juncture is not to say that the AKP is finished as a political force; however, its loss of majority in the elections of June 2015 will undoubtedly serve as a setback. And the fact that the AKP still managed to collect over 40% of the vote suggests that the political landscape continues to lack a credible oppositional vision capable of winning outright against the AKP. Analysts have suggested that Erdoğan is likely to come back fighting from this setback (Tisdall, 2015). And the AKP clearly had long-term ambitions: election posters showed ‘target’ years marking out the future course of their geopolitical vision, confident that they would still be in power at the time. ‘Target 2023’ (Turkish: Hedef 2023) is identified as the date by which the AKP aims to make Turkey one of the world’s top ten economies, and is also the centenary of the founding of the Republic (Bostan, 2012). And since ‘Hedef 2023’ posters invariably feature a large picture of Erdoğan, the implication is therefore that Erdoğan will still be in charge. Davutoğlu’s future may be less certain. Having only recently become head of the party after Erdoğan became President, Davutoğlu has led the AKP to their worst election performance, and comparisons between the two men’s leadership styles will be inevitable – consequently Davutoğlu’s position at the head of the party may be on shakier ground (Tisdall, 2015).

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

Fig. 4.2 Can Davutoğlu come out fighting? Source: Anadolu Ajansı (2015).

AKP posters have also shown the target dates of 2053 and 2071. 2053 will be the 600th anniversary of the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, while 2071 will be the 1000th anniversary of the Battle of Manzikert, when the Seljuk Turks first defeated the Byzantine army and gained a foothold in Anatolia (Finkel, 2005). By this time, Erdoğan wants Turkey ‘to reach once more the degree that the Seljuks and the Ottomans reached’ (Bostan, 2012). The AKP thus envisaged a lasting geopolitical legacy which it would bequeath to Turkey, despite the evidence that Davutoğlu’s geopolitical aspirations have borne little fruit either abroad, and now also domestically. At an AKP Congress in 2012 Erdoğan told his youthful audience ‘with God’s grace we will build 2023, inshallah you will build 2071’ (CNNTürk, 2012). The future generation was therefore tasked with realising the geopolitical visions which the AKP leadership could not achieve in its lifetime. It remains to be seen what will happen to this vision in the aftermath of the election.

This thesis has sought to argue that Davutoğlu’s doctrine of Strategic Depth, and his attempts to implement his geopolitical visions for Turkish foreign policy, have been unsuccessful, and have contributed to Turkey’s isolation. At the same time, there is also no sign that Davutoğlu or the AKP leadership are prepared to change their geopolitical visions other than adopting a longer timetable. They see their defeats only as temporary setbacks. It should be pointed out, however, that Turkey

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam would not necessarily be in a better international position under a government of a different ideological colour. While Neo-Ottomanist visions of regional grandeur have ultimately harmed Turkey’s position, Ömer Taşpınar has argued that a Kemalist government may have been even more isolationist, authoritarian and reactionary (Taşpınar, 2008, p.28). Previous Kemalist governments have indeed been less enthusiastic about joining the EU or compromising on Cyprus (Akçalı & Perinçek, 2009, p.556). And in the unlikely event of a Kemalist coup d’état, Turkey might then shift its attention away from the West and the Middle East, and focus more on the Eurasian geopolitical space, perhaps forming closer ties with Russia, China and Central Asia (Taşpınar, 2008, p.28). Yet the erosion of the power of the Turkish military makes such an event improbable. Ultimately it appears that, in spite of an inflexible foreign policy agenda and an embarrassing general election result, the AKP and its geopolitical vision are here to stay for a while yet.

Ross McQueen 10848355 MA Thesis European Studies University of Amsterdam

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