Turkey sways between self-esteem and hubris
With the region in crisis, even some at home fear Ankara is a bit too brash
It is a sign of the euphoric mood in this newly confident nation that Turks of all ages are dressing up as Ottoman sultans and noble women, harking back to an era when Turkey ruled an empire stretching from the Balkans to the Indian Ocean.
“This is Turkey’s moment,” said Esra Poroy, a 39-year-old housewife, admiring a photo of herself adorned in the sumptuous silks and jewels of a sultan's wife. “We feel a strong pride in our strength and influence, much as we did during the Ottoman days.” Yet, even as many in Washington and Europe praise Turkey’s newly assertive leadership, such brashness is prompting some concerns both at home and abroad that the nation’s giddy sense of self-confidence could tip into arrogance and aggravate allies and foes at a critical time.
Ankara faces a raft of foreign policy challenges on its doorstep, any one of which could derail its long-term goal of obtaining regional power status. An increasingly outsized national ego, analysts say, has already frayed ties with Europe. On Thursday, Ankara recalled its ambassador from Paris after France voted to criminalise the denial of the genocide of up to 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1918 by the Ottoman Turks.
And with talks to join the European Union hopelessly stalled, many Turks have greeted the euro crisis with barely concealed glee, saying Europe has rejected them because they are Muslim.
Closer to home, three of the most volatile states in the world —Syria, Iraq and Iran — are lined up along Turkey’s southern and eastern borders. Syria is already in a state of civil war and Iraq seems to be flirting once again with sectarian strife and dissolution. Throw in the longstanding Kurdish problem and an Iran that erupted in 2009 and now may be descending into economic chaos, and the possibilities of regional destabilisation, mass refugee flows and even war do not seem terribly remote.
Facing such threats, analysts and diplomats say, Turkey needs to resist the temptation to gloat and swagger. Soli Ozel, professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, said that the European and American economic decline, coupled with the Arab Spring, was emboldening Turkey as it evolves into the model of democracy for the Arab world.
“Turks are saying, ‘We are now on the rise, you are running out of steam and we don’t have to take any stuff from westerners,” he said. But he added: “There is a fine line between self-confidence and hubris.”
Turkey and its charismatic prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, could be forgiven for displaying some vanity. He has overhauled a country once haunted by military coups into a regional democratic powerhouse. He is so popular in the Arab world that there has been a surge in babies named Tayyip.
While Turkey’s economy surges — growing by 8.2 per cent in the third quarter, second only to China in the world — Europe is sputtering; Greece, a long-time rival, has been flattened by the sovereign debt crisis. With its new clout as a leader in a region long dominated by the United States, this large Muslim country of 79 million people has also been basking in its role as the voice of regional indignation against Syria and chastising Israel. Earlier this month a deputy prime minister boldly lectured Vice President Joseph R Biden Jr. that it was Turkey, and not the struggling economies of the US and Europe, that would win the 21st century.
Whale in a sea of young sharks
“The fast fish, not the big fish, eats the small fish,” said the official, Ali Babacan, who oversees the economy. Challenging his host’s boastful tone, Biden reminded the audience that in a sea of young sharks, the United States was still the whale.
Six years ago, Burak Turna, a Turkish writer, was mocked here as a literary shock jock after he wrote a futuristic novel in which Turkish commandos besiege Berlin, obliterate Europe and take control of the Continent. Now, he says the same people who once dismissed him are celebrating him. “There is a new air being pumped into the Turkish consciousness,” he said. But, he warned, “We shouldn't be too brave or overconfident.”
Indeed, for all of Turkey’s recent achievements, its aim of having ‘zero problems’ with its neighbours has shown few successes. Turkish officials tried in vain for months to persuade president Bashar al-Assad of Syria to halt his violent crackdown against civilians, before finally turning against him. Turkey has been unable to resolve conflicts with Cyprus and Armenia. Its recent decision to host a Nato radar installation has rankled Iran. Relations with Israel collapsed after Israeli troops killed nine people aboard a Turkish flotilla trying to break the blockade of Gaza.
In September, the limits of Turkey’s appeal as a political model were laid bare when Erdogan told the Egyptian satellite channel Dream TV that secularism was not the enemy of religion and Egypt should embrace a secular constitution. A spokesman in Egypt for the Muslim Brotherhood party, which won first-round parliamentary elections there, told the Egyptian daily Al Ahram that Erdogan was interfering in Egyptian affairs. (Er-dogan’s aides said the term secularism had been mistranslated as atheism.)
Nor were many Kosovar Albanians amused in August when Turkey’s minister of education, Omer Dincer, asked his Kosovo counterpart to remove offending paragraphs from history textbooks, which he said insulted the Ottoman Turks. Local historians protested that Turkey was trying to whitewash centuries of Ottoman subjugation.
The perils of standing in Turkey’s way became abundantly clear at the United Nations during the annual General Assembly meeting of world leaders this autumn. Erdogan was on the fourth floor of the general assembly hall when he learned that the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, whom he ardently supports, was making his address demanding full UN membership for Palestine. When Erdogan rushed to the nearest entrance to take Turkey’s seat on the main floor, a security guard refused to let him pass. When Erdogan pressed forward, a loud scuffle erupted that was audible four floors below. One western diplomat noted that “the Turks were literally throwing their weight around.”
Yet Turkey’s many defenders say the west cannot expect the country to play regional leader and then criticise it when it flexes its muscles. Moreover, they note, the country is entitled to defend its dignity. At the Cannes summit meeting of the G-20 major economies in November, cameras showed Erdogan suddenly kneeling down when he noticed a sticker of the Turkish flag on the floor to mark the position where he was supposed to stand for a group photo, near president Barack Obama. He gently folded it and put it in his pocket.
